On the heels of “Fairy Dust” follows “Dracula Night.” I really enjoyed writing this one because we get to see an almost childlike side of the usually pragmatic Eric. Sookie, along with other members of the supernatural community, is invited to celebrate one of the few big dates on a vampire’s calendar—the annual party held in honor of the first modern vampire, Vlad Tepes, popularly known as Dracula. The vampires believe that every year the real Vlad makes an appearance at one of these parties, and Eric hopes it will be at his. Eric gets his wish . . . and he doesn’t. The timing of the party in the original version of “Dracula Night,” published in Many Bloody Returns, was gradually perceived to be improbable, and by the time the story appeared in A Touch of Dead, the invitation date had been changed to a more credible January 13. The book that follows this bit of lore is Dead as a Doornail.
“One Word Answer” is the most serious of the short stories and contains information important for understanding the action in the next book. (It falls between Dead as a Doornail and Definitely Dead.) I apologize to readers who for years wondered if they’d missed a book somehow. I won’t put vital information in a short story again. I’ve returned to treating the short stories as little side trips from the main action of the books.
In “One Word Answer” (which first appeared in Bite), Sookie and her friend Bubba are raking in Sookie’s yard (at night, of course) when a limousine arrives. It contains the lawyer Mr. Cataliades, the vampire Waldo, and a secret passenger. Sookie finds out about the death of her cousin Hadley Delahoussaye, she discovers that Hadley had become a vampire before that second death, and she is told that Hadley had become the lover of the vampire Queen of Louisiana. In the course of their conversation, Sookie realizes that Waldo was so jealous of Hadley he may have had a hand in her death. The secret passenger in the limo is Sophie-Anne, Queen of Louisiana, and she’s come with her own agenda.
“Lucky” was first published in Unusual Suspects, and it’s lighter in tone. Sookie’s insurance agent, Greg Aubert, has been casting spells to ensure that he won’t have to pay out on policies. His clients simply have better luck than other people in Bon Temps, thanks to Greg’s witch training. But Greg is worried because someone is coming into his office at night, and as Sookie and her friend Amelia investigate, they discover that other insurance agents are really suffering because of Greg’s track record. And maybe one of them has decided to do something about that. “Lucky” should be read following All Together Dead.
My Sookie Christmas story, “Gift Wrap,” should be read before Dead and Gone. It’s the only thing I’ve ever written about Sookie that contains another point of view. Sookie is lonely at Christmas; everyone seems to have big plans but her. Her great-grandfather Niall knows this, and he collaborates with some supes to give Sookie a wonderful Christmas Eve gift, though it’s not one she would have normally accepted. I got several messages of protest after the publication of “Gift Wrap” in Wolfsbane and Mistletoe , but I wrote the story to let the reader know something important about Niall.
“Two Blondes,” the sixth of the Sookie short stories, is one of my favorites. It’s in the anthology Death’s Excellent Vacation, and it’s a Sookie-and-Pam story set after Dead and Gone. Victor sends the two to investigate an offer he’s gotten from the owner of a sleazy “gentleman’s club” north of the casinos in Tunica, Mississippi. Sookie and Pam enjoy a little entertainment at a casino show before they drive up to keep their appointment. It’s not a huge surprise that this meeting turns out to be a trap, and Sookie and Pam form close acquaintances with stripper poles before the night is through. “Two Blondes” was published after A Touch of Dead was on the shelves, so it’s not included.
The novella “Small-Town Wedding,” which appears in this book, occurs chronologically between Dead in the Family and Dead Reckoning.
The seventh story, one I finished not too long ago, is “If I Had a Hammer,” included in Home Improvement: Undead Edition. This story should be read after Dead Reckoning because the du Rone twins have been born. While Sookie and Sam are helping Tara and JB with some much-needed home renovation, they uncover a terrible secret that has lain buried for decades.
RELATED STORIES
Dahlia Lynley-Chivers
I thought I’d enjoy writing about another character in some short fiction, so I’ve written several pieces about Dahlia Lynley-Chivers, a little, very old, very cold vampire who loves her high heels and her men. The adventurous and judgmental Dahlia lives in Rhodes, the city Sookie visits in All Together Dead, and Sookie sees her there, but the two do not talk. Some of the Dahlia stories (“Tacky” from My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding and “Bacon” from Strange Brew) take place before the summit at Rhodes. “Tacky” is about the wedding of Dahlia’s best friend—yes, even Dahlia has a best friend—which is rudely interrupted by terrorists, who don’t live to regret it. “Bacon” is a revenge story in which Dahlia hatches an elaborate plot to bring a witch to justice.
In “Dahlia Underground” (from Crimes by Moonlight), my favorite vampire is hauled up out of the rubble by rescue workers after the explosion of the hotel housing the vampire summit. After a bit of recuperation, she’s directed to pursue the perpetrators by her sheriff, Cedric.
And finally, in Glamour’s holiday issue, we have a Dahlia Christmas story: “A Very Vampire Christmas.” Dahlia actually embraces the spirit of the season in her own way, and she gets to kill some elves in the process.
Another Dahlia story is scheduled for release in Down These Strange Streets, publishing in October 2011.
Sean and Layla
Sean, an Irish vampire with freckles, and Layla, a modern young woman who has a serious problem with a stalker, meet in the novella “Dancers in the Dark,” which first appeared in Night’s Edge. The beautiful Layla, who’s trying to remain anonymous in the Northern city of Rhodes, has fled from the South to hide from her stalker, a rich man who attacked and mutilated her after getting her pregnant. Layla is running out of money, so she auditions for a job with Blue Moon, a company that keeps a stable of dancers who appear at parties and gala events. The teams are usually composed of one vampire and one human, and the human gets bitten at the end of the dance. Layla comes to know and sympathize with the other members of the dance troupe, and they in turn respect her talent and help her when her stalker catches up with her. Sean falls in love with her in his quiet way. In the end, he has to bring Layla over when she suffers terrible blood loss during an attack by her stalker.
Sookie meets Sean and Layla in Rhodes at the vampire summit in All Together Dead.
The Britlingens
Sookie meets the Britlingens in All Together Dead, too. Batanya and Clovache are hired to protect the King of Kentucky at the summit in Rhodes, and against all odds, they succeed in their mission. They’re incredibly tough bodyguards from another dimension. Clovache and Batanya were raised and trained by the Britlingen Collective, whose motto is “What is the law? The client’s word.” We learn more about the two women in “The Britlingens Go to Hell,” in Must Love Hellhounds. Burdened with a dubious client (a thief) and an impossible task (to retrieve a ball from Hell), the two saddle up and head into trouble. Along the way, they encounter Amelia Earhart, Narcissus, assorted strange beings, and the Lord of Hell himself. They also discover that their client is one of the few surviving members of a race with an unusual physical attribute.
Vampires, Two-Natured, and Fairies, Oh My!
Sookie Discusses the Creatures She’s Met
BY CHARLAINE HARRIS
The last couple of years have been one big learning curve. I got nothing against change. Considering I wasn’t a happy camper before I met my first vampire, I have to say that change is a good thing. Some days I just feel like I have learned as much new stuff about the world as I can handle. However, so far I’m coping.
There is one real positive thing about my hometown of Bon Temps, Louisiana: Though it isn’t all that big, it can sure adapt.
Back in high school we were
studying Shakespeare, and there was this quote in Hamlet that seems to describe the last few years: “There are more things in heaven and on earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Everyone trots that out in bad horror movies, but there’s a reason for that. It really does say it all.
I always thought that life, and society, wouldn’t change in my little corner of Louisiana. That was before the whole world got shocked one evening when we found out that vampires were real and not just something that you saw in cheesy late-night movies.
Two years later, a real vampire walked into my life one night in Merlotte’s and pulled me smack-dab into the middle of his world. There are times that I wish I had not been working that night, but I know it would have happened one way or another.
THE VAMPIRES
I love the sun. I felt so sorry for vampires when I really considered what it would mean to live your life in the darkness—to never see the blue sky, watch butterflies, see a hummingbird at a feeder . . . just enjoy the day. And some vampires haven’t seen the light of day for over a thousand years. A thousand years of night! It’s hard to wrap my mind around.
And all the time they kept their existence as secret as they could. They’d still be skulking around picking off humans if some Japanese scientists hadn’t managed to create a form of synthetic blood that was just like the real stuff; in fact, in English they named one brand TrueBlood. I figure there were probably stories in the newspaper or on television about this product when it was getting approved for the market, though I don’t remember seeing any.
But the vamps were all over it. It gave them the impetus they needed to start networking, trying to form a plan to coordinate their entrance into the modern world. After a lot of palaver, they decided to, as they say, “come out of the coffin” to let us know they are here and have been here for a long time. The vamps were very anxious to present themselves as no threat to the normal human population. They wanted everyone to know that they were the person next door—except for the “not going out in the day” thing, the fangs problem, and the blood addiction. They downplayed that part, emphasized the “not Eurotrash in a tuxedo” aspect.
A lot of vampires, like my ex-boyfriend Bill Compton, wanted to “mainstream,” to live as much like humans as possible. That presented a few problems ; when you can only go out at night, you can’t exactly be running a Main Street shop. But they all seem to manage to make a dollar or two; that’s the American way, isn’t it? Bill invests in real estate and does computer programming; my current love interest, Eric Northman, owns the vampire bar Fangtasia over in Shreveport. I know there are vampire strippers and builders, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if there’s a vampire private detective or electrician. There are a lot of tandem partnerships—someone does the job during the day; someone of the fanged persuasion takes over at night.
A few of the countries around the world went wacky and killed all the vamps they could get their hands on. But the good old U.S. of A. was always a melting pot, so we figured they were just another minority wanting a new home, a dangerous minority if pressed the wrong way, but still one that wanted the same freedoms as the rest of the people in this nation. There’s been a lot of arguing about whether vampires should have equal rights with humans; even if they get them, there will always be people opposed to the idea.
Oh, things weren’t all just hunky-dory once the vamps had stood up and said, “We’re here.” It didn’t take folks too long to find out that vampires’ blood is almost a narcotic for humans plus helps injured people heal faster. (I know that last part from personal experience.) Since America’s the land of free enterprise, before much time had passed scumbags were lining up to make money pushing vampire blood. And the vampires weren’t willing donors. Teams developed methods to subdue vamps and drain them. And if you drain too much blood from vampires and leave them out in the open, they die, usually from exposure to the sun. That first night that Bill came into Merlotte’s, I had to save him from a couple of Drainers who had trapped him outside the bar.
The humans who prey on vampires don’t care who they sell the blood to or how diluted or old it is. The addicts or recreational vamp-blood users can go stark raving mad when they drink the stuff dealers sell. And blood dealers have a short shelf life. Both the mainstream vamps and the rogues love to pick off the dealers.
I’m not sure what’s worse: knowing that there are Drainers out there or knowing about the rogue vampires. A rogue is a vamp who refuses to live by the rules that the human population has laid down. When the other vamps find out about one, it’s up to the sheriff of the area to deal with him. Eric is very thorough and isn’t bothered all that much if he has to put an end to a rogue. Rogues are bad for business.
Of course, since there are humans who live off preying on vampires, there are humans who live to be preyed on by vampires—fangbangers. They get off sexually from letting vampires feed on them. I’ve heard that some of them get off erotically from just being in the same room as a vampire. But loving to have your own blood taken is just as dangerous as taking vampire blood yourself. Even if you’re in a committed relationship, like I was with Bill and am now with Eric, the vampire has to be very, very careful about how much blood he takes.
The big problem with the fangbangers is that they can get really addicted to the bite and will keep coming back for more and more frequent feedings with any vamp they can attract. If the vampire isn’t careful, and some of them aren’t, the fangbanger ends up being accidentally drained or even turned.
You can’t be born a vampire. There’s only one way to become one. A human being has to be “turned” by a vampire, the way Bill was by that bitch Lorena.
Bill told me it isn’t easy to make a new vampire. The victim has to be drained of blood at a single sitting or over a period of no more than three days, till he’s almost at the point of the true death. Then the sire has to donate most of his or her own blood to the prospective vampire. After that, it can take up to three days in the dark for the whole change to occur, and it doesn’t always turn out right. Sometimes the vampire-to-be doesn’t make it. Sometimes they have to be destroyed, they’re so damaged. If the baby vampire survives, it’s the obligation of the sire to teach the child how to be a good vampire.
Just like a newborn child, the newborn vampire is hungry and doesn’t have a lot of control over his or her baser instincts. Amelia and I had firsthand experience with this when a shapeshifter named Jake Purifoy turned into a vampire and rose in a closet in my cousin Hadley’s apartment. We got lucky. We were able to call the vampire cops, who could control him during his hunger pangs.
That’s another reason the accidentally flipped fangbangers usually don’t survive. Not many older vampires are willing to take responsibility for controlling and educating the new vamp.
I’m always astonished when I read about someone who wants to become a vampire. There are actually people who are willing to give up the daylight for the night, who have no problem with the idea of watching all their loved ones wither and grow old. I guess they want the enhanced speed and strength and the glamour ability more than they want their human life. Are they just scared of dying? I don’t understand it. A wooden stake through the heart will take them out in a jiffy. They’re not stake-proof, and a beheading will end anyone’s existence, vamp or human.
It’s true that a vampire cannot cross the threshold of a private home uninvited—the resident has to say the express words to allow the vamp to enter. Even more interesting, that permission can be revoked, rendering a home safe from vampire intrusion. I’ve had a little fun with that rule myself in the past, and it’s good to know that it works.
All in all, there are times that I regret ever setting eyes on a vampire, or even seeing a six-pack of TrueBlood at the convenience store, but in the end you have to adapt to the world around you. I’ve become pretty good at adapting.
THE TWO-NATURED
When the vampires let people know that they were real, everyone tho
ught that the world had been turned upside down. Heck, the first time I met an actual vampire, my universe did turn upside down. Of course, I fell in love with him. If I hadn’t, my life might have stayed on more of a predictable path.
Finding out shortly thereafter that some people can change themselves into other creatures was another serious shock. My favorite boss, Sam Merlotte, was the first person I saw in both forms.
There are apparently two kinds of the two-natured: shifters, who can change into any type of animal, and weres, who change into only one animal. By far the most numerous clan is the werewolves, and they’re so proud of that that they just refer to themselves as Weres, with a capital W. Of course, in the strictest sense, they’re all shapeshifters. They can change their physical form. But you wouldn’t ever hear a Were refer to himself as a shapeshifter, and Sam would never call himself a were-anything.
Within those two big divisions, there’s a caste. You’re either bitten or born. If you’re born, you’re the child of two pure-blooded two-natured humans. And you’re the first child of that particular pair. Your little brother or sister won’t be able to change. If you’re bitten, you had an unfortunate encounter with a two-natured individual when he or she was in animal form, and you got (of course) bitten. Most often, that won’t take, and you’ll be fine. But if it does take, you’ll start feeling weird at the full moon. You’ll assume a half-human, half-animal form when the moon is up. (Think Lon Chaney Jr. in The Wolf Man.) You’ll maintain your health and vitality longer than your regular human buddies, but sad to say you probably won’t live as long.
The Sookie Stackhouse Companion Page 25