It’s going to be a long dry spell for those of us longing for fresh blood from Bon Temps. Happily, though, we have learned that the True Blood writers are already back at work readying season 5 (which will likely not see the bright light of day until late spring/early summer 2012) and in fact are getting ready to shoot episode 1.

The True Blood production blog, InsideTrueBlood.com, has also now quoted showrunner Alan Ball as saying about the upcoming Season 5 that “we’re really going to find out what the Vampire Authority is all about.” Ooo, that’s a nice new thing to explore; other than Nan’s side of phone conversations we really don’t know much about them. Excellent!

But what about – well, the billion things we have questions about? There’s no point in trying to guess, so I suppose we’ll just have to wait for the next bon mots to drop from Bon Temps. We’ll keep you posted.

True Blood, starring Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer, and Alexander Skarsgard, is expected to return with Season 5 in 2012 to HBO.