EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. – Elizabeth Donald is used to people making wisecracks when they find out she has published two books categorized as “vampire romance.”

But the (Belleville) News-Democrat reporter by day, novelist by night has built a national fan base and has won awards with “Nocturnal Urges” and its sequel, “A More Perfect Union.”

“It’s definitely a niche market,” said Donald, 33, of Edwardsville. “I think the hardest thing is convincing people that I’m not writing ‘porn with fangs.’ I’ve tried to make these characters into real, three-dimensional people. They suffer and they grieve. Things are not always tied up in a happy bow at the end.”

Donald’s books also reflect a real-life interest in social issues. Vampires in her fictionalized Memphis settings are treated as second-class citizens, much like blacks before the Civil Rights movement.

“They aren’t allowed to hold certain jobs,” Donald said. “They work the night shift. They work the sex trade. They do the jobs that humans don’t want.”

The vampires also fall in love, sometimes with humans, and face the wrath of people in the community who don’t approve of mixed relationships. (It’s illegal for them to marry.)

Donald recently invited the public to celebrate the release of her most recent book, “Abaddon,” by attending a vampire-themed party at the historic Blum House in Collinsville.

“Abaddon” is a continuation of the “Nocturnal Urges” vampire-mystery series, but it’s categorized as “horror” instead of “romance.” The book won Donald her third Darrell Award from the Mid-South Science Fiction and Fantasy Association, this time for best novella.

“Someone is killing the human partners in vampire-human couples,” she said of the dark, violent plot. “It’s that racial-hatred thing rearing it’s head again.”

Ellora’s Cave, an online company that specializes in romance novels, published “Nocturnal Urges” and “A More Perfect Union” as electronic books in 2004 and 2005, respectively. Sister company Cerridwen Press later combined them into one paperback called “Nocturne.”

Cerridwen published “Abaddon” last year as an electronic book and this year as a paperback.

Donald also has a collection of horror and science-fiction short stories called “Setting Suns” (New Babel Books).

Donald grew up in Massachusetts with a communications professor for a father and a classical pianist for a mother. As a child, she wrote Smurf tragedies and aspired to be an actor and playwright.

Donald learned to love science fiction while watching “Star Trek” reruns with her father. She got hooked on horror by secretly reading her mother’s copies of Stephen King novels, leaving dust jackets on shelves to keep from being caught.

“She also loved Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys – all the usual adolescent literature,” said her father, Ralph Donald, a mass-communications professor at Southern Illinois University. “She always had her nose in a book.”

In high school, Elizabeth Donald wrote a 90-page novella about an alien invasion of New York City as part of a creative-writing project in English class.

She went on to attend University of Memphis and University of Tennessee at Martin, starting as a theater major and switching to journalism. It proved to be valuable dual training.

“When you’re an actor, you’re constructing a character from the inside out,” she said. “And that is immensely helpful when writing fiction.”