P. N. Elrod

[3] Her suspense short story, Beach Girl, won the 2011 Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award.

[5] She has published more than twenty-five novels, beginning in 1990 with her Vampire Files urban fantasy series, featuring hard-boiled private investigator Jack Fleming and his partner, Charles Escott, girlfriend, Bobbi Smythe, and other recurring characters.

Another series co-authored with actor Nigel Bennett, who played the evil yet seductive LaCroix on the television show Forever Knight, is of a very different character, but still features a good guy vampire.

Lord Richard makes a brief cameo appearance in the story, and Morris' vampiric state is attributed to a previous blood-sharing with Nora Jones from Elrod's Jonathan Barrett series.

Also quite different, and qualifying as horror, are the Dungeons & Dragons-related books in the Ravenloft world featuring the dark and sinister vampire Count Strahd von Zarovich.

Elrod has authored around two dozen short stories in the fantasy, romance, science fiction, mystery, and horror genres, and edited several collections including Time of the Vampires, Dracula in London, and with Roxanne Conrad (aka Rachel Caine) Stepping Through the Stargate: The Science, Archaeology, and Military of Stargate SG-1 The latter is non-fiction and has contributions from world-famous scientists, doctors, the USAF military, FX wizards, and actors from the TV series.

"[10] Her short story, "Beach Girl", published in the November 2011 edition of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, was presented with first place for their annual Readers' Choice Award.