Let's Do the Monster Mash-Up!

Have you noticed a recent trend in publishing?  It’s called classic monster mash-ups.  You take a classic work of literature and combine it, or mash it up, with modern popular genre fiction.  The most famous monster mash-up came from Quirk Books in 2009, inspired by music and TV spoofs on YouTube – Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  Picture Regency England suffering from a zombie plague with Elizabeth Bennet, a master of deadly combat, defending Meryton from zombie attacks.  Soon thereafter Quirk published Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Ben H. Winters and Jane Austen where the Dashwood sisters live on Pestilent Island and learn to protect themselves from sea monsters.

I am not making this stuff up, honestly.  Here are some other titles in the library’s collection of monster mash-ups:

 Abraham Lincoln:  Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith is based on Honest Abe’s secret journal that reveals he used his famous ax to avenge his mother’s death, caused by a vampire. 

Android Karenina by Ben H. Winters and Leo Tolstoy depicts an alternative Russia with a robotic class system. 

Jane Bites Back by Michael Thomas Ford uses Jane Austen herself as a character as in Jane is a vampire, turned by Lord Byron. 

Little Vampire Women by Lynn Messina and Louisa May Alcott pictures the March sisters as humanitarian vampires, resisting the urge to bite people during the Civil War. 

Mr. Darcy, Vampyre by Amanda Grange follows Elizabeth and Darcy after their marriage when Elizabeth discovers Darcy’s deep, dark secret – he is a vampire. 

Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer by Van Jensen is a graphic novel where Pinocchio uses his nose as a wooden stake to kill vampires in revenge for the murder of Gepetto.   

Shakespeare Undead by Lori Handeland tells the story of vampire Will Shakespeare in London in 1592 where zombies roam, and Will falls in love with a young zombie hunter.

Why am I bringing this up?  I thought it would be fun to come up with our own monster mash-up titles.  You just have to find a classic book that is out of copyright and mash it up with some genre characters – vampires, werewolves, zombies, demons, robots, and so on.  Once we come up with some titles, writing the books shouldn’t be too hard, right?  How about Huckleberry Finn and the Horrifying Hobgoblins?  Or David Copperfield and Demons?  See, this can be fun.  So post your mash-up titles in the comments, and let’s get in on this trend before it’s gone.  Maybe we can even write a bestseller.

Oh, and forget about using Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.  It’s already been done as Jane Slayre by Sherri Browning Erwin – that’s right, Jane is a vampire slayer.