It's a vampire thing

So, a confession. I've never really understood the whole 'vampire thing'. It always seemed a bit naff. Boy with fangs bites girl. Girl swoons (or dies). The end.

When a friend of mine last year suggested I watch the first few episodes of True Blood while I was babysitting her kids, I laughed and told her I didn't 'do vampires'. She urged me to watch at least one installment and make my mind up then. I smiled wanly as she pressed the DVD case into my hands when she and her husband headed out the door.

I put the kids to bed, turned on my laptop and started reading some material/taking notes for my masters research project (which I have just put on hold). After an hour or so I got a bit bored (short attention span), so cracked open the block of chocolate I had cleverly secured in my laptop bag in case of such an emergency and slipped the disc out of its cover and into the player.

All I can say is OH MY GOODNESS! I have rarely been so riveted. I LOVED the first episode and watched the second and third (my laptop shut down and put away by this stage) and devoured the rest of Season 1 over the next week or so. Fortunately said amiga had Season 2 on DVD as well, so I watched that too. What great television – possibly even better than BSG (which I adored until the last ep).

At the same time as I was getting sucked in by True Blood, the Dead Red Heart anthology opened for submissions and I wrote a story (sadly, rejected) which had a vampire or two in it! I think I have been converted. (I still haven't read/seen any of the Twilight stuff – I have a feeling that's more along the traditional teenage angsty line – the 2010 version of Flowers in the Attic, which was all the rage when I was finishing high school.)

To top it all off, I got an email from a vampire friend of mine. Xan is the coolest damned vampire this side of Eric (how HOT is Alexander Skarsgard, by the way?) and he was emailing me! I am so not cool, but I'm happy to flirt with the dark side every now and then (a girl's gotta have a bit of bad in her life). Turns out I won a miniature guitar in a fan contest his maker was running on his Crooked Fang fan page on Facebook. I got to choose my favourite and ended up with a perfect Paul Reed Smith, replete witha bird in flight neck. I always wanted one of these – even in miniature! It now sits on my window ledge at work, a tiny reminder there is life beyond the office. Thanks Xan and the badass Carrie. You guys rock!

Now get your arse over to Crooked Fang for a bit of action with Xan.