Roxanne Conrad the prolific Fort Worth novelist who writes fantasy thrillers as Rachel Caine  says she got into publishing by accident.

Truth be told, though, it was more a case of a friend twisting her arm.

“I began writing stories in high school, but never showed them to anyone,” Conrad says. “I’d put them in a big suitcase, never intending for them to amount to anything.”

She currently has three book series up and running, all bearing the Rachel Caine pen name that twice has appeared on The New York Times bestseller list:

The eighth of her “Weather Warden” fantasy thrillers, featuring a heroine who controls the weather, is Cape Storm, due in bookstores Aug. 4.

Book six in her Texas-based “Morganville Vampires” series for young adults, titled Carpe Corpus, came out in June; Fade Out, the seventh book, will get a Nov. 3 release, with books eight and nine scheduled for 2010.

She just finished writing Unknown, the second in her four-book “Outcast Season” series, a “Weather Warden” spinoff; it’ll be out in early 2010.

And she’s working on a new series to replace “Weather Warden,” which she plans to retire after book nine in 2010.

What was the genesis of the “Morganville” books, in which Claire Danvers, a freshman at Texas Prairie University, finds herself living in a community of centuries-old vampires? Are you guilty of jumping on the vamp-lit bandwagon?

“I’m afraid not. In fact, right around the time that Twilight came out, my editor called and said, ‘We’re starting up a young adult line. We’re thinking about something with vampires. What do you think? And in that conversation, I said no. I said, ‘I don’t want to write a vampire book just to write a vampire book. But on the drive home, while talking to a friend on the phone, I actually thought of Morganville. By the time I got home, I had the idea all fleshed out, so I called the editor back. ‘Hey, I’ve got something after all.”

Read the complete article and interview here

After reading the Twilight series, it took me quite a while to even want to read other series or books. I started with Rachel Caine’s Morganville Vampires series. LOVE IT!!! to say the least. Shane and Claire are so much fun.

Have you read any of the Rachel Caine series? Which ones, and did you like them?