Why Vampires/Werewolves/Faeries (???) should never be British

Honestly, I'm not uber-Patriotic or like, British-obsessed. I just wanted to share my thoughts on a few paranormal romance staples that just WOULDN'T work in Britain. I mean, I'm not a total expert, because I'm a contemporary kinda girl. And I'm not saying UK pnr romance writers are rubbish (I'm sure they're just as awesome as their US counterparts), just that our little isle is ill suited to shmexy vampire shparkleeee timez.

First of all, our town names are boring.

I've seen the summaries: "Someday Dreamer is just an average girl from Enchantment, Ohio". Or Paradise, Texas. Or Sunrise, Indiana.

Basically, US towns have these dreamy-sounding towns way more suited to witty little metaphors/titles/comments than the UK. Tell me this doesn't sound rubbish: "Anne Brown is just an average girl from Grimsby, Yorkshire." The closest we come to cool names is really grim (ha) ones like Black Dog and No Man's Land (both actual places). And Grimsby, and Hull.

Secondly, not many of us UK teens can drive. So no midnight car chases/hot pnr boy skidding into a car park to save us from thugs.

In the UK, driving age is seventeen. No practicing before that, and no going straight out in your car on your seventeenth birthday, because there is a crapload of paperwork to fill in and send off before you can actually drive.

Our streets are tiny and windy, so town/city dwellers don't usually bother to drive if there's nowhere to put their car.

Plus, insurance is shockingly expensive. So unless your boy was as rich as Midas/Edward Cullen, he would have to save you from the car park thugs (get me, Twilight reference) and then your romantic lunch would have to consist of Morrisons Bettabuy sandwiches and reduced Scotch eggs sitting in the car in said car park, because a romantic meal would probably be too expensive.

And most UK teens don't learn to drive till about 18, so that's another setback.

No ultra-expensive, super-fancy glass houses in the woods. Because you have to get planning permission for that sh*t.

And chances are, the woods are owned by some local farmer who doesn't want a wolf pack running through them, or some rich vampires setting up home there. You go climbing trees with Vampire boy, and he'll be down the bottom with his gun. Still, at least vampire boy'll be safe, because farmers don't tend to shoot silver bullets.

So that's it, people. Can anyone else think of reasons why the UK is totally unsuited to sparkley, bitey goings on?

And does anyone agree that Queen Elizabeth and Edward would make a TOTALLY awesome fan fiction? So long as Eddy doesn't eat the corgies...

UK YA - not hiding in the shadows any more!

I was visiting the Absolute Vanilla blog, and I read this post about a brand new website for and about UK YA writers and readers. It's called www.ukyabooks.wordpress.com and it is made of awesome. And I also think it's important, because when I looked at my bookshelves, about 90% of the YA was American.

I think this is because US YA is so well-developed as a genre, and the characters are usually older, and hey, they can go on road trips! In the UK, you can travel from Land's End in Cornwall to John O'Groats in Scotland in about seven hours. Great road trip, right? Hardly enough time to fall in love and discover meaningful self-truths or whatever it is road-trippers do.

Oh, and there's a #UKYA hash tag thingie on twitter, which means nothing to me but might to others of you. Get tweeting, peeps!

Next post is going to be about a UK YA book that I've just read, which freaked me out and made me think and I'm going to review it for you all to check out.

First, though, because I can and because it's British, here are some funny Harry Potter pictures for you all!