Interview with Charlaine Harris from Arkansas Educational Television Network

Steve Barnes sits down with New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris this month and discusses her Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire series.

Born in Tunica, Mississippi and growing up literally in the middle of a cotton field, Charlaine has been writing since she was a teenager. While her early writing consisted mainly of ghost stories, she began writing poetry and focusing on plays as a natural expression of her talent during her young adult years at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.

In her interview with Steve, Charlaine recounts how she was given the opportunity to stay at home and write. She wrote and published a couple of mysteries and after having three children created the two different book series, “Aurora Teagarden” and “Lily Bard”, ultimately winning an Agatha nomination for the Teagarden series, but according to her online bibliography “began to realize that neither of those series was ever going to set the literary world on fire,” that is until she decided to mix-up genres and offer a very unconventional take on the vampire mythos. An interesting twist allowed Charlaine’s vampires in the Sookie Stackhouse series to ingest a blood substitute and integrate into everyday society. As imagined this creates all sorts of problems for vampires and non-vampires alike.

The success of Charlaine’s Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire series captured the attention of HBO who turned it into a made for television series called True Blood. This series earned favor with the Golden Globe voters, garnering a nomination for best dramatic series and a best dramatic actress nod for star Anna Paquin.

Please stay tuned to AETN for this interesting interview and check out Charlaine’s website for the latest news concerning any of her books, her blog or events calendar at www.charlaineharris.com.

http://www.aetn.org/programs/barnesand/archives/posts/barnes_and..._a_conversation_with_charlaine_harris

Loving True Blood in Dallas Blogtalk Radio: Season 2 Spoilers Let's look at Ep 3 and 4 (Episode 10)

Tonight we talk spoilers !!

What do we know about True Blood Season 2 from the spoilers we've seen ?

What have we found out about Episodes 3 & 4 ?


Loving True Blood in Dallas Blogtalk radio tonight 9 pm central chatroom will open here at 8:45pm

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/True-Blood-in-Dallas call in (646) 929-0825

***
Thanks to everyone who can join, the podcast should be up in a hour or so and the show will be available on iTunes tomorrow -
Here are the links we talked about:

Spoiler TV HERE

Season Two HERE

Episode three HERE

Episode four HERE

"Hey, Babe, What's Your Blood Type?"

In Japan, "What's your type?" is much more than small talk; it can be a paramount question in everything from matchmaking to getting a job.

In Japan, Whether You Are A, B, AB Or O Can Determine Your Mate, Job, Even Your Fashion Accessories

By type, the Japanese mean blood type, and no amount of scientific debunking can kill a widely held notion that blood tells all.

In the year just ended, four of Japan's top 10 best-sellers were about how blood type determines personality, according to Japan's largest book distributor, Tohan Co. The books' publisher, Bungeisha, says the series - one each for types B, O, A, and AB - has combined sales of well over 5 million copies.

Taku Kabeya, chief editor at Bungeisha, thinks the appeal comes from having one's self-image confirmed; readers discover the definition of their blood type and "It's like 'Yes, that's me!"'

As defined by the books, type As are sensitive perfectionists but overanxious; Type Bs are cheerful but eccentric and selfish; Os are c

Read on
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/02/01/world/main4767079.shtml

Things I've learned while watching True Blood (6)

They make sawdust pies in Texas.

If you find a giant hole in your yard it's possible a vampire was just hatched.

Dead folk are piled up around Jason.

Rejection causes vampires to lose their fangon.

If anything were to happen to Sookie during Bill's absence then Eric would then be without Sookie's helpful skills.

Do you still need to read some of the Sookie books ? Or do you have some you'll trade ? Try Swaptree

Try Swaptree
http://www.swaptree.com/

Books, magazines, DVDs, movies and more can all be swapped around on this website, free of charge. All you have to do is join, put in the items that you want to swap and Swaptree will generate a list of thousands of items that you can receive in trade for any of your items, from all over the world. You don't have to search for trades, negotiate or anything of the sort. Swaptree does everything for you and all you have to do is choose what you want to shop for.

Once you are ready, you print off the postage on your computer, provided through free software with Swaptree and mail your item to its new destination. All you have to pay for is shipping, nothing else.

You could even set up a network of friends that would like to swap just Charlaine Harris books ...

Did I mention it's free and media mail postage is only $2.50 -what a bargain !

So get busy today loading up your swaptree account with what you have to trade ( I noticed over 30 Charlaine books available ) and you are also saving trees...

True Blood behind the scenes : Bruce Dunn, co-producer talks about shooting True Blood in Lousiana and Dallas !!

Filming in Dallas !!! yippee!!
Great interview by Markee magazine http://www.markeemag.com/

Bruce Dunn has co-produced Strange Love, Tell Me You Love Me, Local Color, Kingdom Hospital, and has associate produced Californication, The Path to 9/11, Desperation, Sleeper Cell, The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer, Rose Red, Storm of the Century, The Siege at Ruby Ridge, and Sophie & the Moonhanger.

Markee: HBO's new hit series, True Blood, from Alan Ball, gives a new twist to the vampire legend. With the development of synthetic blood, vampires have come out of the coffin to be integrated with mortal culture in rural Louisiana. Did you shoot there at all?
Dunn: We shot in Shreveport to get big-value local exteriors: the town of Bon Temps, the trailer that a tornado supposedly hit surrounded by those mossy trees we love, the exterior of Jason's and Bill's houses. We're definitely going back to block shoot for the second season - it's important for Alan to be where Charlaine Harris set her Sookie Stackhouse books.
Louisiana's tax incentives are icing on the cake, and the crews supporting us there are top-notch.
Since the second book in the series is called Living Dead in Dallas, it's likely we'll do doing a bit of shooting in Dallas, too.

MARKEE: Right from the opening titles - a collage of images ranging from bayous and evangelicals to sexy dancers and road kill - the audience knows it's in for a different viewing experience.
Dunn: Digital Kitchen did the title montage. They worked on the opening sequence for Six Feet Under so Alan had a relationship with them. Their storyboards for the initial presentation blew us away - they really caught the flavor of what we were looking for. One of the mandates was to sell Louisiana, to let viewers know they were going to see something quirky and visit locations they'd never been to before.
MARKEE: How was the look of the show determined?
Dunn: R!OT colorist Scott Klein and pilot DP Checco Varese set the contrasty look with blown-out highlights. We now have quite a library of looks like Sookie's 'psychic TV' where she sees what others are imagining: We pump up the brightness to bring out the film grain and differentiate it from the norm. In the flashbacks our DPs use a Deakinizer lens, named for Cinematographer Roger Deakins, to vignette around the edges of the frame; when we do that in postproduction Zoic simulates the lens look.

MARKEE: Visual effects play a key role in every episode, don't they?
Dunn: Zoic Studios does the digital VFX and MastersFX the makeup effects.
When vampire fangs are out for long periods of time, they're prosthetics from MastersFX. But when they're retracted and extended, they're digital VFX from Zoic. We latched onto the concept of snakes' fangs which are always there. The vampires' fangs are tucked into their mouths and unfold from the back - you can see the CG mechanics in certain scenes.
Zoic created [vampire] Longshadow's death and deterioration with an entirely CG actor - it's probably the costliest effect in the show. They also did the V hallucinations [which occur when mortals drink vampire blood] which have been a lot of fun - sparks flying out of trees, the love scene swimming through a shared-experience dreamscape. The backgrounds were imagined after the water-tank shoot with the actors; it was Alan's idea that they all be based in nature - in a forest, with waterfalls.

MARKEE: Audio is another key component from using Jace Everett's amazing Bad Things as the theme song to Sookie's ability to hear people's thoughts.
Dunn: Working with Technicolor Sound we did multiple design tests to help sell the concept of Sookie's thought dialogues: We needed a good way to convey that without being confusing. We use sound effects coming in and out of the thought process, then reverse dialogue and EQ it in a certain way to make it very clear that what Sookie hears is specific to her. It's important for the storyline that the process be intelligible when we want it to be and cacophonous at other times.
Composer Nathan Barr has really nailed the spirit and feeling of the show.
Nate's love theme for Bill and Sookie has both an Old World feel, since Bill comes from the Civil War era, and the feel of something timeless. The Civil War flashbacks have banjos and cellos, there's an African sub-theme for the voodoo exorcism, big-string power hits for the scary parts and, always, the flavor of Louisiana.

MARKEE: Are any production changes ahead for season two?
Dunn: We've had a top-notch, efficient team for our first 12 episodes. All the key departments worked so well that I don't really expect changes for season two. I've never worked on a series that has spoken to fans like True Blood has. Thanks to Alan and the material we're all excited to get back to work in January.

True Blood behind the scenes: Poor Bill is a little crispy

More great special effects for True Blood from Master FX

http://mastersfx.com/


Check it out in action here :

True Blood goes to the movies: Alexander Skarsgard in Metropia

Trailer of the animated film, Metropia to be released in Sweden 9 October 2009
Aexander Skarsgard works with his father Stellen in this film


Stellan Skarsgård ... Ralph (voice)

Juliette Lewis ... Nina (voice)

Alexander Skarsgård ... Stefan

Vincent Gallo ... Roger (voice)


METROPIA is taking place in a not-so-distant, terrifying Europe. The world is running out of oil and the net of undergrounds has been connected, creating a gigantic web underneath Europe. Roger (Vincent Gallo) from a suburb of Stockholm tries to stay away from the underground. He thinks it's unpleasant and sometimes he hears a strange voice in is head.

One day Roger finds out that his life is controlled in every detail. He tries to break free. To succeed he needs super-model Nina (Juliette Lewis) to help him. Or is it maybe Nina that needs Roger?

It was love at first bite

From the Sydney Morning Herald

An Aussie actor gets his big break in the vampire drama True Blood, writes Gabriel Wilder.

Vampires may not like the sun but they certainly have no aversion to the limelight. The cultural phenomenon that stretches back to Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula, has resurfaced in umpteen guises since. Lately, teens who like their vamps glitter-skinned and their heroines breathless have turned to Stephenie Meyer's Twilight novels and film. Those looking for something meatier, however, can sink their teeth into Alan Ball's new series True Blood.

Yes, it has a vampire romance but this is no Mills & Boon with fangs: the violence is brutal, the sex sweaty, the dialogue salty and the humour dry. As with Twilight, it has its origins in a series of novels. Ball (Six Feet Under) stumbled across one of Charlaine Harris's novels and became hooked on the sultry, supernatural world set in the Louisiana bayous.

The first book focuses on telepath Sookie Stackhouse (played by Anna Paquin, who won a Golden Globe for her performance), her romance with a vampire, Bill Compton, and a serial-killer mystery. But after the first two episodes, Ball began developing new storylines for other members of the ensemble.

"I think Alan's very clever like that," says Stephen Moyer, who plays Bill. "He knows that it can't just be [a romance]. I think that it ultimately is a love story [but] it doesn't mean it can't be 20 other things as well. When I read the script, I couldn't believe how much he'd packed into it."

One beneficiary of Ball's approach is Australian actor Ryan Kwanten, who plays Sookie's brother, Jason. Once a Home And Away regular, Kwanten now lives in LA and was sought out by Ball.

"He'd seen a film of mine and saw characteristics of Jason Stackhouse in the character that I was playing," Kwanten says. "Next thing you know, I was hired."

Ball expanded the character of Jason, giving him his own storyline and one hilarious episode involving a severe case of priapism. Kwanten, 32, has the task of making the self-centred, womanising Jason not seem like a lost cause.

"I threw away the textbook on everything I thought I knew about acting and just flew by the seat of my pants because that's exactly how this guy operates," he says. "It's really liberating to play a character like that because a lot of characters tend to be very brooding."

The brooding territory in True Blood is pretty much covered by Civil War vampire Bill, whom Moyer describes as "completely angst-ridden … your classic tortured hero".

Unlike Kwanten, who was one of the first to be cast, Moyer was one of the last. Ball searched for months for the right "Bill" before Moyer, who had just finished shooting The Starter Wife with Debra Messing in Queensland, emailed an audition. "Alan saw it in the afternoon and I flew [to LA] that night," he says.

True Blood poses particular challenges for its cast. As well as having to guzzle copious amounts of fake blood (apparently some kind of glucose concoction), both Kwanten and Moyer have frequent nude scenes. The first time we meet Kwanten's character, he is butt-naked and engaged in a sex act. In fact, clothes seem to be something of an afterthought for Jason.

"This is by far the most full-on sex and nudity I've ever done," says Kwanten, who has been acting since he was 16. "I was warned but one can never quite be prepared. You sort of sign your life away and go, 'Oh, nudity', then you walk into your trailer and you see a modesty patch and that's what you're wearing for the day."

It should come as no surprise to anyone who has seen any of Ball's previous work that there is a subtext beneath the sex and humour. In True Blood the vamps have come "out of the coffin" and are campaigning for equal rights. Ball is an openly gay man but has stated the vampires can stand for a number of things.

"It can be any group that has been persecuted or felt like an outcast in society," Kwanten explains.

This ambiguity bothers many of the people posting comments on web forums about the show, people who would rather see their entertainment delivered in a tidier package - ethical dilemmas sorted, no shades of grey. "I think they're the people that need to see it more than anyone," Kwanten says. "But we'll get those people one person at a time."

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/02/08/1234027854744.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

True Blood Music Video of the Day

Uninvited by Alanis Morissette ( LYRICS)

A Soap with Teeth

From Variety September 2008

TRUE BLOOD (SERIES; HBO, SUN. SEPT. 7, 9 P.M.)

Filmed in Los Angeles and Louisiana by HBO. Executive producer, Alan Ball; co-executive producer, Brian Buckner; supervising producer, Nancy Oliver, producers, Alexander Woo, Carol Dunn Trussell; co-producer, Raelle Tucker; writer-director, Ball; based on the novels by Charlaine Harris; camera, Checco Varese; production designer, Suzuki Ingerslev; editors, Andy Keir, Michael Ruseio; music, Nathan Barr; casting, Junie Lowry Johnson, Libby Goldstein. 60 MIN.
Sookie Stackhouse Anna Paquin
Bill Compton Stephen Moyer
Jason Stackhouse Ryan Kwanten
Tara Thornton Rutina Wesley
Sam Merlotte Sam Trammell
Lafayette Reynolds Nelsan Ellis
Andy Bellefleur Chris Bauer
Hoyt Fortenberry Jim Parrack
Arlene Fowler Carrie Preston
Rene Lenier Michael Raymond James
Bud Dearborne William Sanderson
Eric Alexander Skarsgard
Adele Lois Smith

Creator Alan Ball insists, not entirely convincingly, that "True Blood" isn't just a sociopolitical
metaphor for vampirism as homosexuality. Nevertheless, if the popularity of "Twilight" and the Sookie Stackhouse books that inspired this series are any indication, women clearly embrace the romance of guys who suck for more exoticthan-usual reasons, creating otherworldly impediments to true love. So while the show is a trifle hokey, its soapy elements, gothic atmosphere and cliflhanger endings - coupled with Anna Paquin's knockout performance - do reel viewers in, laying the groundwork for what might be the cultish, undemanding romp HBO needs to inject much needed life into its lineup.

Ever since "Dark Shadows," people have sought to perfect the vampire soap, although even a "Shadows" revival failed to find the proper vein. And while Ball - of "Six Feet Under" renown - might seem an unlikely choice to go from chronicling the dead to the undead, he wisely approaches the material with few pretensions.

In the world of novelist Charlaine Harris, whose books inspire this series, vampires have been living invisibly among humans for ages but only felt comfortable emerging from the shadows - essentially, coming out of the coffin - after the Japanese invented synthetic blood (or Tru Blood, packaged in cute little beer-like bottles). Still, there's considerable unease about having bloodsuckers roaming around freely, with humans resisting the push for "vampire rights."
Having participated in the X-Men movies - which set up mutants as another discriminated against minority - Paquin is a marketable choice for a genre audience, but brings much more than that to the role of Sookie, a Louisiana waitress whose psychic ability has caused her to shun romance.

So to her surprise, when a hunky vampire, Bill (Stephen Moyer of "The Starter Wife"), moves into the bayou town of Bon Temps - taking advantage of vampires' recent decision to go public and enter the mainstream - she's instantly drawn to him, as he is to her:

Uncomfortable with knowing the inner-most feelings of those around her, she's blissfully unable to hear Bill's thoughts. Similarly, he senses immediately that Sookie is "something more than human."

Prejudice, however, dies hard, and Sookie's attachment to Bill alarms those closest to her.
The supporting players aren't nearly as interesting initially as the intense bond between Sookie and Bill, though they do keep the first few installments busy, including some nicely gratuitous sex, adventures in the Viagra-like effects of vampire blood, and a tepid murder mystery.
Based on the way women in particular have glommed onto the bodice-caressing aspects of such fare (consider the torch a dedicated few are still carrying for CBS'
"Moonlight"), HBO figures to have a cult hit on its hands at the very least - with Moyer representing the kind of brooding figure many would covet, dead or undead. Special effects are sparing but effective, which should boost male appeal, as will Paquin, who manages to be sexy, vulnerable and mysterious all at once.

How deeply the series resonates beyond that will hinge on how the plot advances and weaves in the secondary characters. Either way, the concept seems like a smart against-the-grain move for HBO, which has already done a phenomenal job marketing it.

If nothing else, nobody will confuse Bill from Bon Temps with "John From Cincinnati." The only question now is whether "True Blood" barely breaks the skin or can tap into a whole new artery.
PHOTO (COLOR): Anna Paquin is the psychic waitress next door and Stephen Moyer the vampire who loves her in HBO's "True Blood." from Alan Ball.
~~~~~~~~
By Brian Lowry

True Blood Writer : Chris Offutt

Interesting post about Chris Offutt ( who seems to be quite the accomplished author) and he actually chimes in himself in the thread and says this :

"Hey man. I wrote Episode 7 of True Blood.
Then quit the weird world of Holllywood.
A cool learning experience, but not the place for me.
I suppose going out there is another thing we Kentuckians do when we leave the hills."

You can see more books by Chris here
**He is listed for both episode 7 and 10 "Burning House of Love" and "I Don't Wanna Know"

I turned on HBO on Sunday night to catch the new episode of Entourage. The channel’s new vampire series, True Blood was wrapping up and the final credits rolled. And I was shocked — and thrilled — to see Chris Offutt’s name listed as executive story editor.

I’m not positive, but I think it is indeed that Chris Offutt, the writer from Kentucky who authored No Heroes, The Good Brother, The Same River Twice, and others. According to the Internet Movie Database, the Offutt associated the television show was born in Lexington, Kentucky and is listed as a novelist and short story writer. So it’s gotta be him.

Offutt lived in Rowan County Kentucky, just a few counties over from where I grew up. He signed my copy of Kentucky Straight with a note that “here’s what we Kentuckians do when we leave the hills.”

The opening pages of Offutt’s 2002 memoir, No Heroes, are about returning to those hills in Kentucky after a lengthy absence.

You can go ahead and forget all your preplanned responses to comments about wearing shoes, the movie Deliverance, indoor plumbing, and incest. You don’t have to work four times as hard because the boss expects so little. You don’t have to worry about waiting for the chance to intellectually ambush some nitwit who thinks you’re stupid because of where you’re from.

You won’t hear these words spoken anymore: redneck, hillbilly, cracker, stump-jumper, weed-sucker, ridge-runner. Never again will you have to fight people’s attempts to make you feel ashamed of where you grew up. You are no longer from somewhere. Here is where you are. This is home. This dirt is yours.

I didn’t get a chance to watch that new vampire show. But I have it set to DVR. If True Blood comes anywhere near the quality of Chris Offutt’s books, then it’ll be worth watching.

Read all the posts here :
"http://www.slushpile.net/index.php/2008/09/08/chris-offutt-and-hbo/"

True Blood France

What does Joss Whedon think of True Blood ?

Thank you TVWeek.com for posting this tid bit.

TVWeek: Vampires are big in pop culture right now. Have you seen “Twilight’?

Mr. Whedon: I saw “Twilight.” And it’s—what can you say? It’s absolutely like crack. It strikes a tweener chord that’s just as loud as the apocalypse. You cannot deny the power of it. It just works. And I sort of like that.

TVWeek: What about HBO’s “True Blood”?

Mr. Whedon: I’ve seen less of it. “Twilight” makes its own rules, as we all do. It takes what it wants and discards the rest but ultimately, it is kind of classical. They’re puffy-shirt vampires in a sense.

“True Blood,” I think, is more what we see in a lot of the comic books, which is, “Let’s deconstruct this and explore what it would be like if [vampires] were really among us.” It’s more postmodern.

TVWeek: Did you watch “Moonlight”?

Mr. Whedon: I did not. I actually don’t love vampires. Anne Rice was definitely a life-changer. It was wonderful. But at the end of the day, I’ve really kind of had my fill.

You know, Buffy wasn’t going to necessarily fight vampires. The idea was always there’s a monster, she fights it. And when I did the Buffy/Angel romance, I thought, “There’s no way in the world I’m getting away with something this cheesy.” I thought, “People are going to laugh at me.”

Over the years, I’ve gotten a better understanding of why vampires resonate so much. I even came up with an idea for a vampire film recently … but then I saw there was this glut, so I thought I better ease off of that. It’s still in my consciousness. But I think I need to spend some time with some Frankensteins.

http://christapie.wordpress.com/2009/02/08/joss-whedon-talks-twilight-and-true-blood/

Watch out Charlaine might be watching you ....

Charlaine posted to her blog today and aside from talking, as she usually does about her own familial and domestic events such as: kids choosing colleges and having a sick pet. She also wrote briefly about the two short stories she is now writing, one for the Mystery Writers of America anthology and the other for a new anthology which she is co- editing with Toni L.P. Kelner called "Death's Excellent Vacation".

We don't know if either of them will be Sookieverse stories ...

But I found it most interesting that she chose to spend her time and used her blog as a platform to discuss what seems to be rampant right now on many of the Sookie Stackhouse /True Blood discussion/ forum sites and that is posters being disagreeable, argumentative and ganging up on other posters. I recently spoke about this too on a recent radio show (you can listen about 4 minutes into the recent Bill's show ) and I received excellent feedback from folks that appreciated what I said and now we see Charlaine addressing the same issue on her blog.

It's interesting to note, that she is most definitely visiting other forums and seeing this kind of behavior. I do think this behavior is in part due to boredom and us lacking anything new to talk about. One of the things we are doing to combat this boredom while we wait for the new book and the return of True Blood Season 2 on the HBO wiki is that we are getting together a group of folks to read and discuss "Dancer's in the Dark" the Sookieverse novella that Charlaine wrote in 2004. If you'd like to be involved with that discussion send me an email and I'll let you know more. We haven't begun the discussion yet so now is the time to get involved.

So beware when you post...Charlaine might be watching what you say ..


"Speaking of writing long - my moderators have recently become concerned that very long posts call all "conversation" on the site to a temporary halt. We've been emailing back and forth discussing the idea. We concluded that we'd ask posters will keep their messages short and to the point.
Sometimes it's impossible to make your case with brevity, but please give it a try.
As long as I'm talking about posting, I wanted to thank all of you for showing so much respect to each other. I'm proud of this website, and I want all my readers to know it. I hope this website never descends to the level of others I've visited, where one group gangs together to shout down the opinions of another. Respectfully disagreeing is the norm here, and I hope it stays that way. I'm glad you're here, and I hope you visit often."

http://www.charlaineharris.com/bb/bb_current.html

True Blood Music Video of the Day

By your side by Tenth Avenue North LYRICS

Annubis Airline from All Together Dead : trip to Rhodes

What we learned about Anubis air in Book 7

Bk 7

I whipped a little notepad out of my purse as Eric went over the date of our departure, the date of our return, the time our chartered Anubis Airline plane was arriving from Baton Rouge to pick up the Shreveport contingent, and a rundown of the clothes we would need.

Our sporadic conversation died by the time we neared the airport. There didn't seem to be anything else to be said. We were right by the main Shreveport terminal, but we were going to a small private hangar. If Eric hadn't booked an Anubis charter plane weeks ago, he would've been up a creek, because the summit was definitely taxing Anubis's capabilities. All the states involved were sending delegations, and a big hunk of Middle America, from the Gulf to the Canadian border, was included in the American Central division.

.. There were a few small planes parked inside, but we proceeded as Pam had instructed to the large opening in the west wall. The Anubis Air jet was parked outside, and the coffins were being loaded onto the luggage belt by the uniformed Anubis employees. They all wore black relieved only by a stylized jackal's head on the chest of the uniform, an affectation that I found irritating. They glanced at us casually, but no one challenged us or asked to see identification until we got to the steps leading up to the plane.

I couldn't help feeling a little anxious, since I was cutting my ties with my familiar life, at least temporarily. The Anubis Air employee in the cabin said, "Choose your seat, Miss Stackhouse." She took the hanging bag from me and put it away. The interior of the aircraft was not like that of any human plane, or at least that was what the Anubis website had alleged. The Anubis fleet had been designed and outfitted for the transportation of sleeping vamps, with human passengers coming in second. There were coffin bays around the wall, like giant luggage bins, and at the front end of the aircraft there were three rows of seats, on the right three seats, and on the left two, for people like me.or, at least, people who were going to be helpful to the vamps at this conference in some capacity. At present, there were only three other people sitting in the seats. Well, one other human and two part-humans.

The Anubis Airline attendant came through and offered drinks and snacks from time to time on the three-hour flight north, and after I'd finished my session with the trial lawyer, I got up to use the bathroom. That was an experience; I'd never been in an airplane bathroom before. Instead of resuming my seat, I walked down the plane, taking a look at each coffin. There was a luggage tag on each one, attached to the handles. With us in the plane today were Eric, Bill, the queen, Andre, and Sigebert. I also found the coffin of Gervaise, who'd been hosting the queen, and Cleo Babbitt, who was the sheriff of Area Three. The Area Two sheriff, Arla Yvonne, had been left in charge of the state while the queen was gone.

It was mid afternoon when we arrived in Rhodes. There was an Anubis truck waiting to onload the coffins and transport them to the Pyramid of Gizeh.

"There's an Anubis plane flying out in three hours. It'll go to Dallas first, then Shreveport. . "Make it to the Anubis terminal in time, and you'll both go home with us. If you don't make it, I'll assume something happened to stop you and you'll have to call to make some other arrangement..