Bad news for fans of Charlaine Harris' Harper Connelly Mysteries

Fans shouldn't hold their breath for a small screen adaptation.

Last fall, CBS was eager to sink their teeth in another franchise by Charlaine Harris, the author of the series of books on which HBO's hit series "True Blood" is based. They optioned the rights to Harris' Harper Connelly Mysteries and even hired a scriptwriter to bring the books, about a woman who is struck by lightning and develops the ability to find deceased missing people and see first-hand how they died, to life. Plans to move forward with either a pilot or a series are dead now, though.
"They didn't shoot the pilot," Harris told me by phone recently from her home in Magnolia, Ark. "I felt sorry for the writer, Kim Miller. She worked on it so hard, but it's one of those things that just didn't happen."
CBS still retains the option to produce a series and could still farm it out to another network, but there are no plans for it on CBS' fall schedule.
"True Blood," meanwhile, returns to HBO in June.

My interview with  Harris should run Sunday in the Chicago Sun-Times.