Laurell K. Hamilton

Hamilton's Anita Blake books put a licensed vampire killer and animator of the dead in St. Louis, and the series is credited with helping build the paranormal romance shelf that followed it. It ran past thirty volumes and shifted considerably in content along the way, from crime with monsters to something a good deal more explicit, which split her readership publicly and which she has declined to apologise for. Merry Gentry is the other series. She was raised by her grandmother after her mother died in a car crash when she was six.