Day 12: How I Would End the Final Book, Part 1

I'm not Charlaine Harris and I'm glad I'm not, but if I could creep into her consciousness long enough to write the final Sookie Stackhouse book, "Dead Ever After," here's what I would do.
I'd set it five years from the end of "Deadlocked."
~~~
 Sookie would by lying outside her much-improved home on her chaise, soaking up the sun, and not far away would be a kiddie pool with two small children splashing away.
Sam would walk out the front door, carrying a plate of raw hamburgers and hot dogs. The grill would be heating up nearby and he'd stop by the chaise and give Sookie a loving kiss right on the mouth, saying, "Hey there, Sook."
"Hi, honey," Sookie would answer. "You might want to put a little more sunscreen on Sammy and Adele. The last thing they need is a sunburn."
"Sure," Sam said. "Right after I get this meat on the grill."
As the meat sizzles, Sam picks up his twins and with a lot of giggling and hugs, he re-applies suncreen to his little blonde children.
"What's up for tonight?" he asks.
"I think Eric and Bill both are coming over to see their 'teacup human' godchildren, and Jason and Michelle will be bringing Jason Jr. over and they're going to babysit so you, me, Eric and Bill can go out for dinner tonight to celebrate our anniversary."
"Which one?" Sam asks with a twinkle in his eye.
"Oh, all of them," Sookie replies airily.
Closing her eyes again, Sookie thinks back to how this all came about. She never thought it would end like this.
Five years ago tonight, she brought back Sam from the dead, using the Cluviel dor. Eric wouldn't return her calls and Bill was impressed she had stood up to the Viking. She knew Bill expected that she would run back to him right after Eric said he was going to marry Freyda.
Eric surprised everyone. He broke of all contact with the Queen of Oklahoma and came back to Sookie, expecting for her to forgive him like she always had.
He was in for a shock. So was Bill.
She remembered the private conversation she'd had with each.
Bill checked in first, as always.
He'd come by as soon as he was up, showered and dressed. Sam and Sookie were in the house, getting ready for bed in separate rooms. After Sam was alseep,  Sookie took a deep breath and walked into her living room.
She had told him then that breaking their bond was the best thing she had ever done. She was free to be with her human friends, to do things that lasted all afternoon into the night without worrying about who would think what when a vampire walked in.
She hugged him then, a warm, close hug, and whispered into his ear, "Bill, I will always love you because you were my first love, first in so many things. You made me the woman I am today, but I will never be yours. Never."
Bill was quite surprised, but stepped back and took a good look at her.
"You've changed," he said, stunned. "I believe you mean this."
"Oh, I do, Bill. I do," she said.
The handsome vampire stayed a while longer, drinking a glass of True Blood and considering what the woman he would love for eternity had said. He began to realize she meant it.
After a few hours, he bade her good night and with a kiss to her forehead, he left.
She was asleep on her couch in front of her TV when she heard another knock on her front door. She had no doubt who it was.
~~~

Day 11: A good use for V

Hello, and welcome to Day 11.
Though they don't sell V in the books, it's a popular recreational drug on True Blood. In the books, we see how vampire blood affects humans after Sookie has a sip of Bill. She feels better, her hair is more luxurious, all kinds of things.
The way vampire blood seems to cure almost anything made me start thinking:
In either or both universes, why doesn't the human medical community ask willing vampires to donate their elixir  of life to seriously ill people? Think of the good it could do.
Surgeries would go much better, a small amount put into in IV would hasten healing. Say someone was hit by a car, a little V would have them walking out of the ER within minutes.
In the books, however, it doesn't help blood diseases. Remember Pam had a girlfriend with leukemia whom she couldn't turn because she could not get permission. The woman died. I have to think Pam had tried to let her drink her blood and it must not have worked.
It would certainly give vampires a lot of leverage where equal rights are concerned. They could get about anything they liked for the price of a blood donation. What if they asked for an even trade: human blood for an injection of V?
I'm sure a lot of vampires would volunteer because it would increase the size of their donor pool.
And, since it seems that V from a vial doesn't create a blood bond with the donor vampire, there wouldn't be all these vampires having feelings about all the people they helped.
It's just a thought, a supposition, but it has some interesting ramifications.

Day 10: I do not like...

I have tried since Season One to like Detective Andy Bellefleur.
I can't really say why I don't like the character but I do not, neither in the books nor on the series.
I'm sure actor Chris Bauer is a great guy, so he must do a fabulous job playing the biggest hick on the show.
Maybe it's because he is a bigot on so many levels, or maybe because he's a hypocrite. Here is a man who has loved hassling Jason Stackhouse for years, but got himself hooked on V.
If his cousin Terry Bellefleur had not stepped in, Andy would still be on V.
Maybe he simply is jealous of Jason and his success as an athlete, a lover and his ability to make friends with little or no effort.
The only time Andy has been sympathetic was when he stepped up to help Sam with MaryAnne. He let Sam live with him in his hotel, but while Sam worked to find out how to defeat the demigod, Andy drank. And drank. And drank.
Does Andy have any real friends? His grandmother Caroline bullies him, retired sheriff Bud Dearborne barely tolerated him, taking his badge and gun away wheAndy saw Dawn as a pig and tried to report it.
I am stumped why a fairy could choose him, out of all the available men in Bon Temps, to have her wicked way with in the woods. The only interesting thing about that is if she'll have a baby that has fairy-like powers and what affect that will have on Sookie.
Can Andy be redeemed?
It looks like an overhaul may be underway for Season Five.
He finally is dating Halleigh Robinson, a waitress at Merlotte's. In the book, they are married and a daughter on the way. On the show, will his night with the fairy jeopardize all this, or will he simply not mention it to his girlfriend and go on business as usual?
Even though Bill is his several times great-grandfather, it's never clear what he thinks about this. We know Portia had to be glamored to stay away from Bill, and Caroline Bellefleur reveres him as the relative he is.
So there it is. The one regular actor on True Blood I could live without.
Easily.

Day 9: Battleship is no True Blood: minor spoilers

Hi ya'll.
I was a movie critic for 15 years, and one of the best perks of all time is seeing movies for free, so today I availed myself of that and went to an 11:35 a.m. showing of "Battleship."
What follows is a tiny bit of a review, but mostly just the thoughts that ran through my brain as the the story unfolded.
The movie opens with a story of how Earth finds a planet in another galaxy that is a whole lot like Earth. So of course, we build a satellite to send a message to them. Well, they answer and it's not a friendly visit.
The one thing I thought would happen did. I won't spoil it, but if you've watched the trailers, I'm betting you can figure it out without much arm twisting.
Of course, my absolute favorite part of the movie was seeing Alexander Skarsgard starring as Stone Hopper. It's even a great soldier name.
He stars as a Navy commander who makes his brother Alex (the equally dishy Taylor Kitsch) join the Navy to keep him out of trouble.
Some time later, they are stationed on separate destroyers in Hawaii.
It's time for war games with several allied countries and the movie really gets going when Alex and a Japanese naval officer get into a fight and the admiral (Liam Neesom) tells Stone his brother will be thrown out of the Navy as soon as the exercises are over. Stone travels to his brother's ship to tell him in person.
Luckily for Alex, it's about this time that radars worldwide light up with a group of objects heading right our our home sweet home. Yup, it's ET come to visit, and they do not want to sit with you and me and watch "True Blood." No, they are coming to look over their newest vacation property, planet Earth.
One ship crashes in the atmosphere, taking out a big hunk of Hong Kong and several other countries. The rest land in the Pacific Ocean right near Hawaii. When Alex and two other sailors take a small boat out to investigate the big metal thing sticking up out of the water, a simple touch causes it to light up and put a protective dome over a Japanese destroyer and two American ones -- the ones with Stone and Alex on them, as well as the Hawaiian Island chain.
All communications inside the dome are cut off from the rest of the planet, so the rest of the ships in the war games only know there are three ships in the dome with Lord knows what from outer space.
Glorious.
The aliens turn out to have taken the reptilian path of evolution, unlike the mammals on Earth. The humans are outgunned and have a steep learning curve before they find a plan that works to fight the aliens.
Skarsgard, while showing no fangy goodness, did a good job of playing a serious, by-the-book soldier who loves his brother and will do almost anything to keep Alex out of trouble and most importantly out of jail.
Alex is in love with the admiral's daughter Sam (Brooklyn Decker). They want to marry but she insists that Alex must ask her father for her hand in marriage. Stone thinks it's funny and hopes the relationship will help his brother group up.
Skarsgard and Kitsch have great chemistry in their scenes together.
It's interesting to see our Sheriff Eric in a more buttoned-down role, and best of all, we get to see him in the sunlight. A whole lot. In one scene, he's wearing soccer gear and man, he has great legs.
Alex looks great both in dress whites and in the blue camouflage uniform, and if he ever needs a costume to wear on the "True Blood" set, say for Halloween, New Years Eve, Arbor Day, whatever, I think the Navy whites would be splendid.
If you want to know more about the movie, well, either go see it or ask me and I'll tell you what you want to know. Otherwise, I'm not giving anything else away.

Day 8: Love in Bon Temps

Bon Temps, like anywhere else on earth, has its problems, but one thing it doesn't lack is love.
Yes, there is a lot of petty jealousies, feuds, spats and all out fights, but there never is any shortage of love (or even better, lust) in this tiny town.
Let's start small and work our way up shall we?
Since Lafayette doesn't exist past the first book, we'll start with him. He has to deal with his grief at killing Jesus, and the probable death (in some form) of Tara before he can move on, and that may take some time for him. I'd say he's probably out of the love department this season.
Andy Bellfleur is an unlikely candidate to be the object of anyone's affection, but he finally scores big, both in the book and on the show. It takes quite awhile, but Detective Bellfleur finally lands a wife, Halleigh Robinson. They're not yet married on the series, and in that universe, Andy has a late night tryst with a fairy. Perhaps we'll see this season what happens there. Maybe there will be another human/fae hybrid in Bon Temps, giving Sookie someone else to protect from her fangy friends. In the book, Andy and Halleigh are expecting a daughter, to be named Caroline, after Andy's grandmother.
Police officer Kenya has an officer boyfriend in the book, but she's not so lucky on the series. I love the idea of the beautifully black Kenya living with her partner, shocking his white family, but love is love, and all lawmen need affection as much as, if not more, than everyone else.
Series lawman Jason has real women trouble on the series. He and Jessica are hot and heavy, causing poor Hoyt Fortenberry to lose both a girlfriend and a best friend. This season, it looks like he's going to become a fangbanger. In the book, there is no Jessica, so Hoyt falls in love with another Merlotte's waitress, Holly. She and her son fit nicely into his life in the book, and they are set to marry. Let's hope he gets as lucky this season on the series.
But, back to Jason. In both universes, he's had plenty of woman trouble. Some are dead, some left town and some simply keep their mouth shut about their time with Jason. In the book, Crystal is dead,  he's dating Michelle, and they are planning a backyard wedding with Sookie's blessing.
Sam and Luna seem happy on the series, but it looks like this year will be a bad one for the shifter, as he as killed the Shreveport wolf pack leader. In the book, his luck is equally bad. He is dating Jannalynn, the enforcer of the Shreveport pack, and her fate is not a happy one. We'll all have to wait and see what happens to him, both on the page and on the screen.
Bill Compton will always love Sookie, that's a fact. He realizes he made a huge mistake by withholding the real reason he was sent back to his original home town, but will all his apologies ever make an impact on his former flame? He accidentally dated a distant great-granddaughter, tried to rekindle old relationships with both his maker and his vampire sister, and has probably tried to date all kinds of other women, but nothing will ever compare to the beautiful, blonde, telepathic Miss Stackhouse. I think he's simply out of luck.
Pam presents an entirely different problem. She prefers the company of women, but has dated her share of men. In the book, the last woman she really loved died before Pam could turn her, and I think she is still really pissed off about that. On the series, she has a several relationships but none -- except the one with her maker Eric -- seem to matter to her. I am wondering if she'll be the one to turn Tara in the Season 5 premiere June 10, and since Tara started batting for the home team, will those two form some kind of lasting relationship? That would be very interesting to me, and it would do Sookie good to have a best friend as a member of Eric's family.
One never knows about Eric. Yes, he loves Sookie, but their relationship is left in the air in the book series, and who knows what's in store for our two favorite blondes in the series this year? I wish he would have her bring him the ceremonial knife this season (fans of the book know what this means) because it was the most stable relationship Sookie has ever had.
Most of all, I want Sookie to be happy. I think that's all any of us want, really, and it will be up to two different writers to her fate.
As for me, I simply love that both universes exist.

Day 7: True Blood Tunes

If we're blogging in the Fangathon, then every one of us knows Jace Everett's tune "Bad Things" and if we ever got together, we could probably manage some pretty good harmony while we sing it, don't you think?
We know Sookie sings with the radio and she tends to like powerful women singers like Mariah Carey and Carrie Underwood.
Still today, I'm going to have some fun and speculate what music our favorite residents of Bon Temps play to when they're listening to their radios, MP3 players, etc.
Sookie's musical tastes follow her mood. If she's happy and things are going well with her vamp of the moment, it's Black Eyed Peas because every woman has a little Fergie in her. I also can hear some Katy Perry in there too. "Firework" and "California Gurls" much, much more than "I Kissed a Girl." If she's depressed, I'm betting there is some Adele in her collection, as well as James Blount ("You're Beautiful" is surely there) and John Mayer. When she's had enough, I'm going for "Wish You Hell" by All American Rejects and Cee Lo Green's "Forget You," and if she's mad enough, she'll change the words.
Pam, now, will go for "I Kissed a Girl." I think she also likes bands like Nine Inch Nails, say "Closer," or a personal favorite of mine, "Sanctified." The best lyrics in it say "Heaven's just a rumor she dispells, as she shows you through the nicest parts of hell." Sound like anyone you know? I'm betting men all over the world think of the Kinks song "Lola" and sigh, remembering their one night with Pam. I'm also thinking she may like chamber music on occasion when she remembers her past, and maybe ragtime.
Eric probably has an extensive collection of everything from Gregorian Chants to Kanye West. With a thousand years of seduction under his belt, he's a connoisseur of music that helps women want to shed clothing--all the way from the days of lace-up corsets and petticoats to zippers and hooks. You know he's got Barry White tucked away in there somewhere, as well as some Abba, A-ha and Golden Earring (all bands from the Netherlands). I'm thinking that the music collection at Fantasia is one of the largest in the vampire world.
Bill is more of a classical guy with a slant toward the Blues. His days as a Confederate soldier have given him a love for the tales of men and women done wrong, and his dalliance with Lorena made him a teaser of the ladies as he tickled the ivories and sang tunes with suggestive lyrics. He probably heard LeadBelly and JellyRoll Morton in person and has an amazing knowledge of all music based in the South. On the show, Bill and Sookie's theme is the most haunting regular piece of music played. The mournful fiddle says it all.
Jason likes any rock and country music you can drink or screw to. I can seen him guzzling a beer and screaming "Freebird" at a Lynyrd Skynyrd outdoor jam as well as screaming lyrics along with the likes of Toby Keith or Tim McGraw. Sam, though he likes rock and country too, seems to be a bit more laid back. Picture him sitting on his porch, feet propped up, cracking open a cold one to any Kenny Chesney beach song, or listening to an old Journey or Boston album. I'll bet he's got a copy of several Brad Paisley albums too, because his sense of humor could not resist "Ticks" and "I'm Gonna Miss Her."

Day 6: Lions and tigers and shape shifters, Oh my!

I've been reading all the Fangathon blogs and I've noticed something: Sam's pretty much a no-show, so today, I'm writing a love letter to Sam Merlotte, owner of Merlotte's bar and grill in Bon Temps.
Well, we all knew that, and we know he's a shape shifter. We also know he has been sweet on one of his employees since day one.

Even in the first book, Charlaine Harris made it plain that Sam has it bad for Sookie. He was about ready to ask her out the fateful night Vampire Bill walked into his bar.
Makes you want to compare Sam to Rick, the world weary bar owner in Casablanca.
"Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world he walks into mine."
First, Bill breaks Sookie's heart. Then, she and Alcide are always out of step. She's interested, he's not, and vice versa. Then, Eric wins her over when he can't remember what he did. In the book, Quinn and Sookie have all the right intentions of having a relationship, but a bomb literally blows that relationship to kingdom come. Eric steps back in, but the in book does something much more surprising than anything imagined in True Blood.
Actually, way back in the early days of both the books and the show, Sookie and Sam kiss, but that's quickly quashed by an extremely jealous Bill.
In the book, Sam has dated several other women, ending with werewolf Jannalynn, the Shreveport Pack's enforcer. If you're read "Deadlocked," you know how that turns out and you also know there is a very big "IF" left at the end of the book, leaving fans practically drooling for the final Sookie Stackhouse novel, "Dead Ever After."
In True Blood he had a standard booty call with Tara. Other than that, most of his relationships end badly. The jury is still out on how his relationship will go with Luna, a fellow shape shifter who was married to a werewolf, who happened to be Shreveport's Pack Leader. He's gone now, thanks to Alcide, so the jury is out on how this will affect Sam and Luna's dating life.
I like the way Sam is described in the book. I love the "red gold" description of his hair, the way he is always just a tiny bit scruffy. He's a good-hearted guy, the kind most girls would be happy to take home to mom and dad. He just doesn't seem to ever get that far, which I find sad.
Did I mention he has a killer smile?
I'll go out on a limb here and flat out say that I wish Sookie and Sam would wind up together. So many people think I am insane, that either Bill or Eric would be better for her because she can't read their minds, but she has trouble reading Sam's a lot of the time too.
Sam has never hurt Sookie. (Well his brother did when he was pretending to be Sam in the show, but Sam himself never has). He respects her as a person and her decisions, even when he disagrees with them. He doesn't make decisions for her, like both vampires have.
Also in his favor, he has saved Sookies like more than once, just like Bill and Eric. In my world, he's a serious contender. In the book, he shifts into a lion to defend Sookie. A LION. Now that's someone willing to protect you in any way possible.
And, since he still has a beating heart, he can stay out in the sun, something Sookie won't give up. She loves the daylight and she can only share it with Bill and Eric if they get a big ole Sookie cocktail before they step outside, and even then they can only stay a little while.
And hey, if they had a fight and Sookie told him he was in the doghouse, he should simply shift to Dean to collie and go for it. What more could a girl want?
So Sam, this blog's for you. You're a great guy, you deserve a great girl and I hope you find one. Personally, I hope it's Sookie, both in the book and in the series.