VALDOSTA – Dr. Janice Odom is not your typical college professor.

Dr. Odom, who teaches various classes such as Writing for Business, Technical Writing and Grammar and Editing at Valdosta State University, has been interested in the supernatural and horror movies for as long as she can remember.

I was introduced to Dr. Odom through my inquiry about the Vampire Book Club after seeing an ad in the newspaper while designing one night. Little did I know that she worked and taught at the school I had just graduated from.

Dr. Odom is one of the many members of the Vampire Book Club that meets every Thursday at South Georgia Regional Library. The group of mostly women sit and discuss books that they are reading that deal with vampires and the supernatural.

“One of my job responsibilities (at VSU) is to do (community) service,” Dr. Odom said. “I thought about the possibility of talking to the library about leading a book discussion group and they put me in contact with Halley Little who coordinates all of this.”

After talking with Little, Dr. Odom suggested J.R. Ward’s book, “The Brotherhood of the Black Dagger,” and the Vampire Book Club took off.

Born and raised in a small town in east Tennessee, she attended the University of Tennessee for her bachelors degree. She went back to school in her 30s and earned her masters degree in rhetoric and composition with an emphasis in technical writing.

She then got her PhD at the University of Iowa in communication studies in the field of rhetorical studies.

She began teaching at Arizona State University in 1998 before coming to Valdosta to teach in 2006.

“I came from ASU, which is one of the largest campuses in the country,” she said. “I came from a department where people didn’t get along very well, and here, people make an effort to be nice to one another.”

“I teach in the professional writing program,” Dr. Odom said. “One of the things I like about it is the students are practice-oriented and are very interested in learning because it will affect their jobs. It makes the teaching interesting. So how did a woman from Tennessee who taught technical writing get into vampires? She just fell into it.

“I’m an avid reader and always have been,” Dr. Odom said. “One of the things that I was really interested in was science fiction. From that I had branched out into fantasy and somewhere along the line I got interested in vampires from things such as film and television.”

The first vampire book that she read, “The Brotherhood of the Black Dagger,” was the one that she suggested to Little that began the Vampire Book Club.

“I was hooked right away,” Dr. Odom said. “The universe was interesting. The characters were interesting. The plots were well developed so I just got hooked.”

Dr. Odom is not the only one that’s gotten hooked on the vampire genre.