New: Death's Excellent Vacation !

Death's Excellent Vacation, an anthology crossing genres ( from the sci.fi., fantasy, mystery and paranormal genres) with co-author Toni Kelner. Each story in the anthology revolves around death and a holiday, in the similar spirit of the author's earlier anthologies Many Bloody Returns (Vampires and birthdays) and this holiday season's Wolfsbane and Mistletoe (werewolves and Christmas). The anticipated publication date of the new anthology is mid 2010.

** Back during this past summer, Charlaine Harris said during a book signing she wrote a roadtrip story about Sookie and Pam. I'm guessing this is it.

Touch of Dead fills in the blanks

Collected short stories fill gaps in Sookie Stackhouse vampire saga

By GINNIE GRAHAM World Staff Writer
Published: 10/11/2009 2:27 AM


Sookie, Sookie everywhere, but not a drop to drink. Until now.

At least, that is how author Charlaine Harris explains simply in the dedication to this collection of five previously published short stories that feature Sookie Stackhouse: "For all those readers who want every last sip of Sookie."

It's a literary beverage that a great many people have found quite tasty over the last couple of years, thanks in large part to the HBO series "True Blood," created by Alan Ball and based on Harris' series of novels about the adventures of a barmaid named Sookie Stackhouse who lives in a Louisiana that's rife with vampires, shape-shifters and other such creatures.

However, the short stories in "A Touch of Dead" can only be fully understood if one already has a knowledge of Harris' "Southern Vampire" novels — from 2001's "Dead until Dark" to "Dead and Gone," which came out earlier this year.

Arkansas native Harris brings humor and a straight-forward writing style to her unique twist on the paranormal romance genre, blending fantasy, science fiction and a healthy dash of sexual tension.

She has a knack for moving her stories along quickly, but without sacrificing the complexity she gives her characters. And just when action gets serious, she brings in some levity to keep it from becoming completely morose or disturbing.

The five stories here are arranged according to how they fit into the overall chronology of the series — interludes between the novels, so to speak.

Readers
familiar with the Sookie novels will enjoy the stories of her meeting the Vampire Queen of Louisiana for the first time in "One Word Answer," and her role in solving a murder at a strip club for fairies in "Fairy Dust."

The light-hearted "Dracula Night" shows a childlike enthusiasm from the usually ruthless and calculating vampire Eric. The story takes place during a time when Sookie and Eric, who is the sheriff over the regional vampire territory, are flirting with the idea of being a couple. In the vampire culture, Dracula's birthday is a holiday, and Eric views the iconic legend as Santa Claus, hoping for a visit. After the leotard-wearing, pudgy Prince of Darkness arrives, he finds Sookie irresistible, leading to a brouhaha.

"Lucky" uncovers the secret subversive tactics of the town's most successful insurance agent. He has a talent for manipulating luck that only a supernatural being can detect. The good fortune enjoyed by his clients has a detrimental impact on others in the sleepy town. It is the weakest story among the collection, but this is a one-time appearance of the agent among Harris' works.

"Gift Wrap" has a stunner of an ending with Sookie enjoying a very merry Christmas. The tale begins with a naked man, who is also a werewolf, showing up on the doorstep of her country home on Christmas Eve. He is being hunted by a rival werewolf and ended up on her land looking for help. This takes place after "From Dead to Worse (book 8)," and Sookie is alone to celebrate the holidays. While the characters have yet to reappear, it ties in with Sookie's twisted familial lineage.

Through the years, Harris has contributed to short-story anthologies with other authors, including L.A. Banks (Vampire Huntress series), Laurell K. Hamilton (Anita Blake series) and Jim Butcher (Dresden Files). These short stories appeared from 2008 to February of this year.

While it is enjoyable reading the stories in one collection, readers should take time to pick up the anthologies where the pieces were originally published. Harris has been a champion of other writers, even editing at least one of the compilations, and they are good places to find interesting authors.

The stories in “A Touch of Dead” originally appeared in the following paperback anthologies:
“Fairy Dust” in “Powers of Detection” Ace, October 2004

“One Word Answers” in “Bite” Jove, December 2004

“Dracula Night” in “Many Bloody Returns” Ace, September 2007

“Gift Wrap” in “Wolfsbane and Mistletoe” Ace, October 2008

“Lucky” in “Unusual Suspects” Ace, December 2008

Charlaine Harris at DragonCon: “These may be the final three Sookie books”

Novelist Charlaine Harris sinks her teeth into DragonCon

Access Atlanta, Richard Eldredge

We had to battle past Starfleet ensigns, storm troopers, the Green Giant and yes, a few members of the undead to reach writer Charlaine Harris during the DragonCon convention this weekend at the Hyatt downtown.

Thanks to the success of the new HBO hit “True Blood,” based on Harris’ series of Southern vampire Sookie Stackhouse novels, the Magnolia, Arkansas resident has become a rock star on the sci-fi/comics convention circuit.

Still, Harris was to sit quietly in the hotel lounge, observing the bizarre buffet of people-watching in front of her completely undisturbed.

Well, until we showed up anyhow.

She’s still getting used to her new celebrity status. Of her packed panel session this summer at Comic-Con in San Diego with Marietta’s “True Blood” executive producer Alan Ball, she told us: “It was hell. “It was so huge and a little overwhelming. And when you have so many TV and movie people around you, there’s a lot of security.”

Thankfully, the author says only one car-load of overly zealous Sookie Stackhouse readers have actually driven to her Southern Arkansas hometown to pay an unscheduled visit.

“But the chamber of commerce lady tells me she gets a lot of calls!” Harris says laughing. “I honestly don’t know what people expect to see. I’m a boring middle class, middle aged wife and mother. There aren’t any vampires and werewolves in my back yard. I just have a very rich inner life!”

While her nine successful Sookie Stackhouse novels (a 10th, “Dead in the Family” is due out in May 2010) were initially optioned for the movies, “Six Feet Under” creator and “American Beauty” writer Ball was the Hollywood producer who finally proved to Harris he could effectively bring her characters to life via “True Blood.”

“Alan convinced me through his work and his words that he truly understood the comedy, the blood and the romance of the books,” Harris said.

Still, when the pilot episode of “True Blood” aired last year, Harris was uncertain how folks would receive it in her small hometown.

“I was doing this!” Harris explains, covering her face with her hands and peeking out from between two fingers. “There was just acres of flesh. I had to warn my husband! I thought I might have to pack up and leave town. But my neighbors told me, ‘Oh well, we know it was Alan who put all that sex stuff in.’ I remember thinking, ‘Well, Alan put most of that sex stuff in there!’ ”

Harris says she just signed a new book contract for Sookie novels 11, 12 and 13.

“These may be the final three Sookie books,” she says. “I want to stop while I’m still being entertained. I don’t want to be the last person to know I’ve gone stale.”

And Harris has had the final scene of the last book in her head since she was writing book two in the series.

“I know where the end of the rainbow is for Sookie,” Harris taunts with a mischievious smile. “It will please some readers and displease others, I’m sure. I just hope they’ll stick with me until I get there!”

A little Q&A with Charlaine Harris

Charlaine Harris on her Sookie books, ‘True Blood,’ Bill vs. Edward
Posted by Diana McCabe, Paranormal Romance

Charlaine Harris is pretty much everywhere these days. The author of the Sookie Stackhouse series, which HBO is basing its TRUE BLOOD shows on, is working on her 10th Sookie book (due out May 2010), keeping an eye on the TV show as well as appearing at big fan shows such as Comic-Con. We caught up with her right before Comic Con to ask her a few things about the latest book out, DEAD AND GONE, and a little bit about the show!

Q. Do you think Eric has grown because of his relationship with Sookie?
A. I think parts of Eric have surfaced that he thought were buried for good.

Q. What will it take for Sookie to understand the blood bond? (It seems as if she is losing her ability to distinguish between her own feelings, Eric’s feelings and those generated by the blood bond.)
A. This is an issue in the next book.

Q. How would you compare the strengths between the bonds of vampire and sire, a vampire and his/her king or queen, and a vampire and his/her sheriff?
A. The vampire/sire relationship is the strongest.

Q. In one podcast interview, you said you didn’t see Sookie turning into a vampire or even winding up with one — in the sense that she would lead a normal life and be with a human. Do you still think she will be able to do that — settle with one person? Not a vampire?
A. I said that Sookie will never become a vampire. And a vampire can’t give her what she’s always thought she wanted; a regular marriage with children. But that doesn’t mean Sookie will end up with exactly what she wants. I see no reason why she couldn’t settle with one person.

Q. What did you want readers to take away from DEAD AND GONE?
A. I don’t know that I had a specific goal; I had several themes, though. The ruthlessness and inhumanity of the fae, the outrages we commit in the name of love, and the loneliness of those who simply can’t fit in and are doomed by their own nature . . . those were all elements of the book.

Q. Do you have a good idea of how the series will eventually end? If so — have you ever changed your mind about the ending?
A. I do know how the series will end. And I have never changed my mind.

Q. Tell us a little bit about your cameo at the end of season 2!!!!
A. I’m sitting in Merlotte’s at the bar talking to Sam. I’m wearing a striped shirt. I have a line. I almost hope they cut it. I’m not an actor.

Q. Alan Ball has certainly developed the HBO show differently from the books. Does his vision of the show make you think about how you’re writing your current book? Have you ever gotten an idea from the show to build on in the book series?
A. I keep them separate in my mind. The book characters have been living with me for a long, long time.

Q. Do you and Alan Ball talk before, during, after the season?
A. We email back and forth from time to time, more frequently before each season. We are both very busy people. If I’m in Los Angeles, we usually have lunch together or something. And we have some good conversations when we’re doing publicity for the show.

Q. To you — what’s been the most interesting/surprising or creative storyline(s) that HBO has developed in the series?
A. Jessica, without a doubt.

Q. Which parts of the TV series most visually match what you envisioned when you wrote your book series?
A. Sookie’s house is perfect, though it doesn’t have the same layout. But the rooms are just right. In Sam’s office, the desk is turned in a different direction, but other than that it’s wonderful.

Q. Do you know ahead of time what is on each episode? Do you watch each Sunday?
A. I do know ahead of time. And I do watch each Sunday.

Q. OK — gotta ask because it’s everywhere! Bill Compton vs. Edward Cullen?
A. There is no contest.

Charlaine Harris announces Sookie books 11, 12, and 13.

Earlier this month Charlaine Harris announced, at the Chicago Borders book signing, she just signed a 3 (more) book deal with Penguin.

Saturday she announced more details of that plan. Charlaine will write three more Sookie books #11, #12, #13 planned for publication starting in 2011 and through 2014.

Small-town Southern life a muse for author Harris

MAGNOLIA, ARK.

By JON GAMBRELL
Associated Press

Vampires typically roam the fogged streets of London or the humid nights of New Orleans, opulent worlds filled with beautiful monsters and formal balls.

Trailer parks and honky-tonks didn't fit -- until author Charlaine Harris took a chance with a telepathic barmaid named Sookie Stackhouse.

Now, Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries series has hit The New York Times' list of best sellers, gained fans far beyond her south Arkansas town and inspired a television series on HBO. Though fueled by sex, violence and hints of humor, Harris' novels hold a mirror up to a South where race and societal change permeates through her prose.

Still, the mother of three said her only concern at first was finding something that would sell.

"I'm no crusader," Harris says. "I just like to make a point. If people get it, good. If they don't, OK."

Stackhouse's fictional hometown of Bon Temps, La., resembles the South in which Harris grew up, filled with waitresses who wear Keds sneakers and shop at Wal-Mart. Trailer homes dot the rural pastures of the north Louisiana town and pickup trucks fill the parking lot of the bar where Harris' heroine works.

For Kevin Durand, an associate philosophy professor at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, life in Bon Temps evokes where his family once lived in Louisiana.

"As she describes the place, it's a place I've been," said Durand, who specializes in pop culture ghouls and vampires. "I've seen all of those things before."

That sense of place allows the fantastic to seem commonplace, especially as wereanimals, fairies and witches crowd into the story around Stackhouse and her vampire associates. Even the vampires, though satiated with artificial blood produced in Japan, struggle with scheduling nocturnal home repairs.

In a way, Harris, 57, says she wanted to serve as an "anti-Anne Rice," allowing humor and reality to drive her novels.

"I just drew on my knowledge of what it's like to live in a small town from the viewpoint of a person who has very little disposable income, ... a person who's really having to count their pennies, plan ahead to pay their property tax," she says. "That's most people, I believe."

That pretty much is a picture of Magnolia, a city of 11,000 only 20 miles away from Louisiana. There, the small county courthouse sits in a square near a gazebo. Murals of magnolia flowers and oil derricks, once the town's lifeblood, cover building walls. A diner across the street hosts a workday crowd, but don't look for a bottle of beer -- it's a dry county.

It's here where residents stop the roughly 5-foot-tall redhead in the grocery store, even if they've never read one of her books. She volunteers at her church, where members don't raise eyebrows at her violent and racy tales.

The county library, a converted Assembly of God church that has a steeple in the parking lot for sale, stocks a whole shelf of Harris' novels, including her early mysteries.

"Everything Charlaine writes goes over like a helium balloon in Magnolia," said assistant library director Dana Thornton.

Harris' Stackhouse novels read quickly, ramping up at chapters' ends in the pattern of her many trade paperback mysteries. While pulpy love entanglements and murders snare Stackhouse, the novels also provide a glimpse of social criticism. Vampires, once in self-imposed exile, "come out of the coffin," an intended parallel to the acceptance of gays in the world.

"It just seemed like a very similar situation to me," Harris says. "It's just admitting publicly the existence of something that we've always known existed privately."

Those vampires attract Stackhouse, a mind reader, as she can't hear their thoughts like normal people. They brood like other vampires flooding bookstores and movie theaters, but Harris endows them with a dark power harkening back to Bram Stoker, Durand said.

"They're still not the cuddly little teddy bears with teeth kind of deal; they're still a threat," he said. "The only reason that they don't wipe out everything is because they restrain themselves."

Race also plays a part in the novels. Few black characters exist on the pages, a problem Harris acknowledges. The first Stackhouse novel also hints to the need for a black and a white funeral home in Bon Temps, something Harris writes is tradition rather than racism.

Harris herself grew up in Tunica, Miss., during the 1960s. Now home to casinos lining the bank of the Mississippi River, the Tunica of her childhood was 80 percent black and surrounded by rice fields. The town's high school finally integrated in 1969 when Harris was a senior.

"It was very painful and frightening. Honestly, I congratulate the two young black women who graduated from my class," she says. "I don't know how they did it."

Those angry with sweeping societal change make their way into Stackhouse's town after supernatural creatures reveal themselves. Stackhouse finds herself targeted by them, her "disability" of being able to read minds often placing her in harm's way. A terrorist bombing against vampires finds her helping firefighters recover victims as the smell of "hate" hangs in the air, an allusion to 9/11.

"I saw so many people (like that) when integration came in, people who hated change without really understanding what it was going to mean or really looking at it from any other perspective than their own comfort," Harris says.

Another disaster, Hurricane Katrina, hits close to home for the book's characters. Vampires struggle to cover damaged roofs with blue plastic tarps. Stackhouse takes storm victims into her home -- though they are witches, of course.

Some readers got angry about using hurricane in her novels and accused Harris of exploiting the tragedy. However, she believes it would have been impossible not to mention it.

"I thought, 'How can I write a book about Louisiana and not mention Katrina?' That would have been crazy," Harris says. "The last thing I want to feel like is I'm profiting on someone else's misery."

Stackhouse's own travails -- romantic and otherwise -- will continue for at least four more books, the author says. The next adventure is due out in October, with Harris exploring some loose "threads" in Stackhouse's life.

But that sense of small town and the details of Harris' own life will continue to fill the pages of her novels.

"You've got to use everything you have," she says.