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by authors again and again. In many ways, the vampire of fiction is used repeatedly as a metaphor for illicit forms of sexuality: from dominance and submission, to sado-masochism, homosexuality, and, in the more horrific instances, penetrative sex forced on an unwilling victim. The vampire as we see him in film is an inescapably Freudian figure: when he gets aroused, his fangs grow long and hard. With these, he penetrates his victim (or his lover); there is a fluid exchange, and sometimes contagion or procreation occurs. A vampire’s hunger for blood is further sexualized as a type of lust, a burning need that consumes him whenever he (or she) lays eyes upon the object of desire. Homosexuality, bisexuality, and pansexuality are all topics that can be freely explored within the vampire trope, because the vampire’s needs are redirected to something everyone, regardless of gender or orientation, has: blood.

The vampire, as it began in folklore, was in many ways a personification of the primal fear that the living hold for the dead. Once the vampire made its transition from folklore to fiction, the figure morphed and became instead humanity’s dark mirror. It represents all of those forbidden hungers and desires that most of us secretly long for: immortal youth, eternal life, inhuman power, and uninhibited sexuality. Once we understand the vampire in these terms, it becomes fairly obvious why this fearsome creature of the night holds such an enduring appeal.

Charlaine Harris

The Woman Behind the Heroine, Sookie Stackhouse

“[These books were] such an escape, and yet there were nuggets of really profound things that [Harris] said about existence and parts of the culture, but it’s also wrapped up in a fun amusement-park, gothic, romantic, science-fiction slasher movie . . . Right around [Dead to the World] I remember thinking, ‘This would make a good TV series. If this show was done right, this would be a show I would watch.’”

— Alan Ball

The power of social media is undeniable. I was over 80,000 words into this book when I finally turned to Twitter for a response (in 140 characters or less) to the one question I was afraid to ask. I needed to know what the Bookies thought, those people who rabidly read Charlaine Harris’s novels, back-to-back, before they became converts of the TV series. “Speak now or forever hold your peace,” I wrote. “In my book, should I refer to the series as the Southern Vampire Mysteries [the series’ original name] or the Sookie Stackhouse novels [the series’ informal name].” The answer turned out to be quite simple, but I’m glad I asked.

Everyone thought that Sookie deserved to be front and center, books, series, or otherwise, with the tongue-in-cheek response, “the Sookeh Stackhouse novels,” coming a close second. (An inside joke you’ll get soon enough, if you don’t already.) Sookie is the voice of Charlaine Harris’s blockbuster series about a young, southern, telepathic waitress who falls for a vampire in Bon Temps, Louisiana. But even though the books are told entirely from her perspective, the remaining characters — least of which the intense flavor of a humid, southern landscape rife with socioeconomic politics — are far from supporting. The books have had massive commercial success: nine of Harris’s novels landed in the top 100 bestselling titles of 2009. If bestsellers don’t impress you, how about prolificacy? In her almost 30-year career, Harris has published close to 30 novels, and that’s not counting short stories. True, South African writer Mary Faulkner wrote 904 books under six pen names, but it’s doubtful she had to meet the demands of today’s market or a genre audience that may not have initially taken too kindly to the idea of a mainstreaming vampire.

If we’ve learned anything about immortality, it’s that it allows our imaginations as both readers and writers to adapt, evolve, and just have some fun! But what makes Harris’s tales so intriguing? For a start, the novels are gruesome and sexy — “We stumbled into the house, and he turned me to face the couch. I gripped it