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Books|L.J. Smith, Author of ‘Vampire Diaries’ Book Series, Dies at 66
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/26/books/lj-smith-dead.html
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She wrote seven books in a series that went on to be a hit TV show. After she was replaced by ghostwriters, she reclaimed her characters online in fan fiction.
March 26, 2025, 2:41 p.m. ET
L.J. Smith, an author of young adult novels best known for “The Vampire Diaries” series, which became a hit television drama, and for repossessing her characters by writing fan fiction after she was fired and replaced by a ghostwriter, died on March 8 in Walnut Creek, Calif. She was 66.
Her partner, Julie Divola, and her sister, Judy Clifford, said Ms. Smith died in a hospital after enduring the cascading effects of a rare autoimmune disease for a decade. She lived in nearby Danville, Calif.
The Wall Street Journal in 2014 wrote about Ms. Smith’s clever career reclamation, calling it “one of the strangest comebacks in literary history.”
Ms. Smith produced more than two dozen published books, with three more unpublished works completed before her death. Readers bought millions of copies of her work, beginning with the fantasy novel “The Night of the Solstice.” It was labeled for readers aged 8 to 12, and Ms. Smith started it in high school.
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The book, published in 1987, sold only about 5,000 copies but intrigued an editor at Alloy Entertainment, a book packaging and production company that has since been acquired by Warner Brothers. Such companies devise ideas for books, find authors for them and then sell them to publishers.
