Sad news broke over the weekend, as the horror genre has lost one of its most popular authors: Anne Rice passed away on Saturday, December 11, at the age of 80.
Rice’s passing was announced by her son Christopher on social media. Christopher wrote:
This is Anne’s son Christopher and it breaks my heart to bring you this sad news. Earlier tonight, Anne passed away due to complications resulting from a stroke. She left us almost nineteen years to the day my father, her husband Stan, died. The immensity of our family’s grief cannot be overstated. As my mother, her support for me was unconditional — she taught me to embrace my dreams, reject conformity and challenge the dark voices of fear and self-doubt. As a writer, she taught me to defy genre boundaries and surrender to my obsessive passions. In her final hours, I sat beside her hospital bed in awe of her accomplishments and her courage, awash in memories of a life that took us from the fog laced hills of the San Francisco Bay Area to the magical streets of New Orleans to the twinkling vistas of Southern California. As she kissed Anne goodbye, her younger sister Karen said, “What a ride you took us on, kid.” I think we can all agree. Let us take comfort in the shared hope that Anne is now experiencing firsthand the glorious answers to many great spiritual and cosmic questions, the quest for which defined her life and career. Throughout much of her final years, your contributions to this page brought her much joy, along with a profound sense of friendship and community. Anne will be interred in our family’s mausoleum at Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans in a private ceremony. Next year, a celebration of her life will take place in New Orleans. This event will be open to the public and will invite the participation of her friends, readers and fans who brought her such joy and inspiration throughout her life.
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Rice is best known for her 1976 debut novel Interview with the Vampire, which she wrote while mourning the loss of her daughter Michele, who died of leukemia at the age of 5. Interview with the Vampire was the start of a series known as “The Vampire Chronicles”, which ended up consisting of twelve more novels (plus two spin-offs under the “New Tales of the Vampires” banner). Rice also wrote several novels that weren’t focused on vampires, including Feast of All Saints, Cry to Heaven, The Wolf Gift, and the Mayfair Witches trilogy.
AMC is currently building franchises out of both the Vampire Chronicles and Mayfair Witches novels.
In 1989, Rice wrote the novel The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned. She and her son Christopher collaborated on a 2017 follow-up called Ramses the Damned: The Passion of Cleopatra, and a third Ramses novel titled Ramses the Damned: The Reign of Osiris is scheduled to be released in February of 2022.
Rice’s work has meant a lot to many genre fans over the decades, and I’ll always be especially grateful for the Vampire Chronicles books, which served as the foundation of a great friendship I had years ago.
Our sincere condolences go out to Rice’s family, friends, and fans.
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