For the Love of Vampires

I have a thing for vampires.

It started at a young age…I had a poster of “The Count” from Sesame Street on my bedroom wall.  When I learned my numbers, my first vampire love was forgotten.  In my early teens I saw the Frank Langella version of  Dracula and first understood why people found vampires sexy.  But it was reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula in university that truly captivated me.  I started reading the literary classic late one Friday afternoon, and stayed up all night and well into the next morning to finish it.  I was too afraid to put it down and too intrigued to stop reading.

I was a big fan of the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” TV series, both identifying with the strong heroine, and of course, developing a giant crush on Spike, the blond punk vamp who initially tries to be bad but somehow ends up doing good despite himself, before finally resigning himself to fight on the right side.  Most recently, the series “True Blood” and the terrific novels by Charlaine Harris they are based, have captured my interest.

The Vampire tradition is so rich that continues to inspire the most creative people working in film, TV and literature.  It gets re-invented with each generation.

What’s all this rambling a precursor for?  My new venture.

http://www.meetup.com/BeforeDawn

Vancouver Vampire Aficionados now have a group to call their own.

“True Blood” ought to be delicious

I’ve been a fan of the vampire genre since I first cracked open Bram Stoker’s masterpiece, Dracula, in university. Actually, I may have to go back further than that since The Count was my favourite character on Sesame Street. The vampire genre has been with us for a long time and has been tackled from many different angles with many different variations. But no one writes great vampire lit like Charlaine Harris.

I’ll take every chance I get to rave about her Southern Vampire novels and now HBO is making that task so much more fun.

HBO has launched the advertising campaign for True Blood, a television series based on Harris’ work. Anna Paquin will star as Sookie Stackhouse, a beautiful waitress with a unique gift and poor taste in men. Set in a time when Undead Americans have come out of the closet thanks to the development of a synthetic blood substitute, the novels mix adventure, romance and humour into an intoxicating brew. Need another reason to check it out? The show is run by Alan Ball, the man who brought us Six Feet Under.

The viral marketing campaign for new show, which begins September 7^th, has taken off, with a variety of websites now running ads for TruBlood, the vampires’ new drink of choice. Gotta love a tag line like “Friends don’t let friends drink friends.”