BILL: “A queen. Bad enough any marriage, but I doubt a queen will release you, Eric. I understand that Pam had to push you into telling her.” (Silence.)

BILL: “Just as you pushed me. As my human neighbors say, ‘What goes around comes around.’ Now you know how it feels to be forced by a queen to betray Sookie.”

ERIC: “I did not betray Sookie. This was Ocella’s doing, not mine.”

BILL: “I actually do understand your loyalty to your maker, Eric. I even respect that you still wish to honor his word. Nonetheless, Sookie will see it as a betrayal. And your treatment of her tonight didn’t help.”

ERIC: “Don’t think this means you will get her back, Bill.”

BILL: “Perhaps not. But I do take pleasure in the possibility that you won’t keep her, either.”

The Sookie Short Stories and Related Material

The Sookie Short Stories and Related Material

BY CHARLAINE HARRIS

Writing short stories is not like writing a very short novel. The pacing is different, the timing is different, and the way you end the story is really different.

At this moment, there are seven Sookie short stories and one novella. They weren’t published in the order in which they should be read if you’re trying to stick to Sookie’s chronology. I backtracked and filled in a little as ideas came to me. For clarity, I’m discussing them in the order in which they fit chronologically between the books.

By the way, the first five of these stories can now be found in one volume: A Touch of Dead. Before my publisher put the collection together, you had to buy separate anthologies to read about Sookie’s adventures. I think that’s a good thing, because then you get to sample a lot of outstanding stories by other writers, but there’s no denying it’s convenient to have the one book.

On to the discussion.

Though not the first short story I’d ever written, “Fairy Dust” was the first piece of Sookie short fiction I’d attempted, and I learned a lot in the process. The story first appeared in a wonderful anthology, Powers of Detection . In “Fairy Dust,” Sookie is asked to investigate the death of Claudette, the triplet of Claude and Claudine, Sookie’s fairy acquaintances. Since Claude and Claudine are questioning human co-workers from the strip club that employed both Claude and Claudette, they believe Sookie can help them get to the bottom of the mystery. Of course our heroine can help, and we learn a lot about the fairies and their outlook on life in general and on humans in particular. These events take place after Dead to the World.