Charlaine Harris News: sales, premieres, and television fame and fortune

Agent Joshua Bilmes of JABberwocky Literary Agency reports a pile of Charlaine Harris news. She will write a fourth "Harper Connelly" paranormal mystery for Ginjer Buchanan for the Berkley Prime Crime imprint for "a solid six figure advance." Harris will also co-edit two more anthologies with Toni L.P. Kelner (the first with a "death takes a vacation" theme) for Buchanan for the Berkley/Ace imprint. The deals were negotiated by Bilmes.

Harris attended the gala Hollywood premiere of HBO series True Blood, based on her "Sookie Stackhouse" novels, on 4 September, and is featured equally with the cast and show creator Alan Ball (Six Feet Under, American Beauty) in HBO's mini "Red Carpet" featurette. The show debuted on HBO on 7 September and "was an immediate success, seen by 4.1 million people in all channels over the first week, leading to a 24% increase in viewers for the episode 2 premiere on 14 September. The show has now been picked up for a second season, with filming to begin in early 2009." Season 2 should begin airing in Summer 2009.

The "Sookie Stackhouse" books have found themselves on the bestseller lists following the television premiere: the New York Times Mass Market Fiction bestseller list featured Dead Until Dark (#8, based on combined tie-in and original edition sales), Living Dead in Dallas (#17), and Club Dead (#22). The Nielsen Bookscan fantasy list had "Sookie Stackhouse" novels in eight of the top 25 spots. Penguin reports 100,000 copies in print of the tie-in edition of Dead Until Dark, and is going back to press for approximately 300,000 copies of the original mass market editions of the first seven books in the series.