Last week, I reviewed Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles: An Alphabettery. This brand-new A to Z compendium tells you everything you could want to know about any person, place, or thing mentioned in Rice’s popular vampire series. But who took the time to painstakingly compile all this information, and how did they become such an expert on Rice’s extensive fictional world? The Alphabettery was written by Becket, a close friend of Anne Rice who served as her personal assistant from 2005 to 2017. I reached out to Becket and he was kind enough to send back some detailed and thoughtful replies about what it was like working with his idol and writing the definitive guide to her most prominent series. Read on for our interview. Also, be sure to scroll to the bottom of the post and enter the giveaway to win your own copy of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles: An Alphabettery!
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Review of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles: An Alphabettery
Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles have been around for over four decades now, and with the recent release of Blood Communion, the series is up to thirteen books (fifteen if you count the New Tales of the Vampires). That’s a lot to keep track of, even for the most dedicated of fans. But never fear, the ultimate Anne Rice reference book is finally here! Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles: An Alphabettery, compiled by her personal assistant Becket and with an introduction by Rice herself, comes out tomorrow, October 23. Here’s what you need to know about the hefty reference guide: Continue reading Review of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles: An Alphabettery
The Vampire Armand Review: Returning to Anne Rice
Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles changed the world of vampire fiction and are responsible for so much of the way the genre is today. You can see Rice’s influence in everything from Twilight to True Blood to The Vampire Diaries. Knowing this, I picked up Rice’s books quite early, reading Interview with the Vampire during my initial bloodsucker craze when I was probably about thirteen. Taken together, the first three books—Interview, The Vampire Lestat, and The Queen of the Damned—have been canonized as timeless classics that are essential reading for anyone who loves these creatures of the night. But as many fans would agree, after Queen of the Damned the books begin to get … weird. I pushed through for a couple more books, but after Lestat embarked on a Dantesque voyage through heaven and hell and back in time to witness the Crucifixion during Memnoch the Devil, I decided I was done and abandoned the series for half a decade. This year, however, I decided to try picking back up where I left off with The Vampire Armand. Continue reading The Vampire Armand Review: Returning to Anne Rice
The Vampire Literary Canon
Now, how can we possibly talk about gothic literature without mentioning the vampire genre? Of all the creatures that go bump in the night, vampires have long been a favorite of writers and readers alike. Today of course, the word brings to mind the type of teenage vampire love story popularized by Stephanie Meyer. To have a true appreciation of the genre however, I urge you to check out some of the classic stories that established the concept of vampires as we think of them today and informed the countless vampire novels that followed: