Does Vampire Bill have a future as the next retro horror movie star?

our own @jessicahamby posted this to her posterous page ...pretty good jess!

Does Bill have a future as the next retro horror movie star?

I'm just sayin'.

http://jessicahamby.posterous.com/does-bill-have-a-future-as-the

Go ask Dallas : How can I write Charlaine Harris a Thank You note ?

J writes: Dallas, I know this sounds silly, but I'd like to send Charlaine a Thank You note and tell her how much happiness the Sookie books have brought me and how much I am looking forward to Book 9. Is there an address where I can send her a note ?

No not silly at all and yes, you can write to Charlaine and I am sure she appreciates getting notes like that.

You can write to her here:

Charlaine Harris
Box 354
Magnolia, AR
71754

True Blood's Amy Burley , Lizzy Caplan talks about being on the show

PW: Did you know going in that Amy would die?
Lizzy: Yeah, I went in knowing she would be killed, but by the time we actually got to that part, I was super bummed about it.

PW: Maybe that's the cost for spending so much time naked with Ryan Kwanten?
Lizzy: He's got muscles that I didn't even know existed! For somebody who looks like they just work out every second of every day, he's just like this totally down to earth nice guy. Nothing like Jason Stackhouse.

More here from New York Post

Sookie Stackhouse book's dedications, acknowledgments and prologues for Book 6 Definitely Dead

Book 6: Definitely Dead

Obviously, this book was finished months before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. Since much of the plot is set in New Orleans, I struggled with whether I would leaveDefinitely Dead as it was, or include the catastrophe of August and September. After much thought, since Sookie's visit takes place in the early spring of the year, I decided to let the book remain as it was originally written.
My heart goes out to the people of the beautiful city of New Orleans and to all the people of the coastal areas of Mississippi, my home state. My thoughts and prayers will be with you as you rebuild your homes and your lives.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks to so many people: Jerrilyn Farmer's son's Latin teacher; Toni L.P. Kelner and Steve Kelner, friends and sounding boards; Ivan Van Laningham, who has both knowledge and opinions about many, many subjects; Dr. Stacy Clanton, about whom I can say the same; Alexandre Dumas, author of the fabulousThe Three Musketeers , which everyone ought to read; Anne Rice, for vampirizing New Orleans; and to the reader at Uncle Hugo's who guessed the plot of this book in advance … hats off to you all!

PROLOGUES

Dear Readers,

If you've enjoyed Sookie's adventures, you might be interested in reading other works of mine. In 2005, Berkley published Grave Sight , the first book in a series about a young woman named Harper Connelly.
Harper was struck by lightning when she was fifteen years old, and since then she's been able to find dead people. Now in her twenties, Harper and her stepbrother, Tolliver, conduct their unique business on the road.
As the two travel from job to job, they encounter all kinds of clients along the way. Sometimes, the body Harper finds has met a foul death … and sometimes, the people who pay her think Harper knows more than she does about who committed the murder.
If you think you might like reading about Harper and Tolliver,Grave Surprise , the second book about their investigations, will be on the shelves in hardcover in November of 2006. The same month,Grave Sight will be released in paperback.
I hope you enjoy the change of pace.

Charlaine Harris

Before Twilight, Before True Blood, Vampires Were Once Heartstoppers, Not Heartthrobs

From the AMC channel blog

These days, it can be easy to forget that vampires weren't always the darkly mysterious, come-hither creatures that dominate pop culture in the modern age. (See: Twilight's Robert Pattinson, True Blood's Stephen Moyer and so on). Once upon a time, the fanged ones were more heartstoppers than heartthrobs. And and in no corner of the vampire-movie kingdom was that more true than for Draculas past. Count-for-the-ages Béla Lugosi had the dark part down, that's for sure, but he was hardly the type to get tween girls a-twittering. His seductive powers were more in the hypnotize-the-life-out-of-you realm. Not his fault! Before Lugosi's debut in Dracula (1931), the only real representation of vampires on the big screen came courtesy of famed silent-film auteur F.W. Murnau.

For his film Nosferatu, Murnau did up the titular character (Max Schreck) up in claw hands, corpse makeup and creepy rodent teeth. Not exactly Facebook-friendly.

Fast-forward to 1979, when not one but two new Count Draculas entered the popular consciousness: George Hamilton as the campy Count in the hit spoof Love At First Bite, and Frank Langella in Dracula (1979). Langella, for one, took the character so far away from its sickly origins that his open-shirted Dracula positively glowed with suave, eighties virility. He didn't even have fangs! Which to certain horror obsessives might have seemed like a travesty. That said, most must have liked what they saw, as evidenced by the fact that we've had a veritable parade of sex-machine Draculas dominating the screen ever since: Gary Oldman seducing Winona in Bram Stoker's Dracula, a wind-blown Gerard Butler in Wes Craven's Dracula 2000, Dominic Purcell's romancing-slash-slaying of Parker Posey in Blade: Trinity, as "Drake", to name just a few. And happily for those with fang fetishes, a quick perusal of porny recent straight-to-video movies (The Sexy Adventures of Van Helsing, anyone?) suggests the trend is in no earthly danger of letting up any time soon.

Click here for a full schedule of Dracula (1979) on AMC.

Richard Nixon is that you ?

Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgård), True Blood makes it to Alpha Dog Round 3

True Blood fans aren't good losers and we know our Eric is a winner !!

Vote, vote, vote for Eric in round three!! HERE

This is how it stands at 2:00pm central

Game 1.1

• 40.8% Aaron Hotchner (Thomas Gibson), Criminal Minds
• 59.2% Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgård), True Blood

... E! Online's Alpha Male Madness tournament tightens into a Sweet Sixteen with some serious competition.

Did your favorite TV dude make it through?

Can he take out his next opponent?

Alpha Male Madness, Round 3

Game 1.1

• 40.8% Aaron Hotchner (Thomas Gibson), Criminal Minds
• 59.2% Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgård), True Blood

Q&A: Generation Kill actor James Ransome answers your questions: and some about Alex Skarsgard

Interview with Generation Kill actor James Ransome from Guardian UK. James Ransome, who plays Person in Generation Kill and Ziggy in The Wire, on acting in two critically-lauded shows.

joedoone: Did Alexander Skarsgard really keep an officer-like distance from the actors playing the other ranks during the making of the series? If so, I hope you gave him a bit of stick about it.

JR: Haha ... I love this one. Yes, he kept his distance from us, but for two reasons that aren't as highbrow as they're made out to be. The first being that the shoot itself was really intense, six-day work weeks with a lot of coverage, and Alex was in almost all of the scenes. So we would shoot all day, from dawn until dusk, and he would go back to his hotel to prepare for the scenes the following day. This was because Alex has a Swedish accent and he wanted it to be as authentic as possible. The other reason he quarantined himself from the rest of us was because when he did go out, he was the wildest party animal I have ever seen. The two occasions we went out, Alex sang the Swedish football anthem and tried to fight an entire town. After that I was like, "Yeah dude, I get why you won't hang out with us, if you get killed or go to an African prison, the producers are gonna be pissed."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2009/mar/20/james-ransome-the-wire-generation-kill

True Blood Recipes: Gran's Pecan Pie or 'Crying pie' the True Blood version

The pie Sookie eats in True Blood is quite different from a Texas Pecan Pie or other southern pecan pie recipes because of it's creaminess, a reader suggest this recipe for the 'True Blood Cryin' pie'.

Pecan Cream Pie recipe

1 (9 inch) pie shell, baked

4 egg yolks
2 cups milk
2/3 cup white sugar
1/3 cup cornstarch
1 pinch salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup ground pecans

4 egg whites
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 tablespoons white sugar
1/4 cup ground pecans

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
In the top of a double boiler, combine yolks, milk, 2/3 cup sugar, cornstarch and salt. Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens. Stir in 1/2 teaspoon vanilla and 1 cup pecans. Pour filling into baked pie shell.
In a large glass or metal mixing bowl, beat egg whites until foamy. Beat in 1/2 teaspoon vanilla and gradually add 6 tablespoons white sugar, continuing to beat until stiff peaks form. Spread meringue over pie, covering completely. Sprinkle with 1/4 cup ground pecans.
Bake in the preheated oven for 10 to 15 minutes, or until meringue is delicately browned.

Read 'Dead and Gone' and all the Sookie books on an Ebook Reader

You may know about the Amazon Kindle but do you know about their competitor from Sony ?

What is a e-book reader ? HERE

I will post tomorrow about the Kindle. I have used both of these and they are both great.

You can purchase one here(prices start at $299)

Sony makes 500,000 public domain book titles available to U.S. consumers for free

Google made Sony's Reader Digital Book more attractive to ebook fans on Thursday. A deal between the two tech giants makes 500,000 public domain book titles available to U.S. consumers for free. The books are out of copyright, which means they were published in 1923 or prior.

Sony's agreement with Google makes available more than 600,000 titles from its eBook Store, compared with 245,000 closed-format titles for Amazon's Kindle.

A button on the front page of Sony's eBook Store leads to the books from Google, which people can transfer to their PRS-505 or PRS-700 Reader at no cost. Those new to the store will need to set up an account and download Sony's free eBook Library software. Consumers without a Reader can read the text through Sony's free eBook Library software on a PC running Windows.

Through the Google Book Search project, the Mountain View, Calif. company has spent four years digitizing books from many of the world's leading libraries, including the Harvard University Library and New York Public Library. Digitized books range from Mark Twain to Jane Austen and other classic authors.

For books published since 1923, Google displays a "few snippets" of text around the search term after scanning it from one of the libraries, according to a Google spokeswoman. Google won't make all digitized books available through the Sony store.

Bill Compton - Hero Jealousy: A Virtue or a Vice?

Racy Romance Reviews writes about jealousy..

I often love those moments when a hero gets jealous of the heroine. But at other times, the jealous hero appalls me. Here’s why......

Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse series provides lots of opportunities for male jealousy, as Sookie has so many admirers. But nobody does jealousy like vampire Bill Compton. In the second book, Living Dead in Dallas, the two have split up. Jealousy is the push they need to get back together. Sookie attends a high school football game with a handsome former classmate, JB. As JB gives her a kiss, Sookie glances down and sees Bill on a lower bleacher twisted around, “staring a hole in her”. Sookie first thinks it was a “wonderful screw-him moment”, but then immediately realizes “I just wanted him”. This scene precipitates their reunion: Sookie comes home from the game to find Bill waiting for her. They make mad love and afterwards Bill, always suave with the ladies, says, “You smell like him.”

read on

http://www.racyromancereviews.com/2009/03/20/hero-jealousy-a-virtue-or-a-vice/

Dead and Gone ...drip, drip, drip

The review for Book 9, Dead and Gone does have an error but it is a real review by a reputable reviewer.

I'm thinking stepdaughter should maybe have been stepfather ..?
So, the line "The owner of Merlotte’s stepdaughter almost kills her mother" maybe should have read The "owner of Merlotte’s stepfather almost kills his mother " and we know this from Chapter One which was leaked by Charlaine, herself.

This is what Charlaine said about the mistake and the reviewer, Harriet Klausner.

Harriet does read the books, but she reads about three a day or something amazing like that. I think the plot gets scrambled with the other books she's reading. Charlaine Harris

The review is posted here from yesterday if you missed it.

I have been contacted by 3 people who have received reviewers copies of the book and we will be seeing more reviews soon. I'm sure many, many more details from the book will begin leaking out ...and what I've heard is great !!!

We do now know from the review that Crystal gets killed, Sookie is almost kidnapped and has a romance ...

Kiwi Anna Paquin Digs Teeth into Vampire Role

Kiwi Academy Award Winner Anna Paquin has hit the headlines with her character Sookie Stackhouse in the HBO series True Blood. True blood is another masterpiece from Six Feet Under writer Alan Ball.

Stuff NZ describes True Blood it this way:

On the contrary, in the world of True Blood, vampires have been “normalised” into society as an underprivileged minority.

Following the invention of a viable synthetic blood, with which vampires can nourish themselves instead of predating upon humans, the vampire race decided to “come out of the coffin” and integrate openly with the Earth’s dominant species.

Anna Helene Paquin was born in Manitoba Canada to a New Zealand Mother Mary. They moved to New Zealand when she was 4 years old. It was in New Zealand in 1991 that Paquin became an actress by chance. Acclaimed Kiwi Director Jane Campion was looking for a little girl to play a key role in The Piano, set to film in New Zealand, and a newspaper advertisement was run announcing an open audition. Paquin’s sister read the ad and went to try out with a friend; Paquin herself tagged along because she had nothing better to do. When Campion met Paquin—whose only acting experience had been as a skunk in a school play—she was very impressed with the nine-year-old’s performance of the monologue about Flora’s father, and she was chosen from among the 5000 candidates that auditioned.

When The Piano was released in 1993 it was lauded by critics, won prizes at a number of film festivals, and eventually became a popular movie among a wide audience. Paquin’s debut performance in the film earned her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at the age of eleven, making her the second-youngest Oscar winner in history after Tatum O’Neal.

When she was younger, she wanted to be the Prime Minister of New Zealand, or a lawyer. We of course look forward to her political career but she is probably going to have to take a paycut.

Read on http://www.kiwibloke.org/archives/857

True Blood Music Video of the Day : Just Like Heaven by Katie Melua

Just Like Heaven by Katie Melua LYRICS

Thanks to zenobia_zero

'Sparks fly out "' the title song for True Blood Season One Episode Five

I recently did a Season 2 Spoiler show for my Blogtalk radio show, where we looked at what we might know about the upcoming episode by examining the title song for that episode.

I can't tell you how many emails I received from folks saying they felt so stupid for not realizing that the True Blood episodes were named for songs. It's OK but I thought it might be a good idea to look back at the song, the artist and the lyrics for each of last season's episode title songs.

So let's look back to Season 1, Ep 5: 'Sparks Fly Out' which originally aired: 10/5/2008


'Spark Fly out' by Paul Burch from the album Fool for Love

Paul Burch (born 1966) is a Washington, D.C.-born musician, songwriter and producer. Burch moved to Nashville in the early '90s where he began singing in the city's '50s-era honky tonks, garnering the attention of Marianne Faithfull and Chet Atkins. Burch's shows and the Lower Broadway scene garnered national attention and a feature in Billboard which led to a record deal.

In 1998, Burch released his first album, Pan-America Flash on the independent Checkered Path label. This album was voted the fifth best country album of the 1990s by Amazon.com. Wire to Wire featured Ranger Doug of Riders in the Sky and a city nomination for best band and best independent record.

In 2000, Burch moved to Merge Records where he released two albums, Blue Notes and Last of My Kind, a companion to Tony Earley's New York Times best-seller Jim the Boy.

2003's Fool For Love, was Burch's first record for Bloodshot Records, this was followed up by East to West in 2006. East to West was recorded in London and featured guest appearances with Mark Knopfler, Tim O'Brien, and a duet and video with Ralph Stanley. Burch's songs have appeared on several film and television soundtracks including The Appalachians, The Rookie, and A History of Violence.

Paul Burch official website http://www.paulburch.com/bio.htm

This is Paul Burch singing "Life of a Fool" from the same album.

Bloodshot Records

Vampire Couture

Trends via TrendHunter.com.

Dead and Gone first review !!!

Book reviewers have now recieved their copies of Book 9, Dead to Worse

This was the first review I've seen but I've been in contact with other reviewers and I hear we have big news in the Sookie /Eric relationaship front more as soon as we know it !!

Dead and Gone

Dead and Gone
Charlaine Harris
Ace, May 2009, $25.95
ISBN: 9780441017157

Telepath Sookie Stackhouse works as a waitress at Merlotte’s Diner in Bon Temps, Louisiana. When Japanese scientists invented synthetic blood, vampires came out of the coffins and introduced themselves over TV. Although the new world needs some getting used to and help groups form, life for the most part have somewhat settled down as people realize vampires have been part of the assimilated population for centuries. It is now the shapeshifters turn to come out into the open.

However, some humans react violently towards the news. The owner of Merlotte’s stepdaughter almost kills her mother. Female shifter is crucified in Merlotte’s parking lot; she is the estranged wife of Sookie’s brother. Sookie’s great grandfather Niall is at war with an enemy who wants to kill and Sookie is sought by his adversaries as a potential hostage; several attempts to either abduct or kill her occur. Having a brother who is a were-panther means he will protect her but Sookie underestimates the threat to her and her loved ones by an ancient evil species more powerful than weres, vamps and humans combined.

True Blood is the TV show based on the Sookie novels and like this tale and previous entries are great urban fantasies. With all the different species surfacing who previously were assumed to be myths, Sookie and one other person are the only known telepaths in the United States. Although a bit less action oriented than other books in the series, Readers get to know the characters better and Sookie finally has some romance in her life. Charlaine Harris is one of the best urban fantasy worldbuilders writing today.

Harriet Klausner
http://worldsofwonders.blogspot.com/2009/03/dead-and-gone-charlaine-harris.html

More news on Johnny Depp’s ‘Dark Shadows’

Supernatural gothic sagas are crazy hot right now: HBO’s “True Blood,” those “Twilight” flicks everyone keeps talking about, plus a host of upcoming films like Benicio Del Toro’s “The Wolfman” and Nicolas Cage’s “Season of the Witch.” Even “Spider-Man 4”’s rumored villain is a vampire. Another of these Zeitgeist-y projects is the Johnny Depp-starring adaptation of the 1960s soap opera, “Dark Shadows,” which had been in development even before this obsession with monsters, ghosts and witches took hold.

But since word of the planned film surfaced two years ago, reliable “Dark Shadows” news has been hard to come by. Now an executive in Depp’s production company, Infinitum-Nihil, which is developing the movie, confirmed some details for MTV News, left others up in the air, and hinted that we might be seeing the makings of a new supernatural franchise.

Most importantly, we wanted to know if Johnny Depp is still attached to star. “Indeed he is,” confirmed Sam Sarkar, Infinitum’s director of development.

When it came to those Internet rumors about Tim Burton signing on to direct, though, Sarkar was somewhat more circumspect. “I can neither confirm nor deny that,” he said. “But I know it’s out there in the ether.”

Sounds like a deal is not yet in place but that Burton, who’s currently busy with another Depp-staring movie, “Alice in Wonderland,” tops Infinitum’s list of prospective directors. Of course, Depp and Burton have a long creative history together, from “Edward Scissorhands” to “Ed Wood” to “Sweeney Todd.”

While all the pieces are not yet in place, “Dark Shadows” is still very much a go at Warner Bros. “All I can say is that one is very active,” Sarkar said. “The studio will be making some announcements regarding it pretty soon. Very soon, probably.”

“Dark Shadows” premiered on ABC in 1966. Gothic romance, ghost stories, plots involving vampires, zombies and time-travel—the daytime soap had it all, and it became a runaway hit for the network over 1,225 episodes. The task facing producers is simply finding a way to shape a movie around such abundant, wide-ranging material.

“It was a soap opera—it was a daily show,” said Sarkar. “That’s something people forget. It’s one thing to adapt a weekly television series into a movie—it’s another thing to take a soap opera that’s been serialized daily and try to boil it down to two hours.”

As much as they’ll be forced to change and excise, they’re also committed to honoring an adored show. “I think it will be very true to the spirit of ‘Dark Shadows,’” Sarkar told us. “I think there’s going to be an authenticity to it.”

Any modifications will be made with the blessing of the mind behind the original series. Said Sarkar, “When Dan Curtis, the creator, was still alive, I met with [producer] David Kennedy, who originally brought the project to us and Curtis, and David has always been very adamant that there are certain things you should definitely take liberties with.”

And if the “Dark Shadows” film turns out to be a success, there’s a good chance it will spawn a franchise. “Obviously, it’s a movie that can continue,” said Sarkar, “because there were so many things going on in ‘Dark Shadows.’”

Johnny Depp and Tim Burton together—enough already or gimmie more? Who else would you like to see cast in the film?

http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2009/03/19/johnny-depps-dark-shadows-adaptation-very-activewith-tim-burton-directing/