Alan Ball/ Charlaine Harris on Vampires

“I understood after I talked to Alan that he knew what I was doing with the books,” she said. “My original conception was about exclusionism and how we’re often most afraid of the things that make us look at ourselves too closely.”

Mr. Ball said: “When I pitched the show to HBO, they asked me what it was about, and I said, it’s about what it really means to be disenfranchised, to be feared, to be misunderstood. It’s a metaphor for the terrors of intimacy. I sort of made that up on the spot, but now that I think about it, it does sort of work. That’s one of the reasons vampires have been such a potent metaphor and mythological motif for centuries. They show up in pretty much all cultures. It’s the notion of separating that part which keeps us safe and separate from another person, both emotionally and physically. And how there is a certain loss of self that takes place when there is true intimacy. And I think that’s really healthy. But it doesn’t mean it’s not scary.”