The Ironic Truth?

I read a post today from Lisa Gail Green's blog Paranormal Point of View. It was called 'Should We Write To Trends?' and I have been thinking about this a lot lately because everyone's like "Why don't you write something that's on the market now?" When you try to explain that books take at least two years to even get on the shelf, they still don't get it. Even if agents pick up your 'trendy' book, in two years who knows what will happen!

It's almost frightening.

When people tell me to write what's popular, I also, almost always, cringe. I don't want to be the same. And most of the time when I'm looking at the shelves and all I see are black covers (thank you Twilight), I am sad and I wonder why there's this stream of similarity.

I know why. I just don't like the truth. lol.

I'm not dissing Twilight either. There's no sense in trying to find fault in other writers when we're all in the game together, but agents are all about the unique, the new--and yet the irony is, look at the shelves and all you see is similarity. Maybe I'm wrong...but all the vampire books...? And then all the characters are unbelievably handsome?

This all could be the mark of our society. We're obsessed with beauty. We're afraid of the unknown. Rich is good. And most of it is. For instance, superhero movies are currently quite popular. Why? Because we feel like we need rescued.

It's also a cycle--superhero movies have been popular before, so have vampires. But the world goes in cycles as well. This isn't the first recession America's been in, or the first time gas princes went up. Or the first for anything. People look to books for their happy endings since they cannot see the future for themselves.

What does everyone think about these trends? Do you see think the books published are unique? What is this definition of unique? 

Anyways, I'm gonna go write now. lol...and try to predict trends. :0