Sucks You Blood.

So okay, I love vampires. Vampires vampires. Yum.

And no. It's not because of Twilight.

Or Interview with the Vampire.

Actually, I have The Vampire Diaries to thank for it. See, when I was younger, the young adult section mainly consisted of about 4 shelves in the little Waldenbooks that existed in the mall that was considered "cool" back then. (It's since become a shell of a mall with a Target attached and some outside stores. Needless to say, the indoor part of the mall is half one of those "college" training facilities where you can pay 13,000 dollars to be a pharmacy tech, and the other half is empty enough for old people to sprint around)

The main young adult writers then were RL Stine and Christopher Pike. I was HOOKED on RL Stine. I spent my allowance every week (5 dollars, and the books, with tax, were 4.27. I only remember this because that's my birthday haha) on a new book, then devoured it 2 hours later.

It probably would have been cheaper for me to go to the library, but I had a habit of forgetting I had the books, thus creating library fines that cost far more than that book itself.

One day, I noticed a new series called The Vampire Diaries. It was about a girl named Elena who falls in love with a vampire named Stefan. Remember, this was 1993, and this idea was new. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was only a movie, and I didn't see it until after reading this series. (I watched the movie endlessly, by the way, and shunned the series until falling in love with Seth Green)

Needless to say, I was hooked. I scoured 3 more bookstores for the next one (which I found for 1.99!), and then the next one. A fourth one came out while I was reading the third, completing the series.

L.J. Smith and her series (I read most of them: Dark Visions, Secret Circle, Night World) were mostly unknown to everyone else but myself and my close friend Catelyn at the time. And she only knew it because I lent her my books.

It took almost 5 more years before I found another person as into the series as I did, but by then the books were largely out of print. You can imagine my shock when Twilight came out, a book I didn't read for a year before finally picking it up (which was still a year before the hoopla on it began), and how it reminded me of this long lost series.

And now? It's back. Thanks to Twilight (yes, I am thanking Twilight), LJ Smith's books were reprinted, and she's put out a fifth, which I am in the process of reading.

Oh but it gets better, my friends.

Twilight was rushed into being created as a haphazard, kind of okay movie that I only saw on a school day matinee so I could avoid the fan girls. (Though I have no problem going to midnight showings of Harry Potter. Go figure. Maybe because Harry Potter fans won't go up to Daniel Radcliffe and ask him to bite them. And also? Edward was Cedric first. Hah.)

And now? The Vampire Diaries is being turned into a tv pilot by the CW. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I'm happy, certainly, because hopefully it will make people read the books. But at the same time, I'm terrified. Gossip Girl was torn apart from the start, turning into something I don't even recognize from the books itself, and already they're talking about casting a character in Vampire Diaries that didn't exist in the books.

I guess we'll see what happens, right? And you know I'll keep you posted.