De La Cruz's "Blue Bloods" book cover. Photo: Amazon.com

If the vampires in Melissa De La Cruz's fiction seem especially alluring, it may be because this New York Times best-selling author cut her chops writing about fashion.

De La Cruz celebrated publication of the fourth novel in her Blue Bloods series, "The Van Alen Legacy," on Wednesday night in New York. But although the author is riding high on the current trend for blood-suckers, she used to write about a different kind of vamp.

"There's still a lot of fashion in my writing," De La Cruz said Wednesday. "But of course writing about fashion, being in that world and out all night at the parties, it's a lot like being a vampire."

In fact, I first met Melissa ten years ago when we both wrote for the online fashion magazine Hintmag.com, on which she serialized her first novel, "Cat's Meow." Since then she has authored two highly successful young adult series, "The Au Pairs" and "The Ashleys," before hitting it big with her tale of the vampiric Van Alen clan.

"Some of my fans, the younger ones, think that maybe vampires really exist," De La Cruz laughed over cocktails at The Apartment in SoHo. "My publisher put on the book jacket that I know some. So I get some crazy emails."