Buffy Summers and Bella Swan. What do they have in common? I know, they have the same initials. Isn’t that weird?

Oh, and they both date vampires.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer first aired in 1997, and Twilight was published in 2005. But in 1991, before these fanged giants appeared on the scene, a series called The Vampire Diaries was already wooing the teen set. And by the teen set, I mean me.

L.J. Smith was my Stephenie Meyer. When I was fourteen, I read The Vampire Diaries and immediately had to read all her other books, too. Vampires with diaries. Vampires fighting the apocalypse. Psychic vampires. You may well ask: what is a psychic vampire? He drank psychic power, I don’t know. What I do know is, he had to kiss her neck to drink her psychic power, and it was awesome. And it wasn’t cheating on her boyfriend either, because he had to drink her psychic powers or he would die. Save a life! Do the noble thing and let a hot boy suck on your neck!

Therein lies the innate appeal of the vampire boyfriend. He’s dangerous, but he is lonely. He needs you, and by sheer virtue of the fact he wants and needs you so much, your companionship after hundreds of lonely years combined with the delicious blood he cannot help but want, you have a certain power over him. He is a beautiful path to death and at the same time a promise  …