A lot of vampires, like my ex-boyfriend Bill Compton, wanted to “mainstream,” to live as much like humans as possible. That presented a few problems ; when you can only go out at night, you can’t exactly be running a Main Street shop. But they all seem to manage to make a dollar or two; that’s the American way, isn’t it? Bill invests in real estate and does computer programming; my current love interest, Eric Northman, owns the vampire bar Fangtasia over in Shreveport. I know there are vampire strippers and builders, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if there’s a vampire private detective or electrician. There are a lot of tandem partnerships—someone does the job during the day; someone of the fanged persuasion takes over at night.

A few of the countries around the world went wacky and killed all the vamps they could get their hands on. But the good old U.S. of A. was always a melting pot, so we figured they were just another minority wanting a new home, a dangerous minority if pressed the wrong way, but still one that wanted the same freedoms as the rest of the people in this nation. There’s been a lot of arguing about whether vampires should have equal rights with humans; even if they get them, there will always be people opposed to the idea.

Oh, things weren’t all just hunky-dory once the vamps had stood up and said, “We’re here.” It didn’t take folks too long to find out that vampires’ blood is almost a narcotic for humans plus helps injured people heal faster. (I know that last part from personal experience.) Since America’s the land of free enterprise, before much time had passed scumbags were lining up to make money pushing vampire blood. And the vampires weren’t willing donors. Teams developed methods to subdue vamps and drain them. And if you drain too much blood from vampires and leave them out in the open, they die, usually from exposure to the sun. That first night that Bill came into Merlotte’s, I had to save him from a couple of Drainers who had trapped him outside the bar.

The humans who prey on vampires don’t care who they sell the blood to or how diluted or old it is. The addicts or recreational vamp-blood users can go stark raving mad when they drink the stuff dealers sell. And blood dealers have a short shelf life. Both the mainstream vamps and the rogues love to pick off the dealers.