“I am the vampire Lestat. I’m immortal. More or less. The light of the sun, the sustained heat of an intense fire – these things might destroy me. But then again, they might not.” These are the opening lines of ‘The Vampire Lestat’, by Anne Rice, copied from my October 1986 First Ballantine Books edition. It was the first Anne Rice book I ever read, but far from the last. A row of Anne Rice paperbacks lines my bookshelf.
Anne Rice: What her Books Meant to Me
Anne Rice died this week at age 80, after writing dozens of novels. Her death made me pause and reflect on why her stories appealed to me so much.
Part of the joy of reading a book for the first time has to do with who we were at the time. When I read The Vampire Lestat, I was in my early thirties, married to the love of my life (he still walks beside me, my anchor and safe haven), working at the University of Guelph, taking creative writing courses, and riding my first horse Lancer. I was full of energy, and life was exploding with potential. Anne Rice’s lush imagery and bold, splendid, vampire protagonist – who was seeking, as the cover blurb puts it, “answers to the mystery of his eternal, terrifying existence” – resonated with my own journey towards maturity and meaning.
The very humanity of the vampires Anne Rice created started my lifelong fascination with the vampire in story. For me, the vampire represents the innermost truth of what it means to be human: each of us separate and alone, but bound through our deepest needs for community and meaning to our families, friends, the rest of humanity.
How Anne Rice’s Stories Affect my Writing
Now that I’ve finally become a writer myself, I’ve discovered that my stories are, first and foremost, about people, and about what it means to be human. My career in scientific laboratories developed my analytical mind, but it’s my creative mind that makes my life meaningful. How do I turn the crash of feelings that overwhelm me at the sight of an old friend’s face, into words that will resonate with other people? How do I fashion the characters and events that will bring those big feelings to life on the page? This is what it’s all about for me, and Anne Rice played her own small part in nudging me in this direction.
I’m not sure if it’s significant that I’m working on my own vampire series now. I’m striving to make my vampires and all my characters to be as human as Anne Rice’s.
Never forgetting, of course, that stories are, first and foremost, about entertaining readers. Anne Rice also did that wonderfully well.