Anne O'Brien Rice is horror's female equivalent to Stephen King. A publishing phenomenon in her own right, she began her acclaimed 'Vampire Chronicles' series in 1976 with the novel Interview with the Vampire. Responsible for creating a huge resurgence in the popularity of the undead, the book introduced readers to her sexually powerful bloodsucker, Lestat de Lioncourt .
Described as 'The undisputed queen of vampire literature', she has followed it with a string of bestselling sequels and spin-offs, including The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the Body Thief, Memnoch the Devil, Pandora, The Vampire Armand, Vittorio the Vampire and Merrick.
Her other genre novels include the 'Mayfair Witches' series (The Witching Hour, Lasher and Taltos: Lives of the Mayfair Witches), The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned, Servant of the Bones and Violin. She has also published a number of erotic novels under the pseudonyms 'Anne Rampling' and 'A.N. Roquelaure' .
As with King, a mini-industry of non-fiction books has grown up around her work. Among the most prolific is Katherine Ramsland, whose biography of the author , Prism of the Night, appeared in 1991. She has since followed it with such titles as The Witches' Companion, The Anne Rice Trivia Book and The Anne Rice Reader. Rice's life before she became a writer was profiled in the 1993 BBC TV documentary , Bookmark: The Vampire's Life, and the following year she was awarded the World Horror Convention's Grand Master Award .
Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles was filmed in 1994 by Neil Jordan with an all-star cast that included Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas, Christian Slater, and Tom Cruise as Lestat. More recently , The Queen of the Damned featured Stuart Townsend as the undead anti-hero .
'You know, I was not a person who was obsessed with vampires,' reveals Rice, 'or who had pictures of them around the house. I hadn't seen any vampire movies in recent years, so it didn't grow out of any active obsession with them. It just happened that when I started to write through that image, everything came together for me. I was suddenly able to talk about reality by using fantasy.'
The following tale is the author's only vampire short story, originally published in the American magazine Redbook in 1984
Spring 1888.
Rampling Gate. It was so real to us in the old pictures, rising like a fairy-tale castle out of its own dark wood. A wilderness of gables and chimneys between those two immense towers, grey stone walls mantled in ivy, mullioned windows reflecting the drifting clouds.
But why had Father never taken us there? And why, on his deathbed, had he told my brother that Rampling Gate must be torn down, stone by stone? 'I should have done it, Richard,' he said. 'But I was born in that house, as my father was, and his father before him. You must do it now, Richard. It has no claim on you. Tear it down.'
Was it any wonder that not two months after Father's passing, Richard and I were on the noon train headed south for the mysterious mansion that had stood upon the rise above the village of Rampling for 400 years? Surely Father would have understood. How could we destroy the old place when we had never seen it?
But, as the train moved slowly through the outskirts of London I can't say we were very sure of ourselves, no matter how curious and excited we were.
Richard had just finished four years at Oxford. Two whirlwind social seasons in London had proved me something of a shy success. I still preferred scribbling poems and stories in my room to dancing the night away, but I'd kept that a good secret. And though we had lost our mother when we were little, Father had given us the best of everything. Now the carefree years were ended. We had to be independent and wise.
The evening before, we had pored over all the old pictures of Rampling Gate, recalling in hushed, tentative voices the night Father had taken those pictures down from the walls.
I couldn't have been more than six and Richard eight when it happened, yet we remembered well the strange incident in Victoria Station that had precipitated Father's uncharacteristic rage. We had gone there after supper to say farewell to a school friend of Richard's, and Father had caught a glimpse, quite unexpectedly, of a young man at the lighted window of an incoming train. I could remember the young man's face clearly to this day: remarkably handsome, with a head of lustrous brown hair, his large black eyes regarding Father with the saddest expression as Father drew back. 'Unspeakable horror!' Father had whispered. Richard and I had been too amazed to speak a word.
Later that night, Father and Mother quarrelled, and we crept out of our rooms to listen on the stairs.
'That he should dare to come to London!' Father said over and over. 'Is it not enough for him to be the undisputed master of Rampling Gate?'
How we puzzled over it as little ones! Who was this stranger, and how could he be master of a house that belonged to our father, a house that had been left in the care of an old, blind housekeeper for years?
But now after looking at the pictures again, it was too dreadful to think of Father's exhortation. And too exhilarating to think of the house itself. I'd packed my manuscripts, for — who knew? — maybe in that melancholy and exquisite setting I'd find exactly the inspiration I needed for the story I'd been writing in my head.
Yet there was something almost illicit about the excitement I felt. I saw in my mind's eye the pale young man again, with his black greatcoat and red woollen cravat. Like bone china, his complexion had been. Strange to remember so vividly. And I realized now that in those few remarkable moments, he had created for me an ideal of masculine beauty that I had never questioned since. But Father had been so angry. I felt an unmistakable pang of guilt.
It was late afternoon when the old trap carried us up the gentle slope from the little railway station and we had our first real look at the house. The sky had paled to a deep rose hue beyond a bank of softly gilded clouds, and the last rays of the sun struck the uppermost panes of the leaded windows and filled them with solid gold.
'Oh, but it's too majestic,' I whispered, 'too like a great cathedral, and to think that it belongs to us!'
Richard gave me the smallest kiss on the cheek.
I wanted with all my heart to jump down from the trap and draw near on foot, letting those towers slowly grow larger and larger above me, but our old horse was gaining speed.
When we reached the massive front door Richard and I were spirited into the great hall by the tiny figure of the blind housekeeper Mrs Blessington, our footfalls echoing loudly on the marble tile, and our eyes dazzled by the dusty shafts of light that fell on the long oak table and its heavily carved chairs, on the sombre tapestries that stirred ever so slightly against the soaring walls.
