Since Twilight Series and this Bella-Edward Stuff explode to it’s splendid fame, new era of readers are now shifting to be part of vampires and bloodsuckers’ world. From the book stands, Vampire books dominate the best selling books for teens and fantasy.
Maybe it’s what they call The ‘Vampire’ Romance Phenonemon, and I blame it to Meyer who turns freaking bloodsucking monsters to glittering crystal balls.
Anyway, this is not a top 10 lists of books but quite related to it. It’s about the list of top women who writes about vampires:
1 – Chelsea Quinn
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro was born in Berkeley, California. She attended Berkeley schools through high school followed by three years at San Francisco State College (now University). In November 1969 she married Donald Simpson and divorced in February 1982. She has no children.
Writing for over 35 years, Yarbro has worked in a wide variety of genres, from science fiction to westerns, from young adult adventure to historical horror. She is the author of over 70 novels and numerous short stories. She is probably best known for her series of historical horror novels about the vampire Count Saint-Germain. She also has published numerous volumes in a popular series of channeled wisdom from the entity Michael in the Messages from Michael series.
Yarbro’s contribution to the horror genre has been recognised in a variety of ways: she was named a Grand Master at the World Horror Convention in 2003, and in 2005 the International Horror Guild named her a “Living Legend”. She has also received the Knightly Order of the Brasov Citadel from the Transylvanian Society of Dracula. In 2009 the Horror Writers’ Association presented Yarbro with the Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award. Additionally, two of her novels, The Palace (1979) and Ariosto (1980) were nominated for the World Fantasy Award, neither winning.
On average, Yarbro writes three to four books a year, and one or two short stories and/or essays. She writes six hours per day, six days per week except when traveling. Five days a week she spends three to four hours doing research.
Aside from writing, she has worked as a cartographer, has read tarot cards and palms, and has composed music, all of which she continues to do. Over the years she has studied seven different instruments, voice, and musical theory: composition, voice, and piano have continued to be active interests for her. The newsletter, Yclept Yarbro, about her and her writings has been published since 1995 by Lindig Hall Harris.
2 – Freda Warrington
Freda Warrington is a British author, known for her epic fantasy, vampire and supernatural novels.
Her earliest novels, the Blackbird series, were written and published when she was just finishing her teen years; in the intervening years she has seen numerous stand-alone novels and a trilogy published. (The original Blackbird series has recently been put back into print by Immanion Press.) Four of her novels (Dark Cathedral, Pagan Moon, Dracula the Undead, and The Amber Citadel) have been nominated for the British Fantasy Society’s Best Novel award. Dracula the Undead won the Dracula Society’s 1997 Children of the Night Award.[1] Her novel, Elfland, won the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award in the Fantasy Novel category for 2009.[2] Warrington has also seen numerous short stories published in anthologies and magazines.
Born in Leicester, Warrington grew up in Leicestershire. After completing high school, she trained at the Loughborough College of Art and Design and afterward held a job at the Medical Illustration Department of Leicester Royal Infirmary. She eventually moved to full-time writing, pursuing a love she had had since childhood. In addition to her writing, Warrington works part-time in the Charnwood Forest.
3 – Tanya Huff
Tanya Sue Huff (born 1957) is a Canadian fantasy author. Her stories have been published since the late 1980s, including five fantasy series and one science-fiction series. One of these, her Blood Books series, featuring detective Vicki Nelson, was adapted for television under the title Blood Ties.
4 – Anne Rice
Anne Rice (born Howard Allen O’Brien; October 4, 1941) is a best-selling American author of gothic, erotic, and religious-themed books from New Orleans, Louisiana. She was married to poet and painter Stan Rice for 41 years until his death from cancer in 2002. Her books have sold nearly 100 million copies, making her one of the most widely read authors in modern history.
5 – Poppy Z. Brite
Poppy Z. Brite (born Melissa Ann Brite on May 25, 1967 in New Orleans, Louisiana) is an American author. Brite initially achieved notoriety in the gothic horror genre of literature in the early 1990s after publishing a string of successful novels. Brite’s recent work has moved into the related genre of dark comedy, of which many are set in the New Orleans restaurant world. Brite’s novels are typically standalone books but may feature recurring characters from previous novels and short stories. Much of Brite’s work features openly bisexual and gay characters.
6 – Nancy A. Collins
Nancy A. Collins (born 10 September 1959) is a United States horror fiction writer best known for her series of vampire novels featuring her character Sonja Blue. Collins has also written for comic books, including the Swamp Thing series, Jason Vs. Leatherface, Predator: Hell Come A Walkin and her own one-shot Dhampire: Stillborn.
Collins was born in McGehee, Arkansas, United States. She lived in New Orleans, Louisiana in the 1980s; after time in New York City and Atlanta, Georgia she settled in Wilmington, North Carolina in the late 2000s.
7 – Patricia N. Elrod
Patricia N. Elrod is an American novelist specializing in urban fantasy. She’s written in the mystery, romance, paranormal, and historical genres with at least one foray into comedic fantasy. Elrod is also an editor, having worked on several collections for Ace Science Fiction, DAW, Benbella Books, and St. Martin’s Griffin. She self-published a signed, limited edition novel under her own imprint, Vampwriter Books.
In 2010, she was nominated for the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award in Urban Fantasy.
8 – Charlaine Harris
Charlaine Harris (born November 25, 1951) is a New York Times bestselling author who has been writing mysteries for over twenty years. She was born and raised in the Mississippi River Delta area of the United States. She now lives in southern Arkansas with her husband and three children. Though her early works consisted largely of poems about ghosts and, later, teenage angst, she began writing plays when she attended Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. She began to write books a few years later. Her later books have been in the urban fantasy genre.
9 – Stephenie Meyer
Stephenie Meyer (born December 24, 1973), née Morgan, is an American author known for her vampire romance series Twilight. The Twilight novels have gained worldwide recognition and sold over 100 million copies globally, with translations into 37 different languages. Meyer is also the author of the adult science-fiction novel The Host.
Meyer was the biggest selling author of both 2008 and 2009, having sold over 29 million books in 2008 alone, with Twilight being the best-selling book of the year. She sold an additional 26.5 million books in 2009, making her the first author to achieve this feat in that year. Meyer was ranked #49 on Time magazine’s list of the “100 Most Influential People in 2008”, and was also included in the Forbes Celebrity 100 list of the world’s most powerful celebrities in 2009, entering at #26. Her annual earnings exceeded $50 million. Also in 2010, Forbes ranked her as the #59 most powerful celebrity with annual earnings of $40 million.
10 – Laurell Kaye Hamilton
Laurell Kaye Hamilton (born February 19, 1963) is an American fantasy and romance writer. She is the author of two series of stories. Hamilton is known for her New York Times-bestselling Anita Blake series, featuring a professional zombie raiser/supernatural consultant for the police as the protagonist in a world where vampires and werecreatures not only exist, but are citizens with recently protected, if nervously granted, civil rights in the US. The series has 19 novels, several short story collections, and other media tie-ins such as comic books. 6 million copies of Anita Blake novels are printed.[1] Also notable is her Merry Gentry series, an urban fantasy in which the world of fairy interacts with the “real world”.
[Reference/Source: wikipedia]
[Reference/Source: Vampires by Joules Taylor]
