you’re being as judgmental about the naivete of some readers, as they are about Mr. Woodbury’s intentions.

I honestly don’t know what it’s a function of, but I can’t fathom a person who doesn’t get that connection. I don’t know anyone, in church or out, who hasn’t had exposure to something vampiric. Even Buffy? Really? I’m not trying to be sarcastic at the moment; I’m having a hard time with there being that many people who haven’t run across this.

Kate Woodbury, in the other thread, said:

I had a BYU Creative Writing professor who said, “Well, sex and vampirism is kind of an automatic link”…

Could this possibly be a function of regional differences? Like Kate, I’m loathe to play the “we out here in the mission field” card, but I am at a loss as to how this could be missed by so many LDS.

However in this particular case, I think the phrase, “As the two women push against every moral boundary…” should have been a big clue. My only question is, what part of “every” do you not understand?

And precisely!

While I agree with a lot of what you’ve said, I think this statement is a little bit harsh and you’re being as judgmental about the naivete of some readers, as they are about Mr. Woodbury’s intentions. I know plenty of people who’ve had little exposure to classic vampire tales. And no, they honestly don’t believe there is any subtext in Twilight. If you haven’t been exposed to it or you haven’t had it pointed out to you, you’re not going to get it.

However in this particular case, I think the phrase, “As the two women push against every moral boundary…” should have been a big clue. My only question is, what part of “every” do you not understand?

a normal grocery store or a Wal-Mart without having supernatural romance novels jump off the shelves at you.

Goodness yes. I stopped seeking paranormal anything after, oh, you know, Lestat. In, you know, 1994. 😀 Doesn’t mean I won’t read something interesting, but the current urban fantasy thing doesn’t interest me the way it would have, say, 10 years ago.

Right now I like my romance contemporary sans supernatural and/or dressed up in costumes and plopped down somewhere in the world before 1900.

While I’m bored with the controversy itself, I do think it would serve the LDS fiction community well to use this to define its terms and, furthermore, define them on the already-existing consumer’s expectations. Whether Deseret Book set those expectations or fulfilled them is, at this point, moot. The expectation has been created, as evidenced in this review of the book on Amazon. She read the bio and automatically assumed stuff about the book. That’s on her, but I think it’s important to remember this in the future for marketing purposes.

Let’s get a solution out of this, folks.

Good point. Wouldn’t hurt at all for the definitions to be better and tighter.

Though you can’t walk through a normal grocery store or a Wal-Mart without having supernatural romance novels jump off the shelves at you.

Thugh a lot of it has to do with expectations and paying money, not to mention I’ve gotten two e-mails from the publisher pushing the controversy.

I’d say there is a lot there to think about.