Marie Kiraly

http://www.elainebergstrom.com

I've always had a love for exotic and historic locales, creepy houses, twisted characters and doomed romance—all of which grew out of youthful habits of excessive reading of gothic novels and short stories by Lovecraft and Poe, and a near-compulsive attendance at Saturday matinee double creature features.

I began composing fiction while in grade school. It was a hybrid mystery/suspense piece, a Bobsey Twins meet Norman Bates type of story. That was put on hold until, the mid-1980s. I was working as a copywriter. I had an office, a typewriter, and often a lot of time on my hands. I could read a book, or I could write one. I opted for writing.

The result was Shattered Glass, the first in a series of vampire novels featuring the Austra family of glassworkers. They are their own breed - sophisticated, creative and as nice as circumstances allow them to be.

I've also written four novels under my grandmother's name, Marie Kiraly, including Mina ... The Dracula Story Continues, and its sequel, Blood to Blood ... The Dracula Story Continues (both books were later reissued under my own name).

Poe, Aleistar Crowley, Oscar Wilde, Elizabeth Bathory and other historical figures frequently put in an appearance. I love taking people who once lived and helping them to live again, to walk through their minds and their time and their psyches. And since I'm borrowing their lives, I owe it to them and to my readers to get the details right.

When I start a novel, every day's work seems terrible to me. I hand in the finished product with hundreds of misgivings. By the time I get the copyedited manuscript, it looks pretty good. By the time the galley proofs come my way, I find the work marvelous, but if you ask me where all of it came from, in truth, I can only say that my characters write it all.

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