Vampires are so over, according to Neil Gaiman, and I have to admit I hope he's right, drowning as we are under shelf-loads of Twilight clones and vampire academies and sexy vampire hunters. Amazon even has an entire romance sub-category for the blood-suckers, which I find rather unbelievable.

"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," Gaiman told Entertainment Weekly. "It definitely sort of feels like classical vampires have been around enough that if they could go back in their coffins 25 years and come out the next time as something really different, that would be cool."

Wearyingly, Gaiman's comments provoked a backlash from vampire fanatics telling him he's mistaken (there's nothing worse than an angry Twilight fan). This, the author says on his blog, only proves his point. "I'm not saying there's anything bad about vampires, quite the opposite. Just that in a world in which a dozen people immediately write to me on Twitter to point out that I've got it wrong, as they are all writing Vampire stories, in which Vampires are now everywhere, is a world in which High Vampire Season is coming to an end," he writes. "You shouldn't be glutted with vampires: they should be a spice, not a food group."

Hear, hear. But what will replace them? Zombies, perhaps? There's a rash of zombie titles lined up, but I feel there's little mileage to be found in sexy zombies or zombie romances: my money's on werewolves. And if you haven't read Kit Whitfield's excellent Bareback, then now's your chance.