Michigan Mom Earns Praise For Foray Into Vampire Land

The Pueblo Chieftain:

The inspiration crystallized for Colleen Gleason during a ‘‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’’ marathon.

If Buffy was the Chosen One for this generation, there’d been others before her, right? Say, during the 19th century?

So, what would Buffy as a debutante death-dealer, Buffy in a bonnet, have been like?

Since Gleason had already written eight romance novels - though none of them had been published - she was in a good position to turn that what-if into a manuscript.

You can see the result in ‘‘The Rest Falls Away,’’ Gleason’s publishing debut that turns vampire stories - and romances - on their ear with a decidedly dark, decidedly unsentimental Regency heroine who stakes the undead with the best of them.

And so the Brighton, Mich., mother of three, who says she had never found vampires particularly interesting before she started to write about them, is the hot thing in vampire fiction, with glowing reviews and a four-book deal. So much in life is timing, and few fields prove that like publishing.