Vampires and werewolves and witches, oh my!

I have a pet peeve--okay I have a lot of pet peeves, but I've noticed something happening in a lot of paranormal books these days. Instead of focusing on one kind of supernatural creature (writing a vampire book about only vampires, for instance), some authors just lump all paranormal creatures together in the same universe and let them loose. As far as I'm concerned this rarely works out.

I recently read Stacia Kane's Personal Demons. Her universe contains demons, witches, and vampires at the very least, although no vampires appear in this story. Thankfully her book sticks to demons. For me, demons and witches go hand-in-hand. Witches summon demons, etc. This book didn't grab my imagination as others have, but at least it didn't throw a bunch of different rules at you for a bunch of different monsters and then expect you to keep up somehow.

It depends, of course, on how well a book is written as well. In L.J. Smith's Night World series (a new personal fave), she has vampires, werewolves, and witches all co-existing in the same world, but each story focuses almost exclusively on one type of those creatures, making it a more enjoyable experience for me. Plus her writing just draws you into the world and into the characters' heads.

For the most part though I prefer my vampires to remain separated from my shapeshifters, and for my demons to stick with their witches. I know I for one will never want to create a world where they all coexist--that's just not a world I would want to write about.