Lestat will be back with his tribe of outcasts

From Anne: Prince Lestat is the first of my novels to rack up over 2,000 reviews on Amazon. For me, it is a reboot of the series, with a wholehearted commitment to write not just about my beloved hero, Lestat, but about Lestat and the whole tribe.

Another Prince Lestat novel is coming to be published in November and I hope there will be another Prince Lestat novel after that.

The Vampire Chronicles overall is an eccentric series that was never an organized series at all. It is the story of a tribe of outcasts, as seen through the eyes of individual members who deal with vampirism and immortality in their own ways. It's about outcasts, monsters, people society fears and rejects; it's about having incalculable power to determine your own destiny while paying a terrible price for that power. It's about moving through darkness to find light.

At times when writing these books, most of the time, actually, I feel like I'm channeling real personalities, who inhabit a world somewhere that I've been privileged to see from an omniscient perspective. I yield to Lestat when I write about him. There have been years when I couldn't see him or hear his voice. Well, he's back now and the world around him is filled with vivid detail.

Prince Lestat is available on Amazon.com.

Have you read The Wolves of Midwinter?

From Anne:  The Wolves of Midwinter was meant as a Christmas book. A kind of "Christmas at Downton Abbey" for the werewolves of Nideck Point. Well, we didn't make that clear enough in the title. Some readers couldn't quite figure why they were reading a novel about one long Christmas celebration.

But for me it made perfect sense, tying in ancient midwinter customs with the werewolves of today as they celebrate a pagan feast that has become a Christian feast. The novel amplifies The Wolf Gift. And it does take further the personal story of the hero, Reuben, young werewolf with a foot in two worlds. It's also about the deep need of the people of this earth to honor nature and its mysteries, to celebrate the changing seasons, a need so deep that it transcends religion or religious bias or "unbelief."

There is a long tradition in English literature of writing gothic ghost stories at Christmas time. That tradition gave us Dickens' Christmas Carol. I love all that...Christmas as a time when the deep dark and cold of winter open a portal to the supernatural.

Get your copy of The Wolves of Midwinter now!

The novel that was "Blood Paradise" and the promise of a new Lestat adventure

Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis flows right out of Prince Lestat. It gives me a chance to present Lestat's royal Court in the mountains of France in its full glory.

In the past the vampire tribe has tried to come together — for example, on the Night Island described in Queen of the Damned — but it has never worked out. Vampires drift away. At one point the vampires gathered in St. Elizabeth's Orphanage in New Orleans as Lestat lay comatose on the floor of the old chapel; but eventually he and they moved on. This time around, the French Court offers new hope. And into this world comes the mystery of Atlantis coupled with a grave threat to the tribe's survival. 

The novel will be published on November 29th. And by that time, perhaps I'll be well on the road to finishing yet another Lestat adventure, flowing from this one. I don't want to offer a tentative title. Titles are subject to change with me, and I need to face that fact. The original title of this new work was "Blood Paradise." But I wanted Atlantis in the title. The legend of ancient Atlantis has been an obsession with me for a long time.

(Ignore the paperback price posted on Amazon. That may be for the Large Print edition. There will be a regular paperback publication at a lower price in time. Also check out the guarantees that come with a pre-order.)

Pre-order on Amazon here.

On film rumors

Anne on Lestat's future in film. Universal Studios and Imagine Entertainment currently own the rights to the Vampire Chronicles. They are the ONLY official sources of news on this. What I know is what they've told us through the press: a screen play is in the works. Beyond that, NOTHING is known about a reboot. Nothing official. Nothing is known about possible casting. Nothing official. Myself, I ignore internet rumors as best I can. It can be heart breaking to get all excited about a potential cast pick only to find out there is nothing to the story at all.

Should an author read reviews? Here's what Anne has to say.

Anne here on authors reading reviews.

If reading reviews hurts you as a writer, then don't do it. Nobody says you have to read reviews and there are plenty of good reasons not to do anything that hurts you. Reviews are written for other readers, not for writers anyway. Myself I do read any and every review at least once.

You can't control what you "believe." A good review, a negative review, any review might ring a bell with you, teach you something, inspire you in some way. Or you can be blocked by what you read in a review. Again, you cannot control what you "believe," or what you feel.

But you are in control of your work; and your obligation, as I see it, is to write the best book that you can write according to your standards. That's what I think my readers want of me. They want me to be true to my own judgment, my own passion, my own voice. And do the best I can.

Yes, different readers will have different reactions. That's a given, especially today with 360 degree internet exposure for a book. Authors have to live with this. But you must forge ahead with courage and respect for your own passion.

I'm honored that Lestat is so real to people that they fight with me about what he would do or say on occasion. That's a wonderful thing, to have it confirmed that your character is real for people. That doesn't mean I'm not hurt when some people slam me for the choices that Lestat makes or that I make with him. Of course I'm hurt. But I keep right on going.

Again, there is no winning a perfectly happy audience. If you think there is, choose any book you positively loved by George R.R. Martin or Stephen King and read the negative reviews of that book on Amazon. 

The creation of a fictional world requires courage, stubbornness, a great quiet faith in oneself, and a ruthless on the part of the writer to protect herself from what is harmful. And again, reviews aren't written for us; they're written for other readers. We may bristle at the seeming "unfairness" of a review; but we must move on from that. 

When you do want critical feedback on your work, choose teachers or critics whom you trust for specific reasons. It is your right to be very careful in this regard. Protecting your talent and your morale are your responsibility.

The outcasts of the literary world

Anne on vampires; they are the most powerful metaphor for the outsider I ever encountered. I, a woman with no clear gender identity, strong erotic drives, great ambition, and a fractured cultural background, felt "normal" when I wrote about vampires --- intelligent outcasts who refused to accept the world's contempt as their story. I didn't inject philosophy into my vampire novels; it was just there; Lestat, Louis, Claudia, Armand...they were living breathing allegories, all crying for the right to live, to have a place in the universe. If you give all you have to your writing, if you tell all you know in every novel, you can't escape the deeper philosophical questions, meanings, possibilities.

When I came of age, nobody thought "a vampire novel" was worth that kind of commitment and depth. Genre fiction was presumed to be shallow. Same with the historical novel. I saw "Feast of All Saints" panned because it wasn't a simplistic melodrama. Nobody even knew how to classify "Cry to Heaven." But I kept giving all I had to my strange books, ignoring the denigrating labels and frankly getting downright angry about them.

Today, you don't hear those complaints so much. Seems the whole world knows you can learn a great deal about "everything" from a good episode of "Game of Thrones" and that there are profound truths in "Gone Girl." Daniel Silva packs his beautiful spy novels with deep moral concerns. Any type of novel can be a great novel. ------- What a wonderful thing to have lived long enough to see the power of labels broken, the "rules" of genre thrown to the winds, the bias of high culture ignored or stood on its head.

Of course the science fiction readers always knew these truths. In the 50's they were looking to their great writers for poetry, heart wrenching reflection on alienation --- the use of plot and setting for lofty and undeniable truths. I love being a novelist. ----------- I love being the producer, director, set designer and star of my weird, unclassifiable stories. I've grown to love being laughed at, sneered at, ridiculed, questioned as to how I, of all people, dare to write about Jesus! And you know why I love it? Because I've been lucky enough to have many, many readers over the years, readers who give each new book a chance, readers who say simply that they enjoy my books, readers who quietly "get it," wonderful readers from all walks of life --- They are priceless to me, and they are my real critics, reviewers, judges, etc. I long ago left it up to them to decide whether I was any good, or just a crackpot or a trash writer. And I just go on writing about vampires, witches, telepaths, ghosts, angels, werewolves, and yes, even Jesus --- for them and for me.