Alan Ball, creator of HBO’s new vampire drama True Blood, told SCI FI Wire that he didn’t know too much about vampire movies or lore, so he created his own mythology.

"In our world, a lot of the myths about vampires were created by vampires themselves over history so that they could pass, because if you could convince everyone that you couldn’t be seen in a mirror or that you would freak out if somebody shoved a crucifix in your face then you could prove you weren’t a vampire pretty easily," Ball said in interviews at the Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills, Calif., on July 10.

Ball (Six Feet Under) said that he had never read an Anne Rice book and added: "I personally have never seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel. I’m not really a big vampire fan. This was really my first." But he is a big fan of Kathryn Bigelow’s 1987 film Near Dark, with Lance Henriksen.

As for CBS’ canceled vampire show Moonlight, Ball said, "I think it’s pretty lame when you let your vampire go out in the day just because you don’t want to shoot at night."

True Blood is based on the Southern Vampire series of books by Charlaine Harris. The show is set in Louisiana and centers on a parallel world of vampires, who have learned to co-exist with humans by drinking synthetic blood.

In his series, vampire teeth are important. "We went to great pains to sort of depict a certain kind of physiology for the fangs, where they actually are retracted like rattlesnake fangs and then they click forward," Ball said. "I wanted to approach the supernatural not as being something that exists outside of nature, but something that is more deeply rooted in nature."

Killing a vampire on True Blood is different, too. Ball said, "There are differences in what happens to vampires being staked. I wanted to avoid the instantaneous incineration or the instantaneous turning into dust. ... It’s probably different than what we’ve seen before."

Vampires do burn in True Blood. "What happens to vampires when they burn in a fire ... is different than what we’ve seen before, but for the most part I didn’t want to focus too much on visual effects or special effects," Ball said. "I wanted it to be a show about characters and to really explore what it means to be 170 years old and what it means to fall in love with somebody who [finds it] satisfying being fed upon, you know, not being able to see this person except at night, having the entire town think, ’What? Are you crazy?’"

The 12-episode first season of True Blood debuts on HBO on Sept. 7.