Lisa Jane Smith is an American author of young adult fiction best known for her best-selling series The Vampire Diaries, which has been turned into a successful television show.
[3][6] Smith said that she realized she wanted to be a writer sometime between kindergarten and first grade, "when a teacher praised a horrible poem I'd written",[7] and she began writing in earnest in elementary school.
The Vampire Diaries series was commissioned by Elise Donner, editor of Alloy Entertainment in 1990: Smith immediately wrote the scene when Elena, Bonnie and Meredith are decorating the gym and the heroine meets Damon (scene later included in the first novel), while, as for the other characters, she adapted those of The Garden of Earthly Delights,[5] an adult book she was writing.
Smith submitted a draft of the next installment (The Hunters: Phantom), but after a dispute regarding a pivotal plot twist, her involvement was terminated by the publisher and the episode was revised by a ghostwriter.
[20] In late 2015, Smith almost died from an undiagnosed granulomatosis with polyangiitis that kept her hospitalized for two months and on a ventilator for weeks: she suffered severe damage to her kidneys, heart, liver, and gallbladder.
They pick up after the ending of said book, and while they do represent the original author's intended continuation, they are not considered official canon to the main Vampire Diaries series due to their status.