A teacher who left her job after a row over her vampire fiction has won an award for her first book.

Former English and drama teacher Samantha Goldstone, decided to leave St Christopher's High School in Accrington, after a probe into the content of her personal websites.

Following the controversy in February 2007, many pupils and tutors leapt to her defence and it soon emerged her debut vampire novel was in a good book guide alongside horror legend Stephen King.

Her novel Gabriele Caccini, about a 17th century vampire who lusts after women after being drugged with ecstasy, has now been praised in an American literary magazine's Book of the Year awards.

Reviewers at ForeWord presented her with a silver award in their horror category, after shortlisting the novel, written under her pen name Paigan Stone, from 1,500 entrants. Mrs Goldstone has now been given a three-book deal with publisher House of Murky Depths and is relaunching the novel under the title Killing Kiss.

She came under fire for advertising her gothic writing as "adult content with vampire eroticism, violence and blood lust" on her personal websites.

Complaints from parents led the school to launch an investigation but dozens of messages, many from pupils and teachers, were posted on the Lancashire Telegraph website in her support.

Mrs Goldstone, who was at the school for three years, lives in north Manchester and is married with one child, said on her website: "The success of my novel has been the fulfilment of a lifelong dream."