Okay, I've just about had it.

First came Twilight. For the longest time, I tried to get my mind around the appeal of these books. I attempted to read the first one, but it has the distinction of being one of the few novels I literally couldn't finish. Bad writing, surreal attempt at portraying a realistic teen life, and the most emotionally abusive "romance" I've ever seen idolized. After a while, I decided I'd just step back and agree to disagree, dismissing Twilight as an oddball success.

Now, there's this "Hush, Hush" thing that's looking to be Twilight's replacement. Same flaws as before (but even more extreme), with a love interest who actually tries to KILL the protagonist many times throughout the book (but she ends up loving him anyway. Spoilers above). Movie rights and sequels are already pending. Fansites are cropping up. And here I am, a struggling writer, looking at where the real money apparently is in this profession.

And so I decided: fuck it, if I can't beat them, join them. I want to make some motherfucking bank.

In the wake of Twilight, there were a lot of copycat werewolf and vampire romance novels that pretty much exhausted those mythical creatures for creepy sexualization over the following years. I believe the reason Hush, Hush became a big success is because it took the mould of Twilight and used it for a different and unexpected mythical creature (angels). Since I expect a lot of copycat angel fiction to be published in the next few years, I expect they too will have been exhausted by the time I can get anything finished. So I need to think ahead and kick-start the next subgenre of supernatural stalker love.

I asked for a friend's opinion for the logical next choice, and he suggested zombies. Okay, I thought, seems a logical escalation. However, there are three problems with this:

1. Zombies might be too similar to the other two. Angels might seem like a breath of fresh air after the vampires, but now that there are two pop-mythology based series out there, another would be just too stale. I need to strike out further from the others.

2. The zombie mythology is from Haiti, and - despite recognizing the need to completely rape the source mythology in order to write in this genre - my conscious compels me to at least acknowledge its origins. This would mean that either the protagonist or her psycho love interest would have to be black. I don't think the average twilight fan wants to read about black people.

3. Try as I might, I can't think of any sexy way to spin zombies, without catering to niche fetishes and thereby alienating a significant percentage of my target audience.

So, I sat down and thought, and soon it occurred to me: perhaps I should use my own, personal interests as a starting point. And so, I decided.

[img]http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/992/biomech1.jpg[/img]

I will write a teen romance novel about biomechanical androids from space.

Considering that this community has been helpful in my writing before, I figured I'd turn to you for some more inspiration. Here are the things that you have to keep in mind about the genre requirements:

1. Girl is in high school biology class, and there's a new boy in class.

2. Boy is a total manipulative creep who stalks her, which makes her fall in love.

3. Boy turns out to be X (in this case, alien biomech).

4. Another, evil member of boy's kind makes an attempt on girl's life for some reason.

5. Boy saves girl's life and they begin a codependent romance that will go on for many sequels, and end with her becoming another X (in this case, she will be surgically implanted with cybernetic grafts and bio-engineered organs, along with a retrovirus to make her genetically compatible with them).

So, let's have the suggestions!