ONTD

“Dead Reckoning,” the 12th installment in author Charlaine Harris‘ Sookie Stackhouse mystery series, is set to arrive this May — not long before the hit TV series inspired by the franchise, HBO’s “True Blood,” returns for a fourth season — but the novelist now is looking ahead to the conclusion of her long-running saga.

“Truthfully, the next two books will probably be the last two books in the series,” Harris said last week. “I still love Sookie, but I’m beginning to want to write something else, and Sookie’s kind of taken over my life. I was able to write other things for the first few years I was involved in Sookie, but then after the start of the television show she took over so much of my time because of my increased publicity obligations that it’s been very hard to write other things, and I really need to do that.” 

To satisfy her creative urges, Harris has embarked on a new endeavor, an online game called Dying for Daylight, that prominently features her vampire protagonist, Dahlia Lynley-Chivers, a ruthless, fashion-conscious vamp who has appeared in several of Harris’ short stories. “She’s one of my favorite characters,” Harris said. “Since HBO owns all the development rights to anything related to Sookie, Dahlia seemed a natural choice for this. She’s so visual, she’s so proud of the way she looks and she’s so adventuresome that it seemed like a really good match.”

In the game, available Friday at casual games publisher iplay.com (which previously has fashioned games based on the works of such other authors as James Patterson, Nora Roberts and Agatha Christie), Dahlia embarks on a mission to find a special potion that will enable her kind to spend some time in the sun. The venture was one that Harris had been interested in pursuing for some time. “I had been quite hopeful that someone would approach me about doing a game since some of my fellow writers had been involved in that,” Harris said. “I thought that would be neat. Of course we had to talk a little while to decide what character would adapt best to the medium. I-play just had such a good idea and they were so enthusiastic it was very easy to make the decision to go with them.”

Harris said the company was eager to collaborate with her on the project, and she consulted on the overall look and feel of the game. “They did show me the character drawings, and I had some input into how Dahlia should look and act and they did run the storyline past me,” Harris said. “We talked about several different storylines; I ended up saying that this one appealed to me most. But of course the design and everything has to be left to people who understand how to do it. I feel that way about everything I’m involved in.”

That doesn’t mean that she’s had an easy time navigating Dying for Daylight, though; Harris says she’s already gotten stuck: “To tell you the truth I’m not much of a gamer myself — I’ve got Dahlia dressed in a nurse’s uniform and now I don’t know what to do with her,” the author said. “The part I’m in takes place in the vampire quarter of New Orleans. Dahlia’s on a mission to find the sun potion which will enable vampires to go out in the daytime, and she is searching through all the grotesque parts of New Orleans to find clues as to where the sun potion might be in the first part of the game. That’s where I am, since I seem to be an endless loop. My assistant was helping me this morning.”

Harris’ fiction, of course, has been enjoying increased interest from not only game companies but also television networks and comic book publishers; IDW has a series of “True Blood” comic books spun off from Alan Ball‘s series; and another of Harris’ characters, Harper Connelly, is going to be getting the graphic novel treatment soon. Also, the Connelly mysteries were optioned by CBS with an eye toward developing them into a prime-time series. Seeing her characters adapted for various media has, she said, “added more dimensions to how I view them. I see the game as a different way to approach what I’m trying to do. It’s so interesting to see my characters doing things I didn’t write them doing. It’s been a big learning curve for me, and really kind of fun to challenge myself with seeing what my characters can do in a visual medium. It’s always interesting, sometimes shocking, sometimes delightful to see them translate.”

In the case of “True Blood,” it’s sometimes very shocking: case in point, last season’s (literally) head-turning sex scene between Bill (Stephen Moyer) and Lorena (Mariana Klaveno). Harris says even though she’s a regular viewer of the show, she sometimes is surprised by how graphic it can be, particularly when it comes to the amorous adventures of Sookie’s brother Jason (Ryan Kwanten).  “Of course, the television shows things that I only allude to,” Harris said. “I’ve had some moments where I have kind of covered my eyes a little bit. My gosh, there is a huge amount of skin. I guess I just don’t see that when I’m writing so much. In the books, you know Jason’s a horndog, you know that, but knowing it and seeing it are two different experiences.”

She was quick to praise the cast of actors, though, which, with Season 3, grew to include werewolves, shaman and the scene-stealing vampire king of Mississippi Russell Edgington (Denis O’Hare). “I think all the actors are very fun,” she said. “I think Alan’s genius lies in picking the right person for the right role. They’re all talented and doing a great job. There are some plot lines that have surprised me, but I know that they know where they’re going — I just don’t know because it’s not where I went. So I can only wait to see what’s going to develop.”

http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2011/02/09/charlaine-harris-on-sookie-stackhouse-novels-true-blood-end-is-near/#/0