Booking L.J. Smith

L.J. Smith Biography

Young adult fiction author L.J. Smith was born in Orange County, California. Today, Smith is best known as the author behind the best-selling novel series The Vampire Diaries, which spawned the hit television adaptation series in 2009. But long before L.J. became a best-selling writer, she was inspired by a high school English teacher to begin writing; after graduating from San Francisco State University, she initially became an elementary school teacher, but by 1989 she’d left the profession to start her writing career.

Smith’s first foray into her role as a novelist began with two novels written in high school in college. Both fared poorly on the market, largely because of marketing choices, but her big breakthrough came with the Vampire Diaries series, published in 1990. The trilogies The Secret Circle (1992), The Forbidden Game (1994), and Dark Visions (1995) followed, and in 1998 L.J. took a break from writing and focused instead on marketing the novels she had already written, launching a website and a series of new short stories. The Vampire Diaries was turned into the hit CW television series in 2009, followed by The Secret Circle, which premiered in 2011. The Return: Midnight, a final volume of The Vampire Diaries series, also arrived in 2011.

L.J. Smith continues to write young adult and new adult fiction. The Vampire Diaries recently wrapped its series finale in 2017, but The Secret Circle continues to air on the CW network.