From the backwoods of Louisiana comes a fantasy tale of Vampires, telepathy, romance, suspense, mystery and certain other paranormal behaviors that we won't speak about here..

The Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Mystery novels written by Charlaine Harris follow our heroine Sookie as she moves through life with her vampire lover Bill. The Trueblood series brings this couple to life in an exciting and sensual way.

In the story, vampires, through the invention of synthetic blood are now able to live amongst humans but as with most fish out of water, or beauty and the beast type stories there is bound to be complications due to this unusual combination of species trying to get along.

Humans are becoming addicted to V, vampire blood, and the vampires would rather feed on the real thing, the humans. Tradeoffs abound as the plot thickens.

Both the books and the series contain elements of satire, horror, and romance.

I do enjoy reading over watching but I think Trueblood is the best paranormal television series to air in a long, long time.

The Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Mysteries by author Charlaine Harris come to life in the new weekly series Trueblood on HBO.

I have to admit that I hadn't read any of the Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Mystery Novels before viewing the Trueblood television series but being a book person, I'm now happily gobbling up the novels one by one.

Although I am enjoying both the program and the books, I do find that the books delve deeper into the story, and reading them definitely takes away from the mystery of the Trueblood series.

I am having fun comparing notes on the two though so I guess that makes it all okay.

Author Charlaine Harris created The Southern Vampire Mysteries. The series is about a telepathic waitress named Sookie Stackhouse and takes place in Louisiana. The first book in the series, Dead Until Dark, won the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Mystery in 2001. The books follows Ms. Stackhouse as she tries to solve mysteries involving vampires, werewolves, and other creatures of the night. The book series has been released all over the world.

The first episode of Trueblood, taken from the Dead Until Dark novel was aired on September 7, 2008. The television show is being directed by Alan Ball who also created the popular series Six Feet Under.