Anne Rice Made Me Do It!

I just started using Pinterest and was pinning pictures of women who inspire me…one of which is Anne Rice…and it just made me want to post about how she inspired me to start writing.

I was an avid reader as a kid, but nothing moved me as much as her Vampire Chronicles and tales of Lestat De Lioncourt. Whew! The poetry of her prose. The vivid descriptions of the dark settings her stories took place. The emotional torture her characters experienced. The twist she gave an old legend. I felt her stories were so real, she MUST have interviewed a vampire. She MUST have the inside scoop. What a delightful journey she led me through! I enjoyed The Vampire Lestat so much, I'd read it four times.

Now, I'm dating myself here because I read Interview with the Vampire in the 80s a few years after it came out and I was in high school. As such, I was NOT enthralled with her books because of the Twilight craze. My love affair with these creatures of the night started over 30 years ago, so this is not a bandwagon I've jumped on. The world is just now catching up to me. 😉

I devoured vampire novels like vampires devoured their victims. I'd read every book of vampire fiction I could get my hands on and, at the time, I didn't think anything could compare to the genius of Bram Stoker, who was the father (or known as such, at least) of these gothic and tragic beings with his novel Dracula. (Incidentally, if you haven't read it and you're a vampire fan…you should or you're not officially an avid reader of vampire fiction. It is truly and surprisingly enthralling and unique…even compared to modern fiction.) Though I was writing, my stories were about dragons and unicorns and knights in shining armor.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlJQdpOpAnc]
Sting wrote a song called Moon Over Bourbon Street and my sisters and I were intrigued. Being huge Sting and Police fans, we read all the fine print on all their albums, scouring the inserts for bits of information about their personal insight into their music–and so we learned this song was inspired by Anne Rice's novel Interview with the Vampire. We HAD to get the book just because Sting read it! All three of us–my two younger sisters and myself–became obsessed with Mrs. Rice's stories and began penning poetry. One day I will compile these poems and publish them. They're haunting, beautiful and tragic…just like vampires.

I carried this obsession into my twenties–still reading anything related to vampires, both fiction and non-fiction–and eventually wrote my first novel, then known as Bonded By Blood. Through the years, more stories evolved and now I've developed a six-book series from the first story and use the original title as the name of the series.

And thus is the reason for my dedication page in my debut novel MIDNIGHT CONQUEST:

A Thank You to Sting
For “Moon Over Bourbon Street”
He fed me the intro
To Anne Rice’s treat
She’s planted the seed
To all that I’ve written
If it wasn’t for her
I’d have never been bitten

I had the wonderful privilege of corresponding with Mrs. Rice, letting her know I dedicated my first book to her and how she has been my inspiration. I could have sworn that I blogged about it, but I can't seem to find that entry. Oh well. I guess that's for another post. Thanks for reading!

That's my two pence…