The best-selling author gives up writing about vampires to write about
the 'ultimate supernatural hero' -- Jesus Christ.
By Marcia Z. Nelson

The best-selling author gives up writing about vampires to write about
the 'ultimate supernatural hero' -- Jesus Christ.
By Marcia Z. Nelson


Anne Rice has nailed her vampire novels into a coffin.

"I will never write those kind of books again -- never," Rice said

The best-selling author gives up writing about vampires to write about
the 'ultimate supernatural hero' -- Jesus Christ.
By Marcia Z. Nelson

The best-selling author gives up writing about vampires to write about
the 'ultimate supernatural hero' -- Jesus Christ.
By Marcia Z. Nelson

The best-selling author gives up writing about vampires to write about
the 'ultimate supernatural hero' -- Jesus Christ.
By Marcia Z. Nelson


Anne Rice has nailed her vampire novels into a coffin.

"I will never write those kind of books again -- never," Rice said,
referring to three decades of work that include bestsellers like
"Interview with the Vampire" and other books in the Vampire Chronicles
series. Her books about witches and dark angels, she said, "were
reflections of a world that didn't include redemption."

"I made up my mind that I would not write anything that wasn't for
Christ," the former vampire queen explained. The title of her latest
novel stakes out Rice's new preoccupation. "Christ the Lord: Out of
Egypt" tells the story of a young Jesus from his point of view: a 7-
year-old boy who is discovering his powers and his identity.

This transformation is startling for a writer who previously summoned
vampires, witches and ghosts to life in tale after tale of supernatural
life. Two series of vampire books that began in 1976 with "Interview
with the Vampire," one series dealing with witches, and even a trio of
erotica written under the pen name A.N. Roquelaure all established an
elaborate network of mysterious characters, complex relationships, and
dark themes. Rice's use of the supernatural allowed her to look back
into history for baroque settings as well as contemporary ones for her
stories.

But though they didn't include Jesus, the writer says her previous books
have always pursued questions of morality. From the vampire Lestat to
the devil Memnoch, all her heroes are immortal outsiders who have
supernatural powers and who live in worlds where right and wrong matter
deeply. If the Russian novelist Dostoevsky had his Grand Inquisitor
interrogate Christ in "The Brothers Karamazov," Rice conducted her own
theological investigation in "Memnoch the Devil."

"The books in a way are like stations on a journey," Rice said. "They
reflect different points on a lifelong quest."

Her own faith journey is something of a round trip. Her new book is a
reflection of her return, in 1998, to the faith of her childhood. Raised
a Catholic in 1940s and 1950s New Orleans, that childhood experience of
a gumbo of cultures strongly spiced by religion gave her a keen
awareness of the beauty of faith. A sensual longing for beauty threads
through her work: from the Vampire Lestat's frock coat to rosewood
furniture to rapacious wisteria, the particulars of dress, décor, art,
and music are palpable on the pages of Rice's books.

But she left the church at age 18, beckoned by an adult world where
faith seemed unnecessary. Shortly thereafter she married a painter, the
late Stan Rice, whom she says was a "passionate atheist."

Decades and books later, the influence of Catholic friends and intense
curiosity about Jesus and his times slowly nudged her back to faith, but
not without soul-searching. "I spent a year tearing my hair out over
moral questions," she said. One afternoon in 1998 she asked her
assistant to recommend a priest who might hear her confession, a
Catholic rite of penitence. "She said, 'I know the perfect person, and
he's there now,'" Rice recalls. After a two-hour--"maybe even three"--
session with her confessor, Rice returned to the Church, setting aside
her reservations, especially the Catholic Church's stance on
homosexuality. (Rice's son, Christopher, is gay.) "I said, 'I will leave
these things in the hands of God.'"

She later remarried her husband in a Catholic ceremony at the parish
church of her childhood. He had accepted her return to faith. "We didn't
argue much about that sort of thing," she said. She had already begun
working on her Jesus novel when her husband became ill with a brain
tumor in 2002 and died four months later. Research for "Christ the
Lord" sustained her, she writes in a personal and revealing author's
note that both concludes the book and explains its genesis.

Rice says her return to the Church made writing about Jesus more
challenging. "I had to digest my experience and regain my sense that I
could do this," she said.

Rice immersed herself in Christian scholarship, and her book draws
heavily from many sources, from Josephus to N.T. Wright. But she
discards much of modern New Testament scholarship, as she explains in
the author's note. Her contempt for what she calls "skeptical
scholarship"--including "arguments that insisted most of the Gospels
were suspect, for instance, or written too late to be eyewitness
accounts"--is obvious throughout the note.

The story of Jesus that she constructs includes some legends about
miracles the boy performed. But she makes her tale consistent with the
Gospel of Luke, forming an elaborate and imaginative addition based on a
few lines describing Jesus' childhood. "I took my cue from Luke," she
says. "I saw a great framework there."

Rice's Christ is the young son of Mary who journeys with his family from
Alexandria, Egypt, where they fled after his birth, back to Nazareth. He
observes the social ostracism of his mother, who people believe
conceived her child before marriage. He also witnesses political unrest
among Jews and imperial Roman harshness toward their Jewish subjects.
Rice paints a picture of a young Christ who is both fully human and
fully divine. She elegantly captures his growing awareness of who he is
and the times in which he lives.

Rice was unsure of how both her traditional fans and traditional
Christians would react to her work. But her publisher, Alfred A. Knopf,
signaled its confidence in her new turn with its initial print run of
500,000 copies. Rice has been relieved and gratified by early responses
to the book. When retired New Orleans Archbishop Philip M. Hannan sent a
letter praising her work, "I practically fainted with gratitude," Rice
said. One review calls it one of the bolder retellings of the story of
Jesus.

As for her fans who are more accustomed to reading about immortal
vampires, Rice believes her newest character might not be so different.
"Is Christ our Lord not the ultimate supernatural hero," she asks
rhetorically in the author's ote, "the ultimate outsider, the ultimate
immortal of them all?"

In the end, Rice seems to consider her new book a gift, both to
Christians and to non-Christian fans of her previous work. "This is a
book I offer to all Christians," she writes, "to the fundamentalists, to
the Roman Catholics, to the most liberal Christians in the hope that my
embrace of more conservative doctrines will have some coherence for them
in the here and now of the book...

"I offer this book to those who know nothing of Jesus Christ in the hope
that you will see him in these pages in some form. I offer this novel
with love to my readers who've followed me through one strange turn
after another in the hope that Jesus will be as real to you as any other
character I've ever launched into the world we share."

Rice's future "strange turns" are likely to continue to be inspired by
Jesus. "My life is committed to Christ the Lord," she said. "My books
will be a reflection of that commitment."

Subject: Atheist Anne Rice converts to Christianity!