Interview with Christopher Rice—On Ramses the Damned and Anne Rice’s Legacy

Earlier this month, I reviewed Ramses the Damned: The Reign of Osiris, a recent release from the mother-son writing duo of Anne and Christopher Rice. While Anne remains one of the most influential figures in the paranormal fantasy genre, her son is building quite the literary career for himself, as well. Christopher Rice has written over two dozen novels including erotic romance, suspense novels, and a series of supernatural thrillers. But of course, I know him best for the collaborations he’s done with Anne—the most recent of which just came out shortly after Anne’s death. While I am crushed to have missed the chance to interview mother and son together, I am honored that Christopher took a few moments during this difficult time to answer some questions about The Reign of Osiris and his mother’s legacy:

The Reign of Osiris is the second book that you co-wrote together with your mom. What was that co-writing experience like?

Challenging and wonderful at the same time. Anne and I weren’t creating a world together, I was sliding into a world she’d already built. In some ways that made it easier. But the whole experience, the second book in particular, was about exploring how what was already published could be expanded and continued and brought forward. The cliffhanger at the end of The Mummy was both a blessing and a curse. It said, you must start here, which in some ways is helpful because you don’t have to figure out where to begin. And conversely, it’s a challenge because your origin point is locked in place from day one.

How do you make sure to bring something of your own into a world that Anne first created on her own with The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned in 1989?

Well, with this particular project, I wouldn’t say I made sure to bring something of my own to it. Ultimately, we had to make choices that were about best serving the existing material. I had a lot of ideas that didn’t work. I had one big idea which we needed to let go of during the writing process, because the more I put it on paper, the more I saw it wasn’t hanging together, and that was to make Cleopatra a complete figure of villainy in the second book. As I wrote it, it just didn’t feel right. Mom had initially cautioned against it, saying we should treat her as a richer and more complex figure and I remember lecturing her, “Your story needs a monster.” Then when we got into it I was like, wait a minute. This is Cleopatra, for Christ’s sake. And the entire genius of Anne’s take on the mummy myth is that the mummy is a complex and sympathetic figure — an immortal genius, if you will — not some growling zombie-like villain.

The Reign of Osiris touches on quite the range of history and geography—the story travels from Edwardian England to Tsarist Russia and features characters with histories that go back thousands of years to ancient Egypt. What kind of research did you and Anne do for this book?

The thing I always say about Anne is that she never had to do research because she was always doing research. Meaning she always had her nose buried deep in some work of historical nonfiction. Throughout her life she remained a constant student of history, and so if she got a wild hair to do a character from the Carolingian Empire, chances were she knew enough about that period in history already to start putting together something credible and informed by fact. That said, we initially locked horns over the idea of a Ramses novel that involved World War I. I really struggled with how we were going to convey the adventure and romance of the previous books in the mud of the trenches. The answer was, we didn’t go to the trenches, but focused more on what it would be like to be a powerful immortal on the eve of this devastating loss of innocence moment for the world, and feel like it wasn’t your place to intervene. Or that you couldn’t intervene because to do so would reveal your impossible nature to the world. I was the one who had to do the research on Tsarist Russia and I found it hypnotic. I walked away with a new love of historical fiction, which I’d always told myself I couldn’t write.

Immortal characters have a long legacy in fiction—from damned wanderer figures like Melmoth to a whole genre full of vampires. Why do you think the exploration of immortality has such a strong appeal to readers?

The appeal for me, and the genius of how Anne portrayed it, was that immortality is like time travel. This idea that an immortal could sit and describe for you what it was like to sail the Atlantic to Paris in the 18th Century, that they could describe for you the smells, the creaking of the ship, the scuttering of the rats. Isn’t that what we all look for when we read history or historical fiction? Not simply to be transported, but to know how it felt. But again and again Anne turned to the idea of how terribly lonely it would be. If you don’t have a tribe of other immortals around you, you are in some ways more battered by the reality of death because it will take everyone from you that you love and leave you in a state of near constant grief.

How did growing up with writers for parents influence your writing?

My parents were terribly disappointed when I didn’t pursue an acting career more aggressively. They really thought that was my calling. I like to say I’m the only kid in the world whose parents were disappointed when he wouldn’t audition for Julliard. But that speaks to how supportive they were of creative endeavors in general. Mom was very cautious about not reading my work too early in the process and not giving feedback that she thought would intimidate or overwhelm me. Dad read my first novel in manuscript form and said, “This is going to change your life.”

What do you most want people to remember your mother for?

Her creative fearlessness, and her wicked sense of humor. Interview with the Vampire has become such a staple of pop culture that we forget how completely absurd most people found the very idea when she first published it. “I just can’t see this at all,” said one very famous editor at the time. And critics simply ridiculed her. How dare you try to write this pop culture pablum in this elevated, sophisticated way! And she held up under it. She could be a fantastically stubborn and defiant person and sometimes that served her art and career in magnificent ways.

What upcoming projects are you working on?

My producing partner and podcast co-host, New York Times bestselling author Eric Shaw Quinn, and I continue to put out episodes of our podcast TDPS Presents Christopher & Eric and we talk about everything from our favorite trashy true crime specials to Anne’s legacy. You can find them all at www.TheDinnerPartyShow.com. Believe it or not, I’m releasing four novels this year. In May I have a standalone thriller coming out called Decimate, which is deeply connected to my last years with Mom. It deals with near death experiences, and when I told her I was going to write about the topic, she became ecstatic and started sending me all her favorite books on the topic. This March I’m launching something new for me, an acknowledged pen name devoted to sexy, beachy sunny romance novels about love between men. The first is called Sapphire Sunset. The pen name is about letting my readers know this is a very different project. There are no serial killers or vengeful spirits in a C. Travis Rice novel. A Christopher Rice novel can be a lot of things — an international thriller, a supernatural horror story, a collaboration with Anne. C. Travis Rice is going to be about gay love stories with happy endings (and lots of sex). The second in the series, Sapphire Spring, releases in September and the third, Sapphire Storm, is out in 2023. But I haven’t completely gone over to the world of romance. I plan to keep one foot firmly planted in the world of the dark and suspenseful.

Lastly, what is your favorite work of classic Gothic or horror literature?

If I can’t choose The Witching Hour, by my mother, I was completely blown away by the work of Greg F. Gifune a few years ago. I’m still haunted by his novel Children Of Chaos. 

You can find out more about Christopher Rice at his website www.christopherricebooks.com or follow him on Twitter or Facebook. And if you haven’t picked up a copy yet, you can get his latest release The Reign of Osiris using this Bookshop.org affiliate link.