The "Vampyre" Diary and other such rot

Since when did fan fiction count as valid literature? I thought it was something found only on the internet, in fan magazines, and (in its raciest form) scribbled in notebooks hidden beneath beds.

And this is why I never let my mother clean out under my bed...

Now however, it seems that if your fan fiction involves Mr. Darcy, that pompous hottie from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice then you're almost guaranteed a book deal.

I was first struck with shock while wandering Barnes & Noble looking for the latest Stieg Larsson novel and noticed this ridiculousness on the shelves:

"As the golden summer draws to a close and the Darcys look ahead to the end of their first year of marriage, Mr. Darcy could never have imagined his love could grow even deeper with the passage of time..." Thanks, Amazon.com

Okay, I thought, no big deal. Until I found the book I was looking for and, walking to the checkout, saw this:
Not only did Ms. Amanda Grange have a "vampyre" novel about Mr. Darcy, but she has written the fictional diaries of Darcy, Knightley, Colonel Brandon, and several other Austen heartthrobs to boot.

And apparently combining Pride and Prejudice with Twilight is good business practice, because Amanda Grange was not the only one churning out this kind of ridiculousness. Regina Jeffers has written Vampire Darcy's Desire: A Pride and Prejudice Adaptation. And I don't have time to list all the other Pride and Prejudice knockoffs I found on Amazon (you can look it up yourself).

I'm sure the resemblance is purely coincidental.

Look, girls, I know you want a boyfriend. Someone romantic and sensitive and mysterious who love you for who you are and who finds you irresistibly sexy (and for some reason wants to suck your blood). But buying every Austen fan fiction you get your hands on is not going to get you any closer to that Mr. Darcy of your own. If anything, it's just going to drive him away. Because from what I remember of the character (from the original novel), he doesn't really like boy-crazy ladies who spend all their free time mooning after any guy that gives them the time of day.

This level of lusting after a completely fictional character who lived in a fictional England 200 YEARS AGO just makes me want to bash my head against a wall repeatedly. Except that that would lead to brain damage. And then I might actually want to read these books.

At least I bought The Girl Who Played With Fire. That is some small consolation. Oh, Stieg Larsson, why did you have to die so suddenly after turning in your manuscripts for the Millenium trilogy? Well, at least you finished them. I'll have to content myself with that.