Elrod, P. N.
Elrod, P. N.
(pop culture)Patricia Nead Elrod, popular author of vampire novels, began writing at the age of 12. She developed an interest in vampires at a young age while watching vampire movies and especially the Dark Shadows television series. During the 1980s she became an active participant in role playing games, particularly one called Mercenaries, Spies, & Private Eyes. In 1986 she entered a role-playing module into a Dragon magazine contest that eventually was bought and published in the first issue of Dungeon Adventures. This was her first professional publication. Meanwhile, through her role playing, she developed a supernatural character, a vampire detective. At one point she began to write up the game scenario, and it became the first of “The Vampire Files” novels, Bloodlist. She quickly followed with Lifeblood and Bloodcircle. All three novels were published in 1990. Their success prompted the continuation of the series and three more volumes appeared: Art in the Blood (1991), Fire in the Blood (1991), and Blood on the Water (1992). This series features Jack Fleming, a reporter who had been transformed into a vampire. After his transformation he became a detective with a nonvampire partner, Charles Escott.
By this time Elrod built her writings around what she thought of as interesting characters, some of whom just happened to be vampires who have to work out their relationship with the “normal” world. One such interesting character, Jonathan Barrett, who had appeared briefly in Bloodcircle, became the central figure for a second series which recounted his life after becoming a vampire on the eve of the American Revolution. Having drunk blood from a vampire while away at college in England, in an incident he merely thought of as kinky sex, Barrett became a vampire when he was killed shortly after his return to the colonies in America. His story of discovering what he had become on awakening from the dead was told in three volumes, the first of which, Red Death, appeared in 1993. Meanwhile, Elrod was asked by TRS, Inc., the publishers of the Ravenloft role-playing series, to write the autobiography of their main character, the vampire Strahd. I, Strahd appeared in 1993, and a sequel, I Strahd: The War with Azalin came out in 1998. Through the 1990s Elrod became one of the most recognizable names among vampire fiction writers, and a P. N. Elrod Fan Club emerged in 1993. Through it, she kept her growing legion of fans aware of her new writing projects, and with the advent of the Internet the club has been superseded by her website, http://www.vampwriter.com/.
Into the new century she has remained active in writing vampire fiction. She continued the adventures of Jack Fleming in A Chill in the Blood (1998), The Dark Sleep (1999), Lady Crymsyn (2001), Cold Streets (2003), Song in the Dark (2005), and The Devil You Know (2009), with additional titles in the pipeline. In the mid 1990s, she began a series of novels with Nigel Bennett (better known at the time as LaCroix in the Forever Knight television series). The first one, Keeper of the King, appeared in 1996. The novels were based upon the fantasy of a Sir Lancelot-like character having become a vampire. In the first novel the knight, Richard d’Orleans, is brought into the modern age where he meets contemporary challenges while tying up loose ends from his past. It proved popular enough to continue the adventures through sequels, His Father’s Son (2001) and Siege Perilous (2004).
Sources: