In a pretty-boy showdown between Edward Cullen and Vladimir Tod, Edward would no doubt win. He's got the eyes, the hair, the sparkly chest.

Vampire fiction fans, especially girls and their moms, love the intense, toothy "Twilight" hero (especially as embodied by actor Robert Pattinson). But for the regular guy, Vlad keeps it real.

"Edward Cullen may be hot, but Vladimir Tod would let you cheat off him in math class," reads Heather Brewer's T-shirt.

Brewer, who lives in Maryland Heights, is the author of a hardcover book series for young adult readers, "The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod." As the third in the series hits bookstores, she's thrilled that demand for "Tenth Grade Bleeds" (Dutton, 292 pages, $16.99) has grown along with the overall interest in fantasy and horror fiction.

"Vlad" is "doing really, really well," she said last week.

Although publisher Dutton ordered only a first printing of 7,500 copies for the first in the series, "Eighth Grade Bites," two years later it printed 50,000 copies of "Tenth Grade Bleeds," which ranked a very respectable 272 among all books last week at barnesandnoble.com.

The market for young-adult books seems to log new brand-name contributors every day, among them Louise Erdrich, Jane Smiley and, just last week, James Frey, who disclosed that he's seeking a publisher for a new series about children from another planet.

Brewer, 35, isn't so well-known, but she's writing for an audience she adores.

"I love hanging out with teenagers," she says.

Brewer remembers a time when Judy Blume was one of the few authors writing about adolescent angst. The options have exploded since then.

Her books are aimed not so much at the girls who love "Twilight" and other lengthy romances, but at boys who want action and tighter storytelling. She likes to say that if "you don't like 'Twilight,' you'll like 'Vladimir Tod.' And if you do like 'Twilight,' you'll like 'Vladimir Tod.'"

Brewer's energy and enthusiasm seem at odds with her Goth look: black clothes, skull-patterned sneakers and pink-streaked hair. Her son Jacob, 15, likes the Goth look too, and dyes his hair black.

"We use a lot of dye at our house," she said, although her husband, Paul, and daughter Alex, 8, aren't into the the look.

Brewer's books make no bones about the fact that their sometimes-bullied hero is an underachieving student. Although the series offers no sex, drugs or swearing, the kids in it can be both silly and snide. When he arrives at Bathory High in "Tenth Grade Bleeds," Vlad spies the principal "twitching his little mouse nose distrustfully and watching passing students like he was some kind of prison warden."

Half vampire and half human, Vlad sips blood but doesn't kill humans. He's dogged not just by his peers (such as the aptly named Eddie Poe), but by other vampires.

Brewer's traumatic high school years provide much of the inspiration for her own stories. A victim of constant bullying, she remembers how it felt to be shoved and picked on as teachers turned their backs. The daughter of a custodian in a small Michigan town, her family moved after several house fires. The causes, she says, were never determined.

In the "Vladimir Tod Chronicles," the protagonist's parents are killed in a fire.

Brewer's parents told her the bullying would "build character," but she warns her readers that bullying is unacceptable and not to judge others by how they look.

Yet, "if it weren't for being bullied, I wouldn't have been able to write about Vlad."

A longtime lover of horror, Brewer was inspired as a teen by the story of another fictional high school victim — Stephen King's "Carrie" — and decided that she wanted to write. Brewer is planning a new paranormal series but won't abandon Vlad. His series will have two more books, for a total of five.

After all, he has to survive high school.