Author — Dark Fiction

E.L.
Frederick

Where the desert keeps its secrets buried, and the night has teeth.

Read the Work About the Author

The Author

About E.L. Frederick

E.L. Frederick is an IT and cybersecurity professional who lives in Hereford, Arizona — a few miles from the border he writes about. He has worked as a contractor in Afghanistan and Iraq and has spent the better part of two decades in the desert Southwest. He has a particular interest in apocryphal texts, theological edge cases, and the question of what happens to faith when the answers stop coming.

Vampires of Tucson is his first fiction series. It is set in the region where he lives, about people who look like his neighbors, in a desert he knows by name.

He is not easy to surprise.

E.L. Frederick

What's New

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Series News

  • Jun 1, 2026 The Road North — Twenty vignettes. Rocket looking back on a girl named Naida, alive and moving in the heat of Managua, before the desert and before the night. The first steps of a journey that only goes one direction. Publishing as Notes on ELFrederick.
  • Jul 5, 2026 Babydoll — Book 3 — Her name wasn’t Babydoll. That was the name they gave her, chosen by the man who controlled her, like everything else about her. By the time she died, she’d nearly forgotten there was a difference. Unlife has a way of clarifying what you’re actually capable of.
  • Nov 15, 2026 Blondie — Book 1 — She was embraced before the others and had more time to figure out the rules — and more time to decide which ones she felt like following. The electric blue hair, the hunting outfit, the smile that looks right until it doesn’t: all of it deployed with complete understanding and no apology. The weapon that learned to aim itself.
  • Coming Up Crimson Cabaret — Vera is a hundred-year-old vampire from Chicago who comes to Tucson in 2000 convinced she can build something of her own. The woman she has to ask for permission has been in this desert longer than Chicago has had a name. This book opens the city before the survivors arrive in it.

Publications

The Writing

Serial Novel — Dark Fantasy / Sonoran Gothic

Vampires of Tucson

These stories follow young women who were trafficked, abandoned, and left to die in the Sonoran dirt. Some of them didn't stay dead. Each book follows at least one of them. You don't need to read them in order.

Set in and around greater Tucson and south-east Arizona. New chapters every Sunday. Three books publishing now — 9+ in development.

Read on Substack → Series Overview → Characters →
Kendra Brandt Vera Cruz

The Books

Series Overview

Fourteen books — three publishing now, eleven in development. Timelines, descriptions, and pre-release chapters for the full series.

Explore the Series →

The People

Characters

The full cast: the Levantadas, the Elders, the Hunters, the Crimson Cabaret, and the ones who don’t belong to anyone. The people the story is built around.

Meet the Cast →

The Territory

Interactive Map

Pima and Cochise counties. Every haven, every boundary, every place something happened that was never reported. Built from the 500,000-word draft and updated as the series adds to it.

Open the Map →

Free to Read

New chapters every Sunday. Subscribe and get them in your inbox.

Get in Touch

Contact

For inquiries about the work, collaboration, or anything else worth saying in the dark.

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