Wench Pat checking in:
The golden days of autumn are rather green and brown this year. Poor trees, after a late spring freeze, they had to put out a second set of leaves, and then they baked in a summer drought. Most of them have given up hope and are sulking by refusing to don their gaudy autumn gowns. So I’m staring out my office window at drab colors and early twilight and long to follow the geese south for winter. 
In other words—the current WIP stinks like a three-day-dead mackerel, and I need a new idea to make me smile and reach for my reference shelf. Books are so much more exciting when they’re merely a gleam in my eye. Unfortunately, the current ideas gallivanting wildly through my brain are completely inappropriate, so I have to put a lid on them. That’s an unfortunate side effect of hating the current WIP—my brain wants to run as far as possible from the world I’m working on.
So my thought of the day is to wonder if the current paranormal craze is a result of readers wanting to escape as far from the present as possible. And then I wonder why we don’t escape to the world of the Wild Wild West or Renaissance Italy or Mayan America instead of leaving reality entirely. On my daily 
blog at blogspot, we’ve been wondering if a John Wayne vampire might bring back western historicals. Wishful thinking, I fear, but it does beg the question—What does it take to make a cycle turn? (I know, wheels, let’s not get smart now!) 
Like the seasons, media entertainment—and I mean TV, movies, YouTube, and whatever is out there along with books—follows a cycle. And I assume those cycles are equally affected by droughts and freezes, or dearths and strikes. Right now we’re being inundated in paranormal fiction, superheroes on TV and movies, ghost whisperers, and if reality TV isn’t as close to abnormal as it gets, I don’t know what is. Will a screenwriters’ strike produce a drab autumn next year? I can see it now—Desperate Housewives have their homes on Wisteria Lane foreclosed and move to Desperation Straits where they sit around in housecoats and drink weak coffee and plot to rob Wal-Mart. Told you my brain is gallivanting recklessly!
So where do you think the cycle will turn next? What will be the next big book phase— Reality Romance? Will television produce historical fiction? Paranormal westerns? Anyone with a crystal ball who understands what turns media wheels? And if you don’t have a crystal ball, what would YOU like to see next on TV or in books? Touched by Angels meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer?