RIP Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Apparently her death has been noted in the Death Pool thread, but not as a new topic.

I learned about Yarbro because Stephen King named a character in his movie Creepshow “Yarbro” in her honor. After that I started looking up her work. But I didn’t really get into her until I met my future wife, who was a hug fabn of her Saint Germaine series. If you haven’t read them, they’re historical gothic romances centered around the character of Count St. Germaine, a real individual who claimed to have lived virtually forever. So, naturally, Yarbro made him a vampire. It also gave her an excuse to have him show up in different parts of the world at different times. Her books, starting eith Hotel Transylvania (no relation to the animated movies of that title), were impeccably researched and well-written..

Yarbro continued to crank them out at a rate of about once a year, and so I gave them to my wife as Christmas or birthday presents. Until she stopped writing them. In recent years, I’ve searched for copies of her older works that my wife might not have read, or forgotten about. I just gave her one this week, and she started reading it the day she learned of Yarbro’s death, quite by chance.

Yarbro’s output extended beyond the St. Germaine novels, but I haven’t read any of those.

I’ll have to tell my wife, who was just as big a Yarbro fan. I also gave her Yarbro gifts, including a signed unpublished manuscript. Quel coincidence!

That’s so sad to hear. I found Hotel Transylvania in high school and read everything she wrote until they became too difficult to find.

Darn it! I’m a big fan of hers!

Mostly the St. Germain novels although I also enjoyed her novel False Dawn.