Books 37 - 43: Sookie Stackhouse Novels

By Charlaine Harris

37: Dead Until Dark
38: Living Dead in Dallas
39: Club Dead
40: Dead to the World
41: Dead as a Doornail
42: Definitely Dead
43: All Together Dead



These are the kind of novels you want to read on the beach or some other time when you just want to be entertained. The characters are interesting and Harris puts new little twists on the classic Vampire and Werewolf stories.

Alan Ball's HBO show, "True Blood," is somewhat based on these novels. I'll talk about the books all together so I don't ruin the plots for you. I don't know if the show will continue to loosely follow the books or go completely in its own way. By the way, the second season starts in June!

The writing is generally what you might expect from this type of genre novel: not impressive. It's adequate.

The stories and characters are what makes these good. Sookie Stackhouse is telepathic and has always been considered a freak by the residents of her little town. One day, Vampires make an announcement of their existence on TV around the world, now that synthetic blood has been perfected and they no longer have to hunt humans to survive. One vampire walks into Sookie's bar, she can't read his mind, and she is infatuated with him and his mental silence. Then she gets more and more involved in the world of the Vampires and the Werewolves and other creatures, and all sorts of things happen.

Sookie has comically terrible fashion sense:

·banana clips
·stretch jeans that lace up the side
·long, taupe dress on a tan blonde
·red and green Christmas sweater with reindeer (she regrets that she can only wear it at Christmastime)


Something seriously fell apart in the editing process of Book 6, Definitely Dead. She must have been in a rush. Rather than telling us the story in chronological order, she started in media res and kept leaking out bits of the earlier events throughout the book. It was a mess. Further, the sentence structure and logic from one sentence to the next was missing in several sections:
“I glanced over to their table, to make sure Halleigh was sitting with her back to me. She did.”


I've been reading Dracula in installments thanks to this blog, and the difference in writing quality is striking. Dracula is a book to savor, and the Sookie books are for devouring during every spare minute you can find.

Maraka cartoon

This is a great skit from Saturday Night Live. I wanted to embed the video here, but the only one I found on YouTube was really crappo, so let's use this link to the legitimate NBC site.

Don't question it! Just do it!

A Commitment to Writing

I have promised myself that I will write at least ONE SENTENCE of my novel every day. Yesterday was the first day and I ended up writing a chapter. I still have to do my sentence today.

So far, the book pretty much sucks. But, I'm going to force myself to finish it anyway. For one thing, the plot is good, the characters are good, and I can fix the rest in revision. For another thing, even if it turns out terribly, I still want to accomplish this thing, and take this risk at failing. I can't keep hiding out from doing things just because I might fail.

Hopefully the one sentence will often lead to more each day and maybe I could finish it by 1/01/09! I won't make any promises about that, but I am going to write ONE SENTENCE per day indefinitely.


LATER: I wrote about a page, and now I have to go watch "Weeds." Jason has borrowed season 3 from his co-worker, so we can finally find out what happened! We've seen seasons 1, 2, and 4 already.

A Better Day

Yesterday was a bad day. I guess a migraine day, though I'm not diagnosed with getting migraines (though I don't really go to doctors, so how could I be diagnosed?). I felt like I had a cold when I got up, because my ears were plugged with pressure. But, I decided to sweat it out and do a tough cardio workout before working. I got through 43 minutes of feeling cold and then feverish and a little out of it. Then I started to hallucinate a little and also see lightning flashes in my peripheral vision, so I stopped. I ate an apple and a piece of string cheese and drank a lot of water. My vision returned to almost-normal. I took a shower and stopped feeling feverish.

But then the headache set in! If I moved my head even slightly in any direction, the pain was excruciating. I checked out what was available On Demand (on comcast cable). I found "BloodCopy," which is connected to the HBO show "True Blood." "True Blood" is a vampire series based on some books by Charlaine Harris, but the show is made by Alan Ball, who made "Six Feet Under." Anyway, "BloodCopy" is a bunch of 3- and 4-minute clips from a supposed news show, documenting the events of Vampires coming out into the open and demanding equal rights in the U.S. The political ads are pretty good -- one for the vamps is "Vampires Were People, Too."

So, I like "True Blood," but I did expect it to be a bit smarter, since it's Alan Ball. It's just the usual Vampire As Other, Vampire As Different Race stuff. That's the exact same stuff that 'Dracula' was about in 1897. The new part is just Vampire As Second-Class Citizen Because We're Scared, like we were of blacks and women voting and Chinese being eligible for citizenship. I hoped for more NEW. But, it's entertaining and I'll keep watching it.

After watching TV for a while (holding my head really still and sometimes moaning in my self-pity), I took a nap for an hour. I felt better after that, but still pretty crappy.

The whole day was wasted! I couldn't work because I couldn't stand to look at my computer screen for 60-90 minutes in a row. I had planned on working A LOT, so I was pretty disappointed. Today is a new day, and I feel fine. I'm going to be PRODUCTIVE.