True Blood behind the scenes : Bill and Jessica sample True Blood

OK , Here's an interesting tidbit with the photos

Here is that photo of Bill and Jessica and what caught my eye was that goblet on the table ....
then I remember those set photos we got last month






see below ...

Good catch, Dallas !
That would be a shot for this set ....

Sookie Stackhouse book's dedications, acknowledgments and prologues for Book 8 From Dead to Worse

DEDICATION

Though she can’t walk or see quite as well as she used to, my mother, Jean Harris, remains the most complete person I have ever met. She’s been the bulwark of my existence, the foundation I was built on, and the best mother a woman could have.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A tip of the hat to Anastasia Luettecke, who was a perfectionist in supplying me with Octavia’s Latin. And thanks to Murv Sellars for being the go between. As always, I owe a great debt of thanks to Toni L. P. Kelner and Dana Cameron for their valuable comments and the gift of their time. My one and only minion, Debi Murray, assisted me with her encyclopedic knowledge of the Sookie universe. The group of enthusiastic readers known as Charlaine’s Charlatans gave me moral (and morale) support, and I hope this book will serve as their reward.

~~~~~~
(I would cal this a prologue but it isn't called one in the book )
If this was The Lord of the Rings and I had a smart British voice like Cate Blanchett, I could tell you the background of the events of that fall in a really suspenseful way. And you’d be straining to hear the rest. But what happened in my little corner of northwest Louisiana wasn’t an epic story. The vampire war was more of the nature of a small-country takeover, and the Were war was like a border skirmish. Even in the annals of supernatural America—I guess they exist somewhere—they were minor chapters . . . unless you were actively involved in the takeovers and skirmishes.

Then they became pretty damn major.
And everything was due to Katrina, the disaster that just kept on spreading Before Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana had a flourishing vampire community.In fact, the vampire population of New Orleans had burgeoned, making it the place to go if you wanted to see vampires; and lots of Americans did.The undead jazz clubs, featuring musicians no one had seen playing in public in decades, were special draws. Vamp strip clubs, vamp psychics,vamp sex acts; secret and not-so-secret places where you could get bitten and have an orgasm on the spot: all this was available in southern Louisiana.

In the northern part of the state . . . not so much. I live in the northern part in a small town called Bon Temps. But even in my area, where vamps are relatively thin on the ground, the undead were making economic and social strides.All in all, vampire business in the Pelican State was booming. But then came the death of the King of Arkansas while his wife, the Queen of Louisiana, was entertaining him soon after their wedding. Since the corpse vanished and all the witnesses— except me—were supernaturals, humanlaw took no notice. But the other vampires did, and the queen, Sophie-Anne Leclerq, landed in a very dicey legal position. Then came Katrina,which wiped out the financial base of Sophie-Anne’s empire. Still, the queen was floundering back from those disasters, when another one followed hard on their heels. Sophie-Anne and some of her strongest adherents—and me, Sookie Stackhouse, telepath and human—were caught in a terrible explosion in Rhodes, the destruction of the vampire
hotel called the Pyramid of Gizeh. A splinter group of the Fellowship of theSun claimed responsibility, and while the leaders of that anti-vampire“church” decried the hate crime, everyone knew that the Fellowship washardly agonizing over those who were terribly wounded in the blast, much less over the (finally, absolutely) dead vampires or the humans who served
them.

Sophie-Anne lost her legs, several members of her entourage, and herdearest companion. Her life was saved by her half-demon lawyer, Mr.Cataliades. But her recuperation time was going to be lengthy, and shewas in a position of terrible vulnerability.What part did I play in all this?
I’d helped save lives after the pyramid went down, and I was terrified I was now on the radar of people who might want me to spend my time in their service, using my telepathy for their purposes. Some of those purposes were good, and I wouldn’t mind lending a hand in rescue services from time to time, but I wanted to keep my life to myself. I was alive; my boyfriend,
Quinn, was alive; and the vampires most important to me had survived, too.As far as the troubles Sophie-Anne faced, the political consequences of the attack and the fact that supernatural groups were circling the weakened state of Louisiana like hyenas around a dying gazelle ... I didn’t think about it at all.

I had other stuff on my mind, personal stuff. I’m not used to thinking much further than the end of my fingertips; that’s my only excuse. Not only was I not thinking about the vampire situation, there was another supernatural situation I didn’t ponder that turned out to be just as crucial to my future.Close to Bon Temps, in Shreveport, there’s a Were pack whose ranks are
swollen by the men and women from Barksdale Air Force Base. During the past year, this Were pack had become sharply divided between two factions. I’d learned in American History what Abraham Lincoln, quoting the Bible, had to say about houses divided.
To assume that these two situations would work themselves out, to fail toforesee that their resolution would involve me, well ... that was where I wasalmost fatally blind. I’m telepathic, not psychic. Vampire minds are bigrelaxing blanks to me. Weres are difficult to read, though not impossible.That’s my only excuse for being unaware of the trouble brewing all around
me.

What was I so busy thinking about? Weddings—and my missing boyfriend.

True Blood Hair Afair : What up with Eric's hair ?

Gimme head with hair
Long beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming,
Streaming, flaxen, waxen

Give me down to there hair
Shoulder length or longer
Here baby, there mama
Everywhere daddy daddy

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it
My hair





This image from the recent leaked Season 2 photographs ( you can see them all here ) has caused quite a stir ...

I guess I don't really get it, as it looks like to me that Alex's hair is just pulled back here as it's growing out.
We had quite a roller coaster ride with Alex's hair last season, we had some great episodes where he had his own hair and then we had some episode when he was wearing a not very becoming wig...

I think he had to cut his hair for other roles and just couldn't grow it back in time for the Eric role. This season of TB hopefully he will have his own hair.

However in Charlaine's vampire lore, a vampire looks like he looked when he is turned from a human into a vampire. So, once they set Eric's hair length in Season 1, he should look the same way throughout the run of the series.

See natural hair, below left and right wig...

Hello. My name is Daisy, and I'm a vampoholic.

hahahha great and funny post from Dreaming up Daisy

You see this lady. She looks innocent. Sweet. Grandmotherly. Right?

Well BEWARE!!! She's a smack-pusher. A tease. And I gladly shell out $3-$6.99 for her junk (depending whether I can find it at the used bookstore or not).

For those of you who don't know her face, this is Charlaine Harris, author of the Southern Vampire Mysteries, aka Sookie Stackhouse Series, aka the books on which the HBO show True Blood was based.

I started out watching the show, as I am a lover of most things vampire: The Lost Boys, Buffy, Angel, and even Saturday the 14th. I say "most" because I still can't force myself to read the Twilight series, as my well-trusted book friends tell me that *I* personally would not enjoy the book due to the poor writing style of the author. I trust those friends (and Stephen King). But this blog isn't about Twilight, it's about Ms. Harris.

Read on here

Vanity Plates seen in Bon Temp

Vanity Plates for Eric ..Ideas for more ?












GRCSPLNT

MAN UP

LMEBYTU

YIELD2ME

2ORGWEGO

VKNGLUV

New Orleans and Sookie Stackhouse: Hadley's apartment

Sookie's main connection in the books to New Orleans happens because the death of her cousin Hadley. Hadley as it turns out had become a vampire and was romantically involved with Queen Sophie Anne at he time of her final death.

Sookie travels to New Orleans in the book, Definitely Dead to close out Hadley's apartment after she learns of her death and goes to settle the estate.

In yet another one of the many charming mistakes in the Sookie books, we get 2 different stories about Sookie's previous visits to New Orleans.

In Club Dead , Book Three: Sookie visits with family as a young girl.

The newer tourists were the ones who wanted to rub elbows with the undead; patronize a vampire bar, visit a vampire prostitute, watch a vampire sex show. This was what I'd heard; I hadn't been to New Orleans since I was little. My mother and father had taken my brother, Jason, and me. That would have been before I was seven, because that's when they died.Mama and Daddy died nearly twenty years before vampires had appeared on network television to announce the fact that they were actually present among us, an announcement that had followed on the Japanese development of synthetic blood that actually maintained a vampire's life without the necessity of drinking from humans.

In Definitely Dead, Book Six: Sookie visits in high school and says it's her first and only visit to New Orleans.

It was raining, and it was four in the morning. I wondered if there was an IHOP anywhere nearby. I'd been to one, once. It had been wonderful. That had been on my only previous trip to New Orleans, when I'd been in high school. We'd been to the aquarium and the slave museum and the church on Jackson Square, the St. Louis Cathedral. It had been wonderful to see something new, to think about all the people who had passed through the same area, what they must have looked like in the clothes of their time.

While we were recently in New Orleans, we took some walks in the French Quarter to try to find some of the locations Sookie might have visited in the books. We took some of the location descriptions from the book and just for fun tried to find something in real life that is similar.

The first thing was to find a home that was close to what Charlaine describes as Amelia and Hadley's duplex in NOLA.

From Definitely Dead

We were on a quiet residential street when the limousine pulled to a curb and stopped.
"Your cousin's apartment," Mr. Cataliades said as Diantha opened the door.

I was facing a six-foot wall with an opening for the driveway. It was hard to tell, in the uncertain glow of a streetlight, what lay within, but it seemed to be a small courtyard with a very tight circular drive. In the middle of the drive was an explosion of greenery, though I couldn't discern the individual plants. In the right front corner was a tool shed. There was a two-story building forming an L. To take advantage of the depth of the lot, the building was oriented with the L inverted. Right next door was a similar building, at least as far as I could tell. Hadley's was painted white, with dark green shutters....

There was a broad roofed gallery running below the windows and doors of the second floor, which would provide shade for people sitting inside on the ground floor.

We also believe that the apartment is located in the French Quarter as Sookie says she can hear jazz music from Bourbon Street and she say's it is located on Chloe Street.

Now the style , design and description is JUST exactly right for the more residential streets of the Quarter, the one thing that was a problem was finding a house with a courtyard big enough for a circular drive, above you'll see a photo of one of my favorite or all the homes we saw and very close to the description.

Now, there is no Chloe street in the French Quarter but there is a Conti street and matter of fact the house in this picture is located newar Conti and Burgundy street.

I'll have a few more New Orleans sites for you later this week.

True Blood behind the scenes: Host of Fangphile Stephanie McVay

Do you remember the TV show that Eddie ( Lafayette's vampire boyfriend) is watching on TV in Episode 8? The show was called Fangphiles and had that great lady host ? I loved her right away and that "Dark shadow-esque" studio she sitting in -ha!

The host was played by the actress, Stephanie McVay.

The show is on the Vampire TV network She is listed as vampire talk show host in the credits. She is a human who loves vampires and doesn't care much for the the Fellowship of the Sun. It's great to know that vampires even have their own cable channel.

You can find out more about McVay :
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0574668/

http://resumes.actorsaccess.com/320567-756263

She is presently starring in the play , Mending fences in San Francisco.

Bio: Stephanie is thrilled to be again on the B Street Theatre stage after her roles as Toots in Hear the Grass Grow, Maryjohnny Rafferty in A Skull In Connemara and as Sister Elizabeth in The Book of Liz. Previously she was seen in Juno and the Paycock, and has had the pleasure of performing in several other B Street Theatre productions: The Underpants, Canterville
Ghost, Red Herring and Wonderful World.

Since moving to Los Angeles in 2005, she has landed two great agents and is auditioning for great projects. In the meantime, she just wrapped the indie film "Say Hello to Stan Talmadge" starring Gary Cole and Jennifer Coolidge. "Passions," the soap opera, was her Los Angeles debut in television. Stephanie can be seen in HBO's "True Blood," ABC's "Greek," and "In the Motherhood" with Jenny McCarthy. This fall she will be part of Todd Stephen's film "Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild," the sequel to "Another Gay Movie" in which she will play Bonnie, the Mom.

You can see her in this clip ( 7:30)

Blood Copy Volume 5: Tru Blood Throughout the World

We are revisiting the Blood Copy videos which were part of the HBO true Blood viral marketing campaign that helped introduce the True Blood television series in the summer of 2008. We will be doing a radio show on this topic soon.
Previously we have see the mysterious packages were being received, the gatekeeper awakened on a mysterious website, .... HERE

The blog and videos not only were a marketing ploy but they also served as a prologue to the series ...

Here is the blog entry for that time period HERE ( July 6, 2008)

It's great to watch these videos but you also must read the blog entry for that day

All Fools' Day

April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day, although not a holiday in its own right, is a notable day celebrated in many countries on April 1. The day is marked by the commission of hoaxes and other practical jokes of varying sophistication on friends, family members, enemies, and neighbours, or sending them on fool's errand, the aim of which is to embarrass the gullible. Traditionally, in some countries, the jokes only last until noon: like UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, someone who plays a trick after noon is called an "April Fool". Elsewhere, such as in Ireland, France, and the USA, the jokes last all day.

The origin of April Fools' Day is obscure. One likely theory is that the modern holiday was first celebrated soon after the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar; the term referred to someone still adhering to the Julian Calendar, which it replaced.In many pre-Christian cultures May Day (May 1) was celebrated as the first day of summer, and signalled the start of the spring planting season. An April Fool was someone who did this prematurely. Another origin is that April 1 was counted the first day of the year in France. When King Charles IX changed that to January 1, some people stayed with April 1. Those who did were called "April Fools" and were taunted by their neighbors.In the eighteenth century the festival was often posited as going back to the times of Noah. An English newspaper article published on April 13th, 1789 said that the day had its origins when he sent the raven off too early, before the waters had receded. He did this on the first day of the Hebrew month that corresponds with April. A possible reference to April Fools' Day can be seen in the Canterbury Tales (ca 1400) in the Nun's Priest's tale, a tale of two fools: Chanticleer and the fox, which took place on March 32nd. Wikipedia

The Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time

True Blood Music Video of the Day: Find your way back home by Dishwalla

Find your way back home by Dishwalla LYRICS

Thanks, Lovins24

True Blood - Season 2 Coming Summer 2009 Promo

Posting comments -please log in !

Please, please take the time to sign in to comment. I so enjoy the comments and we've been having some amazing discussions on some of the post threads but it gets a little ridiculous when we are saying "I agree with anony 1"

You can now sign in with Google, Yahoo, AIM or OpenID account.

I think once you sign in, the site will remember you and you wont have to log in every time.

If you don't have OpenID its pretty cool and so easy ...

I just want to be able for us to talk to each other and it's hard when we only see anonymous ..

Thanks " Dallas "

A few more tidbits about Season 2 of True Blood

I have a real feeling that maybe Eric's past has been coordinated between Alan and Charlaine as both Dead and Gone and Season 2 will delve into his past...

FromEonline
Whee! New True Blood gorgeousness!

HBO just graciously confirmed that our favorite Southern vampire friends return for season two on June 14.

BTW, our True Blood source tells us that your favorite Viking vamp, Eric, will indeed be a big part of season two. (Yay!) We'll apparently get to know another side of him when we meet an important figure from his past.

And to answer your fan Q's to tvdiva@eonline.com: Yes, season two was inspired by the second novel and it follows some but not all of its major storylines—there will definitely be a few big surprises and deviations.

Now for the part you've all been waiting for: Many new True Blood season-two photos below the jump...
http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/watch_with_kristin/b106832_true_blood_get_first_look_season_two.html

Charlaine Harris : Guide to Literary Masters and Their Works,

Charlaine Harris was born on November 25, 1951, in Tunica, Mississippi. Her father, Robert Ashley Harris, was a local school principal, and her mother, Jean Balentine Harris, a librarian. She first developed an interest in writing in the fourth grade and began writing plays when she entered Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. Eventually, she earned a B.A. in English and communication arts in 1973 from Southwestern University at Memphis. Upon graduating, Harris held a variety of jobs at newspapers in Clarkesdale and Greenville, Mississippi, including a darkroom operator from 1973 to 1974 and a typesetter from 1974 to 1978. Her first marriage ended in divorce. In 1978, she married Hal Schulz, a chemical engineer, with whom she would have three children.
Harris was living in South Carolina when she wrote her first novel, Sweet and Deadly (1980), about a female journalist's attempt tosolve mystery of her parents' murder in a small southern town. She followed this in 1984 with A Secret Rage, in which the victims of a serial rapist band together to track down their assailant. With the publication of Real Murders in 1990, Harris embarked on a prolific career as a writer of series mysteries. This novel was her first to feature Aurora Teagarden, a professional librarian and amateur detective who discovers someone in her small Georgia town is committing murders patterned on well-known murders from history.
In subsequent novels, including A Bone to Pick (1992), Three Bedrooms, One Corpse (1994), The Julius House (1995), Dead Over Heels (1996), A Fool and His Honey (1999), Last Scene Alive (2002), and Poppy Done to Death (2003), Aurora balances personal romance with murder investigations in the traditional cozy mystery fashion. Harris's penchant for creating strong, frequently underestimated female characters continued with her Lily Baird Mysteries, inaugurated with Shakespeare's Landlord in 1996. Lily is an emotionally scarred woman who survived a brutal attack and who, although educated, prefers to hold a menial job, from which she occasionally stretches to do amateur sleuthing in her town of Shakespeare, Arkansas. The Lily Baird mysteries were praised by critics for their sharp edge and complex character studies, and Harris alternated sequels in the series-Shakespeare's Champion (1997),Shakespeare's Christmas (1998), Shakespeare's Trollop (2000), and Shakespeare's Counselor (2001)-with her Aurora Teagarden novels.
In 2001, Harris inaugurated her new Southern Vampire series, a mix of supernatural fantasy and mystery. The novels, beginning withDead Until Dark, are all narrated by Sookie Stackhouse, a ditzy waitress with psychic powers who lives in a small Louisiana town in an alternate reality where supernatural creatures have rights and mingle freely with mortals. The sequels Living Dead in Dallas(2002), Club Dead (2003), Dead to the World (2004), and Dead as a Doornail (2005) all feature humorous scenarios in which Sookie grapples with werewolves, sorcerers, and representatives of the undead, and inadvertently gets into mischief with thesupernatural hierarchy that controls the destiny of her vampire boyfriend. These novels were the first of Harris's books to become best-sellers in hardcover. Harris was a member of the Mystery Writers of America and Sisters and Crime, and alternated as president of the Arkansas Mystery Writers Alliance.
Essay by: Stefan Dziemianowicz

Dead Until Dark, True Blood tie-in cover comparison

Telma from Portugal writes

Hello Dallas,
How are you? I'm very excited to listen to this week's show.
As promised I send you the Portuguese book cover of Dead Until Dark, that will be in book stores April 9th. As you will see, the cover was changed. The fangs were placed in their "traditional" place, not upfront as in the show. I really don't know why they decided to changed them, but still on the publisher's forum the peoples reaction to it is very positive and they feel it is more "natural" being portrait this way.
Also, the show and the book are named "Sangue Fresco", meaning Fresh Blood, a little different from True Blood. I guess it was just because it sounded better! So, from top to bottom you can read:

Charlaine Harris
Fresh Blood - The Saga
Dead until Dark
Read the book series that is generating one of the biggest HBO television successes in the world.

Kisses,
Telma

Laurell Hamilton's Vampire Hunter heads to TV

The Independent Film Channel is teaming with Lionsgate for a TV movie based on the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter books, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The project is the network's first-ever feature-length production and could be the basis for more Blake projects if successful.

In the books, Blake is a vampire hunter with a lousy dating life who also works as a police consultant investigating supernatural crimes. She attempts to come to terms with her own abilities, and navigate romantic and political relationships within the vampire community.

The 16-books-and-counting Blake novels by Laurell Hamilton include elements familiar to fans of True Blood (vampires are part of regular society) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (tough young female fights supernatural forces). The project will be adapted by Glen Morgan (X-Files, Final Destination), who also serves as executive producer along with Courtney Solomon (Dungeons and Dragons). IFC is targeting the movie to its core base of men ages 18-34 and plans to air the movie next year.

"The popularity of the network in this demographic indicates that there is a clear demand for films that delve into provocative topics and nothing is more classically provocative than vampire lore," said Jennifer Caserta, executive vp and general manager of IFC. "Anita Blake fits perfectly with our successful original programming."

http://scifiwire.com/2009/03/laurell-hamiltons-vampire.php

True Blood Season 2 photos: Keep the party going !

Now let's take theses photos one at a time and carefully look at them.

(from left to right) Chris Bauer and Michelle Forbes in HBO's TRUE BLOOD(2009).

© HBO/ Jaimie Trueblood

Let's keep the party going ! This might be episode 2.
This maenad ( Maryann ) knows how to party and she's got Andy ( Detective Bellefleur, to you ) into the act..I think that's Tara dancing with Mike Spencer in back right ?
Not sure , what do you guys think ?