Q&A: An Interview with Charlaine Harris

The best selling Southern author of vampire novels talks about her path to publishing and how a HBO producer sank his teeth into one of her characters for a bloody, popular primetime series

INTERVIEW by Noel Workman

It’s not often a Delta writer creates a literary character that becomes the main figure in an ongoing network television series. As a matter of fact, Charlaine Harris is the only one to ever pull it off with Sookie Stackhouse in HBO’s “True Blood.”

Unfamiliar names? Maybe to you, but not to millions of readers and viewers. The books of Tunica native Charlaine Harris have sold more than a million copies, appearing repeatedly on the best sellers lists of The New York Times and USA Today.

Still a little lost? Perhaps it’s because you haven’t been reading Southern vampire novels. Harris has been a published author for 26 years. Her current series includes the crossover mystery/horror/fantasy books about Sookie Stackhouse and the Harper Connelly series about a lightning-struck woman who has developed a strange gift. In her writing career, Harris has produced the Aurora Teagarden books (cozies with teeth, about a Georgia librarian), and the Lily Bard books (her walk on the noir side) about a weightlifter with a terrible past.

Much of this pales, however, when you realize that Alan Ball, series creator of HBO’s “Six Feet Under,” is the producer of “True Blood,” the HBO series featuring Harris’ creation Sookie Stackhouse, which premiered last September.

How did Sookie end up on television?
Well, I’d had a movie option before and when that was about to expire, there were three more choices waiting on the table. The idea wasn’t new to me, but when I found out one was Alan Ball, I was very excited. Others might have been more lucrative but he is such a huge talent with such a great track record for picking the right person for the right role. Look at what “Six Feet Under” did for HBO.

Ball also wrote the screenplay for “American Beauty.” Were you a fan of his?
Oh, yes. It’s been kind of exciting. We talked a good bit and I felt sure he would stick to the spirit of my book. I like and trust him. And dealing with him has been a real pleasure.

Did he ask for your input on the scripts?
No, that’s not my area. Alan doesn’t tell me how to write my books and I don’t tell him how to write scripts. He has the rights to the character and he and his staff are writing the scripts. Alan wrote the first three or four episodes and then he brought in trusted compadres for the writing.

After more than 20 published books, do you have a favorite?
I guess I’m supposed to say my most recent book is my favorite, but probably my favorite is Shakespeare’s Champion, which was published years ago.

How did it all begin?
I am blessed with a husband with a real job as a chemical engineer who willingly supported me during the time I was trying to get published. Of course, I’ve had a pretty good run. My first book, Sweet and Deadly, got published because a friend recommended me to Houghton Mifflin. I know it makes aspiring writers crazy to hear it, but it was surprisingly easy for me to get into print. At least, it certainly surprised me. After the first couple of books, I took a break to have children. Then [went] back to writing.

How did you get in the Southern vampire novel biz?
At the time, my career was not going great guns, although I guess it really is a matter of perspective. Writers think that any author who is being published has an idyllic life, but my career was not gaining any momentum. The publisher even cancelled one of my series.

I was looking at 50 and I asked myself, “Am I ever gonna get any further up the ladder?” I had been writing as Hannah Housewife and I decided to try to write something completely different from my earlier stuff. It seemed I might be more successful with a combination of genres. The Sookie books let me unleash my sense of humor, which had been [sort of] repressed. It’s hard to get funny books published, but this is such a strange mixture of funny lines and a lot of blood.

Fifteen publishers turned down Dead Until Dark, the first Sookie book in the series. It took me two years to sell it. That was seven or eight years ago...and it’s now in its 14th printing.

What was your life like growing up in the Delta?
In some ways, I remember it as the “bad old days” not the good old days, as it was for everyone in the South in general and in the Delta in particular. The 1960s were a very stressful, tumultuous time. My dad, Robert Harris, was an educator and my mom, Jean, was the city librarian. Dad’s life was tough after “the big change” and he became principal of an all black junior high school. After high school and college at Southwestern (now Rhodes) in Memphis, I worked for newspapers in Clarksdale and Cleveland and, of course, for Delta Design Group, in Greenville.

Should Deltans be on the lookout for themselves in your writing?
Gosh, I would never say that. Of course, the place you grow up leaves its mark on you for the rest of your life and there really is a piece of me in my writing.

How about your neighbors today?
I had published more than 20 books, some of them on best seller lists, and almost no one in our little town in southwest Arkansas knew or cared. With Sookie Stackhouse on television, however, things have really changed.

What’s next?
Dead and Gone, the ninth book about adventures of Sookie, the telepathic, Bon Temps, Louisiana waitress, will be out next May. The second season of “True Blood” is well into production. And I’m writing the fourth book in my Harper Connelly series. That may be the last one of that series. We’ll see. DM

Learn more about Charlaine Harris, Sookie Stackhouse and the “True Blood” HBO series at www.charlaineharris.com.