Speaking of True Blood, which we probably were a while ago, Charlaine Harris, author of the original Sookie Stackhouse novels, is planning to get into the GN game:
Harris does have one project already in the pipeline taking take her into unexplored territory: comic books. “I’m going to be working on a graphic novel next,” she reveals. “I’m very excited about that. It’s called Cemetery Girl with Christopher Golden, and it’s a very exciting opportunity.” Harris first envisioned the storyline – which centers on a woman who finds herself living in a cemetery with no memory of her past but a clear sense of a mysterious threat hanging over her – as a traditional novel, but back-burnered it until horror and fantasy author Golden, who’s penned prose adventures of characters like Hellboy and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, convinced her it would be a perfect fit for the graphic novel format.
While no artist is on board, Harris and Golden are hatching three books in the series. “The publishing company that I’ve been with, Penguin, is going into graphic novels, so it’s a great book with a very original concept,” she added.
The track record for fantasy/horror authors getting into GNs is already strong — see Kim Harrison, Diana Gabaldon, Laurell K. Hamilton, and so on — so this qualifies as practically a no-brainer.
Oo, awesome! And this is a prose author doing an /original/ series, too – no “I thought this was a NORMAL book in the series” or “the characters aren’t like I imagined them” problems.
And given True Blood’s success, producers will probably jump at the chance to make a Cemetery Girl show or movie, thus bringing Mrs. Harris more money and adoring fans and introducing an even broader audience to the comics medium.
I think I’ve just stumbled across the exact definition of a “win-win.”