Show of hands: who’s over vampires? Put down your hands. Okay, now, who’s over zombies?

I still hear people asking, “What’s going to be the next big trend?” After vampires, they mean. And I wonder where they’ve been. How have they possibly missed the outbreak of zombie titles published in just the last two years, including the following:

• Brains for Lunch: A Zombie Novel in Haiku?!, by K. A. Holt
• The Enemy, by Charles Higson
• The Forest of Hands and Teeth (and sequels), by Carrie Ryan
• Generation Dead (and sequels), by Daniel
• I Kissed a Zombie, and I Liked It, by Adam Selzer
• The Midnight Curse, by L. M. Falcone
• Nathan Abercrombie series, by David Lubar
• Never Slow Dance with a Zombie, by Ehrich Van Lowe
• Tales from the Crypt, No. 8: Diary of a Stinky Dead Kid
• Xombies series, by Walter Greatshell
• You Are So Undead to Me (and sequels), by Stacey Jay
• The Zombie Chasers, by John Kloepfer
• Zombie Queen of Newbury High, by Amanda Ashby
• Zombiekins, by Kevin Bolger

And that’s just some of the children’s and YA books. Go older and there’s more, and not just horror stories, either. Mysteries, romances, parodies, thrillers, science fiction… seriously, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies popping up on the New York Times Bestseller List didn’t clue you in?

I’ll admit it: zombie books gross me out. Dead things gross me out in general, and zombies are, well, dead. Disgustingly so. Rotting. Stinky. And, somehow, slobbery. So while I can appreciate that zombies make good fodder for a horror story, I have trouble fathoming the books in which zombies are the good guys. Even worse when they’re the romantic interests. Um, ewwwww?

Anyway, this is me raising my hand to say that, yes, I am over zombie lit. That’s why I was so tickled when my friend L. just shared this hilarious article, “Seven Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail (Quickly).” Whether it’s due to putrefaction, inefficient spread of disease, or America’s crap-load of guns, suddenly the zombies are seeming a lot less menacing. Now if we could just stem the flood in publishing.

What’s after zombies, you ask? Well, paranormal lit will continue to be a dominating force for a while, I imagine. There are still plenty of ghost stories coming out, plenty of urban fantasies with mean, nasty fairies. And there are dystopian novels coming out of our ears. I have the same problem with literary fads as I do with a large order of mozzarella cheese sticks: one minute you’ve got a delicious, savory treat, the next you’ve got indigestion.

Hmm, I wonder: do zombies ever get indigestion?