'Vampire Diaries' doesn't copy 'Twilight'

You can almost hear it already. When "The Vampire Diaries" premieres on Thursday, Sept. 10, charges of plagiarism — or, at least, copycatting — will be flying.

"The Vampire Diaries" revolves around a teenage girl who lives in a small town. She's strangely attracted to a mysterious boy she meets at the local high school.

He, in turn, seems to be attracted to her, as well. But he's fighting that attraction.

And — gasp — it turns out that the mysterious boy is no boy at all. He's a — gulp — vampire!!!

If you're thinking, "Geez, that sounds an awful lot like 'Twilight,' " I can't disagree. Particularly when you toss in a couple of things like the vampires in "Diaries" being able to go about in the daylight and how their eyes can give them away as preternatural.

But here's a couple of facts you need to know before you start thinking that "Diaries" is some kind "Twilight" rip-off:

 Both "The Vampire Diaries" TV show and "Twilight" are based on books with the same titles.

 L.J. Smith's "Diaries" was first published in 1991; Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" was first published in 2005. (And Meyer has said that the idea for the book came to her in a dream in 2003.)

Soooo ... rabid "Twilight" fans won't want to start any discussions about who copied whom.

Actually, nobody copied anybody here. Once you get past the basic premise — teenage girl and vampire fall in love — "Diaries" and "Twilight" aren't all that similar.

They are a bit more similar to one another than either one is to, say, "True Blood," the HBO series about a woman in love with a vampire. It's based on Charlaine Harris' series of Sookie Stackhouse novels. The first of Harris' vampire novels was published in 2001, by the way. And four were published in the years before "Twilight."

I've read all four of Meyer's vampire books. (I have daughters, and I was curious about what they found so interesting.) And I've read the first two of Smith's "Diaries" because, well, it's a dirty job being a TV critic, but someone has to do it.

Again, they're not that similar. Well, they aren't any more similar than all vampire stories.