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By Root 431 0

Sookie’s telepathy as an endearing trait. She told me, “It’s the first of many awful things I’ve done to Sookie. I would not like to know ANY of the things she discovers via her ‘disability’.” But it is a great narrative device, certainly in a first-person series. I asked Harris if going to these dark places was liberating for her as an author. “My life has not been an entirely easy one. But I think most writers get rid of their worst doubts and fears by writing about them, even if in an abstract way,” she begins. “It’s very easy to get to that darker place inside myself, but it’s not as dark as it would be if I didn’t explore it.”

I also suggested to Harris that Sookie’s telepathy was a nod to the voyeuristic process of all writers who inherently wonder what makes people tick, what lurks under the surface. Did she agree? “That’s the great thing about being a writer, you can live second-hand.” She continues, “I don’t necessarily think writers have to have first-hand experience of every dark thing they write about — or every happy thing, either.”

So, why the Bayou? Harris says she was reacting to famed author Anne Rice, whose Vampire Chronicles series is set in New Orleans, Louisiana, and who made it sound like a mecca for vampires. She thought, “Wouldn’t it be funny to take the very prosaic, unromantic northern part of Louisiana and put my vampires there?” She’s been told that Shreveport has experienced an increase in interest about vampire tours, something Harris finds greatly amusing, her small-town roots showing. “In Shreveport!”

Arriving at Sookie’s name was much easier. It’s an old southern nickname borrowed from her grandmother’s best friend. As for the surname “Stackhouse,” Harris pulled it from the phonebook, thinking it a perfect fit with her protagonist’s given name.

As for the politics of the books, Harris addresses a lot of larger issues, but similar to Alan Ball’s approach, she doesn’t see herself as a crusader. “Certainly, there’s discrimination and tremendous unfairness in the world . . . [I]f we would like to blame the evil in the world on monsters we need to examine ourselves, because we are the monsters. There’s a lot of navel-gazing we could do that would make us all better people.”

When it came time to settle on a tone, Harris went for something light-hearted against the advice of her agent. She felt her funny take on vampires was as challenging to write as it would have been if she had stuck to the usual ominous fare. For two years, it looked as if her agent might be right. But then the manuscript was sold, proving Harris’s instincts correct as one Sookie novel after the other landed on the New York Times bestseller list. The television rights were optioned, but the production fell through. Meanwhile, Alan Ball had fallen in love with the books, and threw his hat into the ring along with three other offers. Harris chose Ball. “He understood what the books were about, a mixture of extremes: humor, violence, awakenings.”

But it was Ball’s polite demeanor that got the deal signed and sealed. Harris had met many players, but had heard nothing but praise from the people who’d worked with Ball over the years. It’s perhaps no surprise then that when she first saw the evocative and sexually graphic opening credits she was taken aback. “I thought, ‘Oh, my god, I’m going to have to move,’” Harris laughs. “It was so extreme.” When HBO sent her the rough edit of the first episode, she settled into the idea that the show could honor her books while taking the stories to new places. “I was riveted. It was so exciting seeing my characters on the screen, and every now and then there was some dialogue straight from the book!” She says she found the sex scenes startling, in particular the viewer’s introduction to Jason Stackhouse. “Although I knew Jason’s character, I’d never followed him into the bedroom before, since Sookie never did.” This sentiment is echoed by Stephen Moyer, who also thrills in seeing the books leap from the page to the screen. “[Charlaine Harris’s] books are specifically from Sookie’s point