Vampire Author Harris Calls it Quits

Today the world of True Blood fans are in mourning at the news from vampire author Charlaine Harris that she has decided to make the next book in the Southern Vampire Series her last one.  Our darling of the barkeep set, Sookie Stackhouse, will be having her final adventure next May when Dead Ever After comes out.

Charlaine Harris has been musing for some time now that she knew she was coming to an end with the series. The world renown vampire author has said in several interviews that she could see that after twelve years of writing and fourteen books published she is ready to move on from Bon Temps. The question simply became how to find the right ending to the series.

The announcement came on her Facebook page and was of course met with a wide variety of comments from fans imploring her to continue a little longer with the wildly popular series. She admits that although she knows it is time to move on it will be hard to leave the crew of the storyline she is so closely identified with behind.

When confronted with her fans disappointment Harris said that “it would be doing readers a disservice to continue writing a character when my heart wasn’t in it. I’ve loved writing Sookie, but if you see the end of the road, you see the end of the road.” The vampire author admits that she loves the characters and that for her a big part of the work in writing that final story will be in finding a way to say goodbye to these characters after having them be a part of her life for over ten years.

There are, of course, other projects either in the works or currently ongoing. Besides the graphic novel she is co-producing called Cemetery Girl, vampire author Harris has several other genre-driven series. Her Harper Connelly fantasy mystery series follows the stories of a woman who can tell by looking at a body how the person came to die. Another mystery series with a dark bend to it are The Shakespeare Mysteries, named for the town that the main character Lily Bard lives in. Finally, the very busy vampire author has a series called the Aurora Teagarden Series. The books are what is commonly called a “cozy detective series” because the main characters are usually elder women who love to sit and sip tea discussing and often solving murders without leaving their cozy living room chairs.

Of course, w hat is missing in all of these books is our favorite kind of character, a vampire. But Harris does not rule out returning at some time to Bon Temps, even if it is just the occasional visit. She has considered that her desire to see “what happened to Harry Bellefleur!’ or ‘This is what happened to Tanya,” may yet lead her back to visit the old town. We can only hope that it does!