Did you know that HBO’s hit series “True Blood” has deep ties to Mississippi? The show is based on “The Southern Vampire Mysteries” novels by Mississippi native Charlaine Harris.

Born in Tunica in 1951, Harris grew up in the South, the daughter of a farmer-turned-school principal and a librarian. After graduating from Rhodes College in Memphis, she worked as a journalist in Clarksdale and Greenville before publishing her first novel, “Sweet and Deadly,” in 1981.