Charlaine Harris Talks Vampires, Book 11 And The Name ‘Sookie’

Charlaine was on the Comic Con Panel talking about our favourite subject ’Vampires’ heres what Charlaine had to say:

–Book 11: She says she’s kind of looking forward to finishing Sookie’s story. Still no name for book No. 11, but she’s just about to finish it. “Maybe even tomorrow (Sunday),” she said.

–Sookie’s name: For fans who don’t know where she got the name for Sookie, she reiterated that it was the name of her grandmother’s best friend. “It’s a common name in the South.”

–Why she developed her vampire world: She wanted to anchor her vampire stories in a blue-collar culture. She knew she wanted the story to be told through the eyes of someone in the working class. And she wanted the vampires’ struggle to join society to be told through that human’s eyes.

–On sticking to vamp lore: With creatures as strong as vampires, you have to stick to some vampire lore. So her vampires — for example — can’t go out during the day and silver is deadly. You need some rules so they don’t overtake human society, she says. “You’ve got to keep them in their place — which is the coffin.”

–On vampires/metaphors: In Rome, the journalists told her they thought her vampires symbolized capitalists, Harris said. But not for her, she says. “Vampires can be symbols for everything. Sometimes a vampire is just a vampire.”

On how she writes: She does not like to do research. “I hate prep work. … I’d rather just make it up as I go along.” But she admits that’s gotten her into some continuity problems with the Sookie books so she has an editor just to double-check her consistency now. She doesn’t listen to any special music — although when she mentioned bagpipes the other panelists thought that was a bit unusual — but she prefers to simply write in solitude in her room. OK — she does say she plays the soundtracks from the True Blood series when they send them to her.

On why vamps are popular: In economic hard times people want to think about super creatures, she said. Maybe it has to do with living forever when things are uncertain. “I do not want to live forever,” she says.

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