Vampires haven't been this sexy since Brad Pitt heated up the screen in Interview with the Vampire in the '90s, and they've certainly never been this smitten.

Vampire love is hot on both screen and shelf this year. If you have yet to hear about the Stephenie Meyers' Twilight books, you have four months to catch up on the uber-popular young adult series about inter-species lovers Edward and Bella before the movie version of Twilight comes out in December. Breaking Dawn, the fourth and final book of the series was released last Saturday to a Harry Potter-like fan frenzy and record-breaking sales for its publishing house.

HBO's much-anticipated (and advertised) True Blood series about vampires cohabiting with humans both-we're hoping-amorously and not so amicably debuts in September. The network went so far as to create lovebitten.net, a fake online dating site (we think it's fake, anyway, as we tried to register but couldn't) for mortals and immortals looking for activity partners, relationships or merely a "fangbang," on top of guerrilla marketing for a synthetic blood beverage and faux campaigns for and against vampire rights.

And then there's this Necking novel written by a book publicist about a book publicist evading one angry vampire while crushing on another and juggling a roster full of needy "underworld" clients.

So what's with all the vampire love fangfare (sorry, couldn't resist), anyway? Well, for entertainment bigwigs, what better characters to invest in than those that never age? All My Children producers were ahead of the curve on this one when they hired Susan Lucci. As for the audience, we get love stories that involve temptation, restraint, eternal love and blood-sucking danger. It's almost like watching Survivor-except better.