Elaine Bergstrom is a Milwaukee-based novelist whose writing melds vampire, romance, mystery and, always, suspense.

Her first published piece of fiction was her first novel, Shattered Glass (1989). It introduced the character of the immortal Stephen Austra and artist Helen Wells, a victim of polio, along with Stephens family of vampires who are “born not created and have an abhorrance for coffins, particulary their own.” The novel was a critical success, a consistent favorite with readers of adult-oriented vampire fiction. Bergstrom has written six novels in the Austra series, including Daughter of the Night, which featured Elizabeth Bathory as a half-breed Austra vampire. Beyond Sundown, the newest book in the Austra series, released early in 2011. The Violin, a novella, in 2012. Most are in print. All are available on Amazon kindle or through the authors website

Using her grandmothers name, Marie Kiraly, Bergstrom wrote a sequel to Dracula called Mina ... The Dracula Story Continues, and its sequel, Blood to Blood ... The Dracula Story Continues, which both look at Mina Harker as a woman changed by her experience in Transylvania, struggling to find her way in the repressive Victorian society. Both were featured in the Science Fiction Book Club and Doubleday Book Club.

For the novel Madeline ... After the Fall of Usher, she adopted Poe’s journalistic style to tell a story in which the details of the last few months of Poe’s life are correct, with her own fictional story overlaid on them.


J. Gordon Melton (The Vampire Encyclopedia) notes that Shattered Glass contains one of the most horrific scenes in vampire literature. (less)