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Anne Rice

Thirty years ago, Anne Rice published the mother of all modern vampire novels, “Interview With the Vampire.”

I talked with Rice this afternoon for an upcoming story (tentatively for Nov. 16). That story is going to be about paranormal fiction, and Rice answered my questions. But she was really available on Halloween because of  her new memoir  about her return to the Catholic Church.  Its title is “Called Out of Darkness.”

 She was at home in Rancho Mirage, California, and said that she’d be staying in this Halloween. But some of her household was taking treats to a nearby Catholic Church’s trunk-or-treat. Rice said she buys Christian symbols and gifts like crosses on chains, along with candy, to give to the trick-or-treaters.

She easily reconciles the church with Halloween, saying the Catholic Church would remind members that this time of year is linked to ancient feast days, The Feast of All Souls and The Feast of All Saints.

Of her previous vampire books and the switch to Christian writing, she didn’t seem to find them in conflict: “Any kind of fantasy can be Christian…. it depends on the moral compass of the book.”

Her vampire books, she says, were “meditations on good and evil.” 

In her memoir, she says that she wrote some 20 books when she was an “atheist” (she was raised Catholic, though, in New Orleans in the ’40s and ’50s). Now, she’s excited to write novels about Jesus, such as “The Road to Cana.” She says she has a great many ideas for Christian literature.

“The Christian audience is very excited about the new books. and that makes me very happy.  A whole new world  is open to me” as a writer.