Bitten by the Vampire Bug

Well, Thursday night was the second Season Finale of The Vampire Diaries (TVD).

I was a bit faklempt to say good-bye to Damon, Elena and especially Stefan for the rest of the summer; however, I know that my vampire obsession will continue to be fed.

Even before Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series came out and possessed the young and old alike, I was a huge vampire fan.

When I was about 8 years old, I read and reread the original, unabridged version of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” and sunk my teeth into some good old vampire lore.  From that point on, I was hooked.

I would read or watch anything vampire-related: from the movie Salem’s Lot to the television show The Munsters to the cartoon Groovy Ghoulies.  As I got a little bit older, I found Anne Rice’s Vampire chronicles and that was when it got really bad. (It didn’t hurt that Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt starred in the movie.) In my young mind, I actually wanted to be a vampire and, if I was ever faced with the decision, I would have been entirely comfortable being turned. 

Well, then I matured a bit and gave up my vampire fantasies until Buffy The Vampire Slayer movie came out in 1992.  Truthfully, I only saw it because Luke Perry – from the original Beverly Hills 90210 – was in it.  Five years later, the Buffy television series came out and I was a faithful follower of the Sarah Michelle Gellar show to the wacky, wicken bitter end; Which also lead me to the Angel spin-off because, of course, I was in love with the fanged hottie David Boreanaz aka Angel. 

I am proud to admit I actually bid on – and won –the original script for the Angel television show, which is autographed by the creators Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt, at a silent auction; To this day, I will still watch Angel in reruns if I happen to catch it on TV.

I mean, who can resist reliving Willow the lesbian wicken; Lorne the lounge singing demon; and Cordelia – whose real pregnancy was worked into the show – by using the angle that she was going to give birth to the devil.

The year my son was born, Angel went off the air and I found myself without the time to even watch TV.  My vampire fascination was put on hold until I found the Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series about two years ago. 

A friend loaned me the first book and, due to working full time and having a little one at home, I didn’t really even open the book right away.  Although, when I did I was fanatical and read all four books within three weeks.  I absolutely drank the Kool-Aid and was actually concerned about my well-being.  The book affected me more than any other book I had ever read.  I was actually depressed...I’m not joking, depressed, when I was done with the series.

But I found help: I logged onto twilightmoms.com and realized that I was not alone.  As a first time visitor to the site, they inquired the following:  Did you have a hard time functioning around the house as usual (i.e. was the laundry piling up and you put off feeding your kids); Did you start fantasizing that your husband was either a vampire or a werewolf; Did you call your husband Edward or Jacob by mistake.

Also, I had a few girls’ dinners and some close buddies fessed up about their Twilight addictions as well.

Luckily, the movies started coming out; but they were being released so sluggishly slow that it left me longing for more. 

That was when I found the “True Blood” series on HBO.  Mid-way through the season, Sookie Stackhouse (played by Anna Paquin) found her way into my living room and – this time – my husband and I both enjoyed the blood bath.  This show is outrageous but, when season one was over, I once again had vampire withdrawals.  My close friend Leslie – also a vampire aficionado – gave me my next fix The Southern Vampire Mysteries

AKA The Sookie Stackhouse novels, is a series of books written by best-selling author Charlaine Harris that were first published in 2001 and now serve as the source of material for the television series.  This is fantastic because the HBO show and the books have some resemblances, but are different enough to keep me guessing.

Harris just released the 11^th book in the series “Dead Reckoning” on May 3.  I am waiting for my copy to arrive from Amazon. But while watching TVD finale, I saw a preview of “True Blood” which is scheduled to begin Sunday June 26.

I am so excited.

But since I am on my supernatural soap box, I just have to give another shout out to Leslie – who also turned me onto the New York Times-bestselling Anita Blake series by Laurell K. Hamilton.

Wikipedia states, Anita Blake is a professional zombie raiser/supernatural consultant for the police as the protagonist in a world where vampires and werecreatures not only exist, but are citizens with recently protected, if nervously granted civil rights in the US.  She just happens to fall in love with a (gasp) vampire and a werewolf.

There are 19 novels in the series and Leslie gave me half of them.  I started with the first book, “Guilty Pleasures,” which was published in 1993.  What I find most interesting is that in 2003, Hamilton completed the 11^th book in her Anita Blake series and, for 10 years, she was writing about the relationship between her human heroine and the love triangle/triumvirate between the vampire and werewolf lovers in her life.

According to Wikipedia, “Meyer says that the idea for Twilight came to her in a dream on June 2, 2003. The dream was about a human girl, and a vampire who was in love with her but thirsted for her blood. Based on this dream, Meyer wrote the draft of what is now Chapter 13 of the book.” Not to mention the werewolf love connection.

There are quite a few similarities between the Twilight, Sookie Stackhouse, The Vampire Diaries and Anita Blake series; And I think that Laurell K. Hamilton should get some props for originating the whole girl gets vamp gets wolf angle.

But don’t get me wrong, I have enjoyed each of these series for various reasons and, as much as they do have some parallels, they have a lot of differences as well.

The bottom line is that they are providing me with years of entertainment. I started the Anita Blake series 9 months ago and, on occasion, I get them all muddled up since they are all so similar.

But there is one thing that stands true: If I had to choose between getting the vampire or the werewolf as a boyfriend, the wolf doesn’t have a howling chance.