Just in time for the upcoming premier of Vikings on the History Channel, Michael Hirst, the show’s writer and producer, talks about his writing process in the latest installment of Mediabistro’s So What Do You Do? series.

“The key for me with historical characters is they’re interesting because they’re human beings,” he said. “A little bit of Hemingway goes a long way here, but journalists and writers should honestly look at their material and have a real interest, a real passion in what they want to write, and they should also have a lot of knowledge, as well. You don’t write police procedural stuff unless you really know that beat, but it’s ultimately not the procedure that makes the show work — it’s the people. The more real they are, the better.”

Read more in So What Do You Do, Michael Hirst, Creator of The Tudors and Vikings?

Despite what the title of this post suggests, we are quite fond of our colleague from WebNewser and TVNewser, Steve Krakauer. So, when we heard he was competing in the “I’m a Blogger…Get Me Out of Here!” contest, we wanted to help him out.

The winner of the contest, which is part of promotional efforts for NBC‘s upcoming reality show “I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!”, will get sent to Costa Rica to blog during the show. And since Steve professes that this is his “lifelong dream,” we had to do our part and vote. And you should, too!

Here’s a little bit more info about the contest, from its Web site:

We pit bloggers against each other in a contest to see who can survive to the final round, and win a trip to live blog behind the scenes at the “I’m a Celebrity” set in Costa Rica!

Three rounds will present our bloggers with challenges about bugs, beauty, being a celebrity and surviving the jungle. And you decide who makes it to the next round.

Check out Steve’s first post about bullet ants (no thank you) and botflies (yuck). We were worried that, were he to win, Steve might encounter these scary creepy crawlers when he gets to Costa Rica. But thankfully, bloggers don’t get to go outside much. But unfortunately, we think Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt are more scary than bullet ants anyway.