This past week I read two viewpoints on the issue of whether the popularity of vampires has topped out, or if there is still some life left in them. So to speak. If we had a crystal ball we could tell if indeed, the release of another “Twilight” movie is a mistake, HBO should not have renewed “True Blood” and Charlaine Harris should stop writing her books. Could it be that all the artists and marketers banking on this phenomenon (my publisher included) are in trouble?

Well, the opinion that vampires “have reached the saturation point” was expressed by my personal idol, Neil Gaiman, in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly. Said Neil, “Vampires go in waves, and it kind of feels like we’re now finishing a vampire wave, because at the point where they’re everywhere it’s probably time to go back underground for another 20 years or another 25 years.”

On the other hand, over on NYTimes.com, director Guillermo del Toro and author Chuck Hogan opined that “Vampires Never Die”. They believe we live in a time perfectly suited for a fascination with vampires. Wrote the pair, “Vampires find their niche and mutate at an accelerated rate now—in the past one would see, for decades, the same variety of fiend, repeated in multiple storylines. Now, vampires simultaneously occur in all forms and tap into our every need: soap opera storylines, sexual liberation, noir detective fiction, etc. The myth seems to be twittering promiscuously to serve all avenues of life, from cereal boxes to romantic fiction. The fast pace of technology accelerates its viral dispersion in our culture.”

Del Toro and Hogan are right: We’ve seen in the past year or two a flowering of this archetype into all kinds of new and creative forms, and spreading virally via the sophisticated media of today. Five years ago there were many vampire romances being published, particularly in the small press, but they were typically similar in theme and execution. However, in 2009, in the field of books alone, you could enjoy a variety of approaches to the topic. Not just Anne Rice style vampires…but Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy, the Sookie Stackhouse series, L.J. Smith’s The Vampire Diaries, Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake books, and of course the Twilight series to name some of the most popular. There are classic vampires, modern vampires, and even fantasy vampires like those in my novel Bloodchained.

This “something for everyone” vampire phenomenon is rather new. Sure, there have been countless ways to enjoy this genre in decades past—think Buffy, “The Lost Boys,” the many productions of Dracula. However, suddenly we find people thinking of vampires in completely fresh, new ways.

This is certainly the first time in history where a book such as How to Catch and Keep a Vampire: A Step-by-Step Guide to Loving the Bad and the Beautiful could be written. My vampire dating guidebook (coming in October to bookstores worldwide) is the first of its kind, and I daresay, it wasn’t until Twilight and “True Blood” caught on in a big way that there was actually a market for a title like this. In 1980, 1990, or probably even 2000, very few women thought about dating vampires. In 2008 it is among the most popular fantasies of females from 13 on up.

In a sense, the vampire archetype is being reinvented, for a new and larger generation. It is, therefore, completely fresh material in many ways. I hate to disagree with my beloved Neil Gaiman, but it seems to me vampires are here to stay. Well, of course they are; they never leave the planet completely. But I mean to say they will continue to be high profile for quite awhile to come.

Vampires have come out of the shadows now, and if you ask me, they won’t be going back to lurk mode for quite some time.

Diana Laurence is the author of the Soulful Sex anthologies of erotic romance fiction, and the vampire romance Bloodchained (www.bloodchained.com). Diana's works are published by Living Beyond Reality Press (www.livingbeyondreality.com.) Visit her at www.dianalaurence.com or enjoy her blog at www.eroticawithsoul.blogspot.com.