Pozzessere, Heather Graham
Pozzessere, Heather Graham (1953–)
(pop culture)Heather Graham Pozzessere is the name of a popular paranormal romance writer who writes under two pen names, Heather Graham and Shannon Drake, with most of her vampire titles appearing under the latter. Pozzessere was born Heather Graham in 1953 in Miami, Florida and later attended the University of South Florida. She married and worked a variety of jobs while raising a family. After the birth of her third child, she withdrew from outside employment and stayed at home. She also began to write. She sold her first book, When Next We Love, in 1982. She subsequently wrote novels in the romance, science fiction, and horror genres, but had her major success in romance. She was a founding member of the Florida chapter of Romance Writers of America. She began hosting the annual Romantic Times Vampire Ball, a charity affair, in 1999.
Because of her wide popularity, she was chosen to write the launch books for the Dell’s Ecstasy Supreme line, Silhouette’s Shadows line, and Harlequin’s imprint, Mira Books. Her books have been translated into approximately twenty languages.
Very early in her career, Pozzessere authored her first vampire novel, This Rough Magic (1988), somewhat lost amid the many ephemeral Silhouette titles. Then, after authoring a number of books, Pozzessere wrote her first vampire novel under her pen name Shannon Drake, Beneath a Blood Red Moon, at the end of the 1990s. For what would become a six-volume series, Pozzessere created the vampire character Maggie Montgomery who runs a clothing boutique in New Orleans’ French Quarter. She found herself drawn to a police detective named Sean Canady, with whom she feels a deep connection. But he has come into her life while investigating a murder in the French Quarter. A blood trail from the victim ended at Maggie’s shop. To solve the murder, she had to reveal her secret identity to him.
In the sequel, Maggie and Sean take second place to Lucien, the King of the Vampires, who has been attracted to travel writer Jade MacGregor. They had met in Scotland, where he saved her from an attack by other vampires. The vampire followed her to New Orleans, where Lucien had to risk his secret identity to continue to assist her. Each of the remaining four titles takes the reader to a different exciting setting such as Venice, Italy or Salem, Massachusetts, focusing on another couple, while reintroducing the characters from the earlier novels.
Pozzesssere revives the vampire world of her Shannon Drake series in the most recent novels written as Heather Graham for Mira Books. She returns to her favorite New Orleans setting and invites characters from the past to attend to the two new characters who will become the focus of each novel. In Kiss of Darkness (2006), for example, Maggie and Sean Canady (now married) and Lucien reappear to assist Jessica and Byron (the latter a vampire hunter just awakening to the existence of “good” vampires).
Sources: