Pondering the paranormal

I write urban fiction and am about to release my L.A. Nocturne Collection of stories set in a paranormal-infested Los Angeles (with a handful of stories set in the Middle East.) Looking through them I see a ghosts, djinm, a succubus, a couple of mermaids, more than a couple of vampires, some fairies, but only a couple of werewolves (and one werebear and a couple of shapeshifters.) I even have some zombies. But I was thinking about werewolves. They're not my favorite and yet, suddenly they're everywhere. Especially billionaire shifters and step-brother shifters and seal shifters. (I find myself thinking how interesting it might be if a SEAL was actually a mer-man.) I was thinking about the werewolf books I've liked and only a few come to mind. They are:

Wolf's Hour by Robert McCammon. I'm a huge McCammon fan anyway, and I started reading his work when you could buy his paperback originals (like this one) for something like five bucks at the supermarket. (Remember those days when paperbacks were cheap enough you could chuck two or three in with the frozen vegetables and the ground turkey and never think twice?) This one features a spy who's also a werewolf during WWII and it's a treat.

Lycanthia by Tanith Lee. I so miss Tanith Lee. I have read almost all of her books, some of them so long ago that I could probably enjoy reading them again. This one was great with its decadent, Gothic deatails--old mansions and secrets. 

Those two books are the ONLY two werewolf novels I can think of off the top of my head. So I did a little Googling around to refresh my memory.
I like Carrie Vaughn's Kitty Norville stories but I put those in a different category from "real" werewolf stories. Ditto Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series (which I loved, loved, loved, when i first started reading them). I've never read Patricia Briggs' popular Mercy Thompson series, although Moon Called has been on my Kindle for forever.

I saw the movie Blood and Chocolate, which is based on a novel by Annette Curtis Klause, and it made me curious to read the original. I looked up a list of werewolf novels on Good Reads and out of the first 50 of 725, I hadn't read ANY.

But i have an idea for a series that might work with werewolves and I'm wondering if I can bring something fresh to the "canon," something beyond silver bullets and full moon madness. It's going to be interesting to see. Because it's clear that readers want more shifters!

A Vampire a Day: They Thirst by Robert McCammon

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge Stephen King fan. I think The Stand is a monumental book. I first read it while home sick from school with a horrible case of the flu and believe me, the chapters covering the spread of the plague scared the bejesus out of me.
But as much as I love The Stand, I think Robert McCammon's post-apocalyptic novel Swan Song is even better. I first read that while staying in a series of really awful motels during my first cross-country drive. I'd drive for 10-12 hours and then read until I couldn't read any more. I pulled into L.A. with a bad sunburn on my left arm--I didn't have air conditioning in my car--and about 100 pages left of the book.
They Thirst was the first of McCammon's books I ever read. Then I read Wolf's Hour, which is a Nazi/werewolf thing. I liked both of them. They were pulpy fun, the sort of horror novels you could read in a single sitting.
Like King, McCammon defies categorization. He writes horror, yes, but other things as well. I'm a big fan of his short stories, particularly one called "Night Calls the Green Falcon," which Birdman reminded me of a bit.
McCammon disappeared from publishing for nearly 20 years, and that's a shame. He has a new novel out as of last year and it's on the ever-growing TBR pile.