Regarding Anne Rice: I figured that if I'm going to write my urban vampiric fantasy parody at some point in the future, I'd like to at least see what's part of its "canon", so to speak. I'd have to re-read most of Amelia Atwater-Rhodes' stuff (although I like her, so that's not that big of a deal), and I'll probably take a look at Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series, since for some reason that's really big now. And I could dig up a million other books on vampires, both fictional and about the history of the vampire mythos.

Really funny thing, though: I don't have a particular "fetish" for either vampires or werewolves, and yet I have original ideas that revolve around both...