I was a HUGE L.J. Smith fangirl in junior high and I was ridiculously excited when I heard they were making one of her series into a tv show. The Vampire Diaries would not have been my first, second, or third choice of her series to see adapted but as you said they're obviously trying to draw the Twilight fans. I'm sort of horrified by the actress they cast to play Elena--the female lead. I'm familiar with her "work" from Degrassi the Next Generation and she stands out as a bad actress on a show filled with fairly bad acting. Plus, Elena is supposed to be a blonde, beautiful mean girl queen bee types but they seem to have changed her to make her more like Bella from Twilight. I don't know I'm not holding out a lot of hope that the series is going to be any good, but if they use the canon at all the vampire brothers are pretty slashy so I'm hoping to at least some good stories come out of it. Wow, that's probably more than you ever wanted to know about my feelings on the show, sorry /o\