Anne Rice actually considers herself a very
spiritual person, and does not wish to
arouse the dead in any way. She is respectful to
cemeteries and
churches. She believes there is a ghost in her house in
New Orleans named
Pamela.
Howard Allen O'Brien was born in 1941 and grew up in New Orleans. She lost her mother at an early age to drinking. She married her high school sweetheart, Stan Rice (also a good poet) and they lived for a period of time in San Francisco. They struggled to keep shelter, and Anne spent day and night on her typewriter, churning out story after story. Her first and most popular book, "Interview with a Vampire," began as a short story, and she wrote it during this time. It would be later on that she would expand the story into a novel, which she turned into a book writing contest and lost.
She sent the manuscript out for "Interview with a Vampire" to numerous publishers, and many of them greatly disliked it and called her crazy. Eventually, while at a writer's convention, she handed it to an agent who brought it to Knopf. Knopf loved it.
The book went through several changes- the original script did not have the character of Claudia. Claudia was later added, and writing about her was meant to be a catharsis for Anne. She had lost her first daughter to Leukemia.
The couple also had a son, Christopher Rice, who has also published a novel. They have a beautiful home (I've seen it) and every year Anne hosts a huge Halloween ball for partygoers. I hear it's something else.
Update: Anne's husband Stan Rice passed away in 2002, and since then Anne has been selling off parts of her property in New Orleans.
I have read virtually all of her work. Some of her "soft porn" as she calls it is written under names like Anne Rampling and A.N. Roquelaure. I have met her twice, and both times she was incredibly kind and well-wishing.
Help for this node came from her biography "Prism of the Night."