Birth Date: October 04, 1941
Education: Texas Women’s University, San Francisco State College, University of California
Place of Birth: New Orleans, Louisiana
Spouse: Stan Rice (1942-2002)
Children: Michele Rice (1966-1972), Christopher Rice (born 1978)
Genres: Gothic fiction, horror, erotica, Christian fiction, fantasy
Official Website: Anne Rice.com
Facebook: Anne Rice
Writing Career
Interview with the Vampire
In 1973, while still grieving the loss of her daughter, Rice took a previously written short story and turned it into her first novel, the bestselling Interview with the Vampire. After completing the novel and following many rejections from publishers, Rice developed obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD). In August 1974, after a year of therapy for her OCPD, Rice attended the Squaw Valley Writer’s Conference at Squaw Valley and met her future literary agent, Phyllis Seidel. In October 1974, Seidel sold the publishing rights to Interview with the Vampire to Alfred A. Knopf. Interview with the Vampire was published in May 1976.
Following the publication of Interview with the Vampire, while living in California, Rice wrote two historical novels, The Feast of All Saints and Cry to Heaven, along with three erotic novels (The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty’s Punishment, and Beauty’s Release) under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure, and two more under the pseudonym Anne Rampling (Exit to Eden and Belinda). Rice then returned to the vampire genre with The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned, her bestselling sequels to Interview with the Vampire.
Back to New Orleans
In June 1988, following the success of The Vampire Lestat and with The Queen of the Damned about to be published, the Rices purchased a second home in New Orleans. Shortly after moving to New Orleans, Rice penned The Witching Hour as an expression of her joy at coming home. Rice also continued her popular Vampire Chronicles series, which later grew to encompass ten novels, and followed up on The Witching Hour with Lasher and Taltos, completing the Lives of the Mayfair Witches trilogy. She also published Violin, a tale of a ghostly haunting, in 1997.
Return to Roman Catholicism
Rice returned to the Catholic Church in 1998 after decades of self-avowed atheism. On December 14, 1998, she fell into a coma and nearly died. She was later diagnosed with Diabetes mellitus type 1, or “brittle” Diabetes, and is now insulin-dependent. In 2003, following the recommendation of her husband and shortly after his death, Rice underwent gastric bypass surgery and shed 103 pounds.
In 2004, Rice nearly died again from an intestinal blockage or bowel obstruction, a common complication of gastric bypass surgery. In 2005, Newsweek reported, “[Rice] came close to death last year, when she had surgery for an intestinal blockage, and also back in 1998, when she went into a sudden diabetic coma; that same year she returned to the Roman Catholic Church, which she’d left at 18.” Her return did not come with a full embrace of the Church’s stances on social issues; Rice remained a vocal supporter of equality for gay men and lesbians (including marriage rights), as well as abortion rights and birth control, writing extensively on such issues. In October 2005, while promoting her book, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, she announced in Newsweek that she would now use her life and talent of writing to glorify her belief in God, but did not renounce her earlier works.
Rice calls Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, published in 2005, the beginning of a series chronicling the life of Jesus. The second volume, Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, was published in March 2008. The third book in the series, Christ the Lord: Kingdom of Heaven, has been postponed.
Leaving New Orleans
On January 18, 2004, Rice announced on her website that she had made plans to leave New Orleans. She cited living alone since the death of her husband and her son moving to California as the reasons for her move. In 2005, after completing Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, Rice left New Orleans.
California
After leaving New Orleans, Rice settled first in La Jolla, California. She purchased a six-bedroom home in Rancho Mirage, California in December 2005, allowing her to be closer to her son in Los Angeles. In Rancho Mirage, Rice wrote Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, Angel Time and Of Love and Evil (the latter two being the first two books in her Songs of the Seraphim series), in addition to her memoir Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession.
On March 9, 2014, Rice announced on her son Christopher’s radio show, “The Dinner Party with Christopher Rice and Eric Shaw Quinn”, that she had completed another book in the Vampire Chronicles, titled, Prince Lestat, a “true sequel” to Queen of the Damned. The book was released on October 28, 2014. In 2015, a sequel to the Beauty trilogy, “Beauty’s Kingdom,” was released.
The Vampire Chronicles
– Interview with the Vampire (1976)
– The Vampire Lestat (1985)
– The Queen of the Damned (1988)
– The Tale of the Body Thief (1992)
– Memnoch the Devil (1995)
– The Vampire Armand (1998)
– Merrick (2000)
– Blood and Gold (2001)
– Blackwood Farm (2002)
– Blood Canticle (2003)
– Prince Lestat (2014)
– Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis: The Vampire Chronicles (2016)
– Blood Communion: A Tale of Prince Lestat (2018)
New Tales of the Vampires
– Pandora (1998)
– Vittorio the Vampire (1999)
The Wolf Gift Chronicles
– The Wolf Gift (2012)
– The Wolves of Mid-Winter (2013)
Lives of the Mayfair Witches
– The Witching Hour (1990)
– Lasher (1993)
– Taltos (1994)
Christ the Lord
– Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt (2005)
– Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana (2008)
Songs of the Seraphim
– Angel Time (2009)
– Of Love and Evil (2010)
Under the Pseudonym Anne Rampling
– Exit to Eden (1985)
– Belinda (1986)
Ramses the Damned
– The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned (1989)
– Ramses the Damned: The Passion of Cleopatra (2017)
Single Novels
– The Feast of All Saints (1979)
– Cry to Heaven (1982)
– The Master of Rampling Gate (Redbook, February 1984)
– Servant of the Bones (1996)
– Violin (1997)
Under the Pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure
– The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)
– Beauty’s Punishment (1984)
– Beauty’s Release (1985)
– Beauty’s Kingdom (2015)
Non-fiction
– Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession (2008)
Short Fiction
– October 4, 1948 (1965)
– Nicholas and Jean (1966)
– Armand’s Lesson, or, The Art of The Vampire at its peak in the year 1876 (Playboy, January 1979)