#SDCC14 Exclusive: Anne Rice Talks Prince Lestat, Future Vampire Chronicles, Updates on Her Werewolves, Witches, and More!
With a lot of chaos in play and Anne’s own Facebook post back in March of this year that she was already formulating ideas for the sequel, which the author confirmed for us will be titled Blood Paradise (conceived by her editor, Vicky Wilson), we wondered how many more novels about the Brat Prince there might be on the horizon.
The potential is “unlimited right now,” according to Rice, “unlimited. The second one I hope to have finished by October. It’s just boiling over with material…”
“When I finish it, I’ll know. There’ll be a period of exhaustion, but then I’ll know if there’s going to be a third right away or if it’s going to take a little time. But I would say it’s unlimited right now; I don’t see closing it out. I never really wanted to close it out anyway. When I stopped, I left it open; that’s why a lot of people were disappointed in Blood Canticle back in 2003 because there was no real finale. It was just Lestat went dancing off into the night. *laughs* I left it open. I didn’t resolve things… I liked the idea of them all existing out there and all moving through time and making new connections and making new vampires.”
With new connections being mentioned, we asked Anne, now that Lestat is back in her life, does she still have time for Reuben Golding and his Wolf Gift cohorts? “I’ll get back to them soon,” she promised. “They’re just a different language and a different kind of pleasure to write.”
What sort of differences are there when writing about vampires versus werewolves? “[Wolves] are a lot of fun… to me it’s a different story [to write] about immortals in the modern world and how they adjust. The wolves are different because, you know, they’re really human most of the time. Fully, completely human. So in some ways it’s a lot of fun to write about them because they can function so well in the human world. With the vampires, it’s always after dark. And it’s always titanic powers: mind-reading, flying, defying gravity, being able to burn someone up with your mind.”
“When you deal with characters who are that powerful, it takes a lot of negotiation. How do you find a plot when you have a houseful of people who can all read each other’s thoughts? You have to find some way to describe how they shut one another out or confuse one another… with the wolves I don’t have to do that so much.”
With witches being so ubiquitous these days, especially on TV, we had to ask Anne about any progress being made with regard to James Duff’s adaptation of her The Lives of the Mayfair Witches novels, a project that first sprang to life over five years ago. You’d think HBO, Showtime, or even upstarts like A&E or WGN America would snap it up. Unfortunately, it’s not so simple.
Rice explained, “The actual, practical reason [is] Warner Bros. owned two of The Witching Hour books for ten years, and when they reverted back to me, they reverted back to me with a lien against them for a certain amount of money. It’s that that’s hanging things up. The rights are available; they’re mine, I own the rights, but whoever steps up to make a movie or a miniseries has got to pay Warner Bros. that money… It’s a fairly large lien… they paid me quite a bit for The Witching Hour and for Lasher, the second novel. But there is a lot of interest… I think things will move. Let’s hope that Prince Lestat, even though it’s not about the witches, will help.”
As for any of the latest reboot/remake/reimagining rumors about the granddaddy of them all, her classic Interview with the Vampire, Anne acknowledged, “There’s a lot of movie interest. Let’s hope… It’s always a matter of hammering out the contract, and it’s so complicated. I do think it’s a golden era though. We have never had fantasy and the supernatural on TV like we have today of the finest quality… It’s just a banquet table right now of unbelievable entertainment. It’s really great… Today we have this feast, and we have this archival culture where you can find anything of any age, too. It’s just a great time.”
It certainly wasn’t always that way. Genre films and TV shows of any sort were few and far between back when Anne was growing up and starting her career. She told us how impactful NBC’s 1973 TV movie “Frankenstein: The True Story” was on her writing back in the beginning. “That had a big influence on me,” she reminisced. “I saw that and wrote Interview with the Vampire… it was so well done and so beautiful, so romantic and so rare, at that time, that it just sent me right in to my desk to write Interview with the Vampire. And now we’ve got 20 times that happening.”
With Prince Lestat hitting bookshelves October 28th, Halloween 2014 is sure to be one to remember for Rice, and she’ll be celebrating in style at the Lestat Coronation Ball (hosted by Anne Rice’s Vampire Lestat Fan Club) in New Orleans on October 31st.
Anne extended us – and our readers – an invitation: “If you’ve never come to the Ball, think of coming because it can be quite wonderful. It also can be a lot of fun to be in New Orleans and in the French Quarter for Halloween!” Be careful what you wish for, Anne. We just might take you up on your offer!
Our thanks to Anne Rice for her time, Becket for his camera work, and Josh Zajdman at Penguin Random House for coordinating.
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