Anne Rice book news

From The Associated Press --

Vampire author Anne Rice set to release video book --

By HILLEL ITALIE --
Feb 9, 2010 --

NEW YORK — Anne Rice is giving the video book a try.

The author of "Interview With a Vampire," "The Vampire Lestat" and many other favorites has agreed to terms with the video book company Vook on a multimedia edition of "The Master of Rampling Gate," a vampire story published in Redbook magazine in 1984 and set in an England mansion in the 19th century.

"Vook represents a very exciting combination of new technological elements, that I think is long overdo in publishing," Rice said in a statement released Wednesday by Vook. "I'm excited that `The Master of Rampling Gate' is going to have new life in this form, and cannot wait to see the finished product. I'm not sure that my mind can conceive of all the possibilities of this new form. I'm learning. And it feels good."

Opinions are still mixed among publishers and authors about video books, or vooks, with some calling them a gimmick and others saying new formats are needed for the Internet age. The product integrates text, video and social networking.

Vook, based in Alameda, Calif., has been producing video books for Simon & Schuster and the HarperCollins imprint HarperStudio and also making works out of public domain texts. Vook founder Bradley Inman says "The Sherlock Holmes Experience," based on two stories by Conan Doyle, has been downloaded thousands of times.

The Rice project begins "a strategic publishing relationship" with Rice's literary agency, Janklow & Nesbit Associates, according to Vook. No other specific writers were identified, but clients at Janklow & Nesbit include David McCullough, Edward P. Jones and the late Michael Crichton.

"They (Vook) came in about two months ago and showed us some of their wares. I think it's very interesting and I think the publishing world needs to really start looking for new ways to find readers," said Lynn Nesbit of Janklow & Nesbit, who said other writers at the agency expressed strong interest in video books, although she declined to provide names.

The Rice video book, which includes an author interview, will be released March 1 and can be purchased through the iPhone, iPod touch and other digital devices. The list price is $6.99.

Q & A with Anne Rice

From The Desert Sun --

Author Anne Rice switches from vampires to angels --

By: Bruce Fessier --
February 7, 2010 --

Unlike her vampire protagonists, Anne Rice is a sun lover.

The best-selling author, 68, has lived in Rancho Mirage since 2006, when she moved from New Orleans after the death of her husband, painter and poet Stan Rice, four years earlier.

Her Thunderbird Heights home is adorned with hundreds of ornate dolls from New Orleans and Stan Rice's art graces her walls.

But the author says, “I need those 360 sunny days per year.”

Rice wrote her last vampire novel, “Blood Canticle,” in 2002 after revitalizing the genre in the 1970s with “Interview With the Vampire,” the first in her “Vampire Chronicles” series.

She announced in 2004 that she would no longer write about vampires after re-embracing her Catholic faith. She's now an active parishioner at St. Francis of Assisi in La Quinta.

The petite, bob hair-styled San Francisco State University graduate recently released her first novel in a new “Songs of the Seraphim” series about an assassin who is literally reborn into different centuries as an agent of angels.

“Angel Time: The Songs of the Seraphim” was partly inspired by the Mission Inn in Riverside, she said, but it also was kindled by the welcoming desert environment.

Rice discussed her new book, her vampire novels, her faith and her love of the desert in a wide-ranging interview at her spacious hillside home.

Vampires
The Desert Sun: Do you have a favorite time in history?

Rice: Ancient Egypt fascinated me as a little girl. There was a mummy that came to the New Orleans museum when I was a child. I remember seeing a little mummy in a box and being enthralled. I was very frightened by the mummy movies in the 1940s. They are terrible movies, but I can't watch them to this day.

Mythology is a bridge to metaphysics. Were you attracted to metaphysics?

Quite a bit. In “The Vampire Chronicles,” the earliest vampires were an ancient Egyptian queen and king, Enkil and Akasha. I tied it in with all the theories about cannibalism that E. A. Wallis Budge has written about in his books on ancient Egypt. I have devoured material on Egypt. I went up the Nile as far as Aswan. I wanted to take my son, Christopher, to Egypt to start his travels, but it was never safe enough to do that.

Did ancient Egypt start your interest in vampires?

I don't think so. Vampires for me started as a whim. I was thinking one day, what would it be like if you could get an interview with a vampire? I got carried away with it and I really was going on the memory of a black-and-white film I saw as a child, called “Dracula's Daughter,” which was a sequel to the Bela Lugosi “Dracula.” In it, Dracula's daughter is a tormented aristocrat and also a painter. One of her victims is a model and I just thought that was the most glamorous, wonderful character. This tragic, tormented aristocrat who was in fact sensitive enough to paint portraits.

Years later, I developed my own mythology. I discovered when I was writing those novels about vampires I could access feelings in a way I couldn't in any realistic novel.

Vampire writers today are taking the story in new directions. What do you think of the vampire fad?

I think it's just what you said. We have new authors taking it in new directions. People ask about it as if it's something independent of the authors causing it to be a good time for vampire fiction. I don't think it's that.

The concept of the vampire is a great concept, so it's not surprising that many different authors could go to that concept and write fascinating stories. Stephanie Meyer with the “Twilight” stuff really is repeating the basic theme of the Bronte sisters: a young girl fascinated by a mysterious older figure. She's made it a vampire that goes to high school, but it's basically an older man that's both protective and something of a menace. That's straight out of “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights” - the infatuation with Heathcliff, the infatuation with Mr. Rochester.

I don't know if she consciously did that, but she satisfied a huge demand and I think it's not surprising that young women have that fantasy because they live in a rather strange world in high school. ... They're in many instances ready for marriage, but they can't go out with an older man who can marry them and offer them a home. They're condemned to sort of sex playing. We're the only culture on Earth that's ever thought fertile young women should play at sex with unmarriageable young boys.

That wasn't your angle.

No. I was writing from the standpoint of the vampire. I wanted to be the mysterious, menacing one. I wasn't ever writing from the standpoint of the victim. If I brought a new twist, that was the twist.

'Angel Time'
It doesn't seem like the author of “The Vampire Chronicles” could have written “Angel Time.” What was your frame of mind as you wrote them?

A lot went into “The Vampire Chronicles.” It had to do with grief and pain and nihilism because that was 1976 when I wrote that first novel. I had lost my daughter to a rare form of leukemia and I think the book reflects a lot of grief - grief for lost faith. As a grieving person, and a guilt-ridden atheist, I could identify with that vampire from the darkness and longing. Then the characters took on life and the story took on a momentum of its own. But I think books always reflect something about you and your life, no matter how fantastic they may seem.

What was your inspiration for “Angel Time?”

I wanted to do the book for a long time - the idea of a person being recruited by the angels and going back in time and working for the angels. I've been thinking of it for years, really. It was just a matter of getting the time and thinking this was the time to do this. When I saw the Mission Inn, I thought, this is where it has to start. I was so taken by that place.

How did it develop?

I knew I wanted Toby (the assassin) to go back to the Middle Ages. Also, I was reading a lot of history. The 12th and 13th centuries are two centuries I didn't know much about and I came across the story of Little Saint William of Norwich and how the Jews were accused of ritually murdering (him). That later became a common accusation against Jews throughout Europe, but the first case was in Norwich. I don't for a moment believe the Jews murdered Little Saint William, but I thought, what is it like for these people to live with this kind of suspicion and tension? I decided to investigate everything about them. I thought, I don't want to take my hero back to the story of Little Saint William, himself. There's not enough room there for me to make a fiction, so I went to a later century and a similar accusation. What I wrote about was very probable.

Renewal of faith
How did you find Christianity after having called yourself an atheist?

I was brought up Catholic. For a long time, I had been believing in God and realizing I was no longer an atheist. But I didn't think it was possible to go back. One day, after a couple years of questioning a lot of things, I finally realized I believed in God. I loved Him and wanted to go back. I called a priest and went to confession and went back to church. It wasn't an easy thing to do.

What happened that day?

I don't remember anything happening except sitting at my desk and realizing I wanted to go back through the Catholic Church. A couple years later, I dedicated all my work to God. In a sense, I would no longer write any books as an atheist. “The Vampire Chronicles” are really books about atheism. The vampires are atheists. They don't have any sign from God that He exists and, in a way, they're about the miseries of that outlook. I couldn't write them any more. I couldn't enter into their universe. I wrote two books about Jesus Christ, both of which are novels. Jesus is a fascinating character to write about. Then I did “Called Out of Darkness (A Spiritual Confession),” a memoir about it all and then “Angel Time” to go back to this idea I had many years before. I was going to do it (in 1998) with the vampire, Lestat. He was going to be recruited by the angels to travel back and I could never make it work. I really didn't want Lestat to do it. I wanted a new mortal character to be traveling with the angels, but I just couldn't put it together.

Are you involved in local Catholic activities?

I go to Mass at St. Francis of Assisi and support the parish. I love Father James (McLaughlin), the pastor. As soon as I walked into that church I felt at home because it looks like Francis' church in a Tuscan valley.

Local influence
Does the Coachella Valley inspire your writing?

Very much. The first thing any writer needs is a place to be comfortable and safe and it gives me that. The weather is especially good for my mind. Also, I like the beauty here - the crystal clear air and the mountains and the contrast - the oasis-like greenery of the valley and the brown of the mountains.

The concept of dualism is visceral here with the desert and the mountains, and that relates to other facets of life, like there's more than good and evil. That's a constant reminder.

I think you're right. It's a dramatic contrast. I really need that. I think I would go crazy if I had to live, say, in the margin of a big city where the squalor spreads out. It's disharmony that gets to me. What I love here is the harmony. I know it's an expensive harmony, but after living in San Francisco for so many years and New Orleans for so many years, I'm ready for the peace and quiet and the safety.

Interview with Anne Rice

From Pasadena Weekly --

Twice Bitten --

By Carl Kozlowski --
02/04/2010 --

Author Anne Rice has spent much of her life in a highly public and creative quest for spiritual truth, making a fortune by writing stories rooted in indelible portraits of evil with characters who guzzle blood to survive.

Today, however, Rice is turning her considerable talents in a different but somewhat similar direction, creating stories in which angels and Jesus Christ — who Scriptures tell us also rose from the dead and has followers drinking His blood, not the other way around — are the heroes.

Rice will be signing her latest novel, “Angel Time,” during a free 1 p.m. Saturday event at Vroman’s Bookstore.

The book follows contract killer Toby O’Dare, who is assigned to commit a murder but is visited by a mysterious stranger — an angel who offers him a chance to save rather than destroy lives. When he agrees to take that chance, he is whisked back to 13th-century England, an era during which children suddenly die or disappear and accusations of ritual murder are made against innocent Jews — a dark world to which O’Dare is determined to bring light.

“Both vampires and angels challenge the imagination. You have to live up to a classic concept. With angels, they’re a creature who’s a messenger of God who comes from heaven,” explains Rice, a native of New Orleans. “So you think: what’s he going to sound like when he talks, what’s he going to say? It’s exciting to me to write about angel Malchiah and make him believable to my audience.

“We have to respect what they are. Angels are messengers of God and live in the presence of God, but over and over in Hollywood movies they’re made into sad figures who want to be on earth instead of heaven. My angels want to be in heaven. It’s kind of thrilling and very similar to writing about vampires.”

In 1976, Rice reached a professional pinnacle with the release of her first novel, “Interview with the Vampire,” an extremely dark exploration of some of the very spiritual questions Rice was faced with in her life. While writing the remaining 10 books in the vampire series, which went on to sell tens of millions of copies worldwide, she also wrote three erotic novels under the pseudonym A.N. Roquelaure.

But even as she eventually came to describe herself as an atheist and enjoyed great wealth and fame, Rice said she wasn’t truly happy. In 1998, she started to rediscover her Catholic faith and in 2004 announced that she would no longer write about vampires. Instead, Rice said she devoted her writing to “what the Lord wanted.”

“The answer to why I switched is my personal conversion. I didn’t really have the same worldview after that conversion,” Rice explained in a phone interview with Pasadena Weekly from her home in Rancho Mirage, where she moved to after selling her New Orleans estate during her conversion. “I didn’t have any more tales to tell with Lestat [the main character in the vampire series] because I now saw the world through different eyes and the vampires didn’t make a connection for me.

“Vampires were people groping for faith, living through darkness, and I personally found the change those characters were looking for,” Rice adds. “I came to the end of my quest. The last two [Lestat books] reflected the split in me and were written after I’d been writing in faith.”

Despite vast wealth and a happy 41-year marriage to Stan Rice, a lifelong atheist who died in 2002, the author now wishes she had never walked away from Catholicism.

“I went through a crisis at 18. I was at a secular college campus in Texas, away from my Catholic roots and had a whole host of new influences,” Rice recalls. “I rejected the faith of my childhood as too limited. I wanted to learn what the modern world was about. I ended up styling myself as an atheist, but was really agnostic.”

Rice ultimately decided to return to Catholicism, only now with a desire to devote her work to Christ.

“There was not a specific incident that sparked my return to the Church,” Rice explains. “I’d been thinking a long time and one day I made decision to go back and realized I didn’t need answers to all the sociological questions I had. God had the answers for what was the meaning of the Holocaust or why was there a Second World War, and that was enough. That burden was not for us. It was a release to let it go but it was also intellectual. Americans tend to believe in that story, that you turn towards or against faith due to tragic loss, but that never happened for me. They’re always casting my story in those terms, but it didn’t fit.”

Anne Rice: Interview With the Vampire Killer

From LA Weekly --

Anne Rice: Interview With the Vampire Killer --

By Gendy Alimurung --
December 24, 2009 --

It’s Angel Time for the famed author

On a rainy December afternoon, Rice is resting in her suite at the Mission Inn, the historic Riverside hotel where she will be signing copies of her new book, Angel Time. She leans back in her chair, arms folded primly across her chest. Having emerged from the proverbial darkness, she looks thin and frail, her once-inky bobbed hair now grown snowy gray, but her voice is precise, matter-of-fact and forceful still.

“I am curious as to whether anyone will show up,” she says. “You never know. Maybe no one will come.”

It is her first signing in four years. Worry sounds quaint coming from someone who’s written 29 novels and sold 100 million books, but there is something to it. Her new novel is about angels. Clearly, in this society, you can bank on vampires. But angels?

Three decades ago, Anne Rice did for the vampire what Martha Stewart did for housekeeping: She made it sexy, modern and marketable. Everybody who comes after her with a variation on that theme owes her an enormous debt of gratitude.

So Rice is not surprised when she sees the fresh generation of vampire fans, who lately seem to be everywhere, with their own conventions, TV shows, musicals, video games and even vineyards (vampire merlot, anyone?). Blood is certainly the new black. They remind her anew of the richness of the original vampire concept. “I remember how it excited me in 1976, when not a whole lot had been done with it,” she says. “Just Dracula and some old Hollywood films.”

That was the year she published the seminal Interview With the Vampire. The setting was her childhood home, New Orleans. She was 35 years old when that first novel came out, and a devout atheist. With the addition of The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned, her Vampire Chronicles trilogy became required reading for the black-lipstick-and-sunscreen set.

One consequence of not having to crank out vampire stories is a freedom to finally enjoy them. She finds HBO’s True Blood, based on Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse novels, to be great satirical fun. Harris’ novels are the clever, postmodern response to Rice’s decadent Southern Gothic vampires, who creep around in decaying, antebellum mansions.

While she hasn’t read the Twilight novels, Rice has seen the movies. “They’re romances for very young kids. They’re about a young woman wanting and needing an older, mysterious figure who’s protective and yet something of a menace,” she says. It’s the Brontë sisters and Jane Eyre. “It was almost genius on Stephenie Meyer’s part to set it in high school. It works perfectly.”

Rice isn’t jealous of Meyer’s success. If anything, she is sympathetic. “You know, when you’re very, very popular the way she is now, a lot of people want to tear you down,” Rice says. “But she deserves credit for making a lot of readers happy.”

Meyer’s genius may be in getting teenage girls to fall in love with vampires. But Rice’s was in establishing the persona to be fallen in love with. Her books, written from the vampire’s point of view, are about the monster’s suffering and agony — the ultimate outsider: himself. What would it be like to interview a vampire? To get him to tell you his whole story?

“You wanted to know, what does he do when he’s alone?” she explains. “What does he do for kicks besides drink blood and turn into a bat? What books does he like to read? I took it in the direction of having that vampire open up to you and tell you all those secrets.”

There were inklings of things to come. When the film version of Interview With the Vampire came out in 1994, producer David Geffen told Rice that he’d noticed an awful lot of teenage girls attending the preliminary screenings. This was unexpected. “They didn’t make that movie for young teenage girls,” Rice says. “Producers saw it more as a gay allegory. They chose those handsome men, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, with that in mind.”

She stayed away from the public, not for lack of love for her audience but for personal reasons. When the popularity of her Vampire Chronicles books reached its pinnacle, she did marathon signings. “We did an eight-hour [signing] once at a Walmart in Denver,” she says, with a grin and a shiver. National book tours are glamorous but hard. Rice, who is a Type 1 diabetic, would be sick for months afterward.

The past four years have been especially rough. Poet Stan Rice, her husband of 40 years, died in 2002 of brain cancer. She sold the last of their three houses in New Orleans mere weeks before hurricane Katrina hit, and moved to Rancho Mirage to be near her son, Christopher, who lives in L.A. The move was painful, she says, but she needed the change.

When Rice did book signings in the old days, she adds, you couldn’t presume who would show up. You couldn’t tell whether there would be more men or women. Just when she’d think her typical reader was a goth kid in black velvet, up would march a bunch of soldiers just back from the first Gulf War, saying they’d read the books there. Or she’d be approached by a country kid in a cap with a bill, who’d ask, “Where’s Lestat? When’s he comin’ back?”

The infamous vampire Lestat — equal parts Casanova, trickster-god Pan and Justin Timberlake — is never coming back.

God has taken the vampire’s place. Rice came through the turmoil of the past few years by finding faith. She converted to Catholicism. In 2002, she consecrated her writing to Jesus Christ, declaring that she would henceforth write only about salvation, not alienation.

Of the novels that made her famous, Rice says, “To me those stories are about grief, about suffering, about atheism. They were stories I told because I was going through that kind of crisis. People respond to those books strongly, particularly if they’re going through a rebellion of their own, where they feel kind of lost. They can identify with the darkness in them.”

The world is never lacking for lost souls. Many of her fans wanted her to keep going with the dark stuff. To keep driving a hearse and to keep showing up at book signings in a coffin. (Even if Catholic dogma wasn’t her style back then, she surely took cues from its theatrics.) But Rice is done with seductive, demonic adversaries. At least, to the extent she can be. Good, after all, cannot exist without evil, and God and Satan are always at their game of chess. Demonic adversaries are inevitable. Mainly, she wants her work to reflect her faith, just as the earlier work reflected her unhappiness and despair. “Why can’t you redeem the vampires? Why can’t you save Lestat?,” Rice’s fans ask.

Though not in so many words, that is exactly what she’s doing. Angel Time, as its title suggests, is about angels. It too will be part of a trilogy, this one called Songs of the Seraphim. Instead of being visited by a vampire, the doomed hero is visited by an angel. After a decade of conscienceless killing, government assassin Toby O’Dare is visited by the angel Malchiah. It is never too late to repent, Malchiah tells him: “I’m here to tell you that everything can change for you. I’m here to take you to a place where you can begin to be the person you might have been.”

Vampires and angels may seem like opposites, but they aren’t, Rice argues. They are similar, especially in the way vampires are used at this particular cultural moment. In the works of Harris and Meyer, they function as guardian angels. True Blood’s Vampire Bill is perpetually rushing in to save his human girlfriend, Sookie, and Twilight’s Edward Cullen would sooner die than ravage his flesh-and-blood crush, Bella Swan. No, actually, he’d rather take her to prom.

“I’ll be very interested to see who’s lined up downstairs,” Rice says. The only generality she can make after all these years is that she has yet to see an 80-year-old at a book signing. “Though, maybe 80-year-olds don’t go to book signings,” she says, slyly.

She recalls a personal appearance in Toronto some 30 years ago, in the earliest days of Interview With the Vampire. It snowed. No one came. Bored, Rice pulled books off the shelves and started reading. “It was very upsetting to the store people. They were so embarrassed,” she says, laughing.

Today’s signing — and Rice has only ever done signings, never readings, preferring instead to let her characters “speak” for themselves — is taking place downstairs, in the Mission Inn’s overly warm lobby. A toasty fire crackles in the hearth. The halls are decked with gold ribbons, lights and cheery, creepy animatronic elves. The whole florid setup leaves you dazzled and slightly sweaty, much like Rice’s prose. Major scenes in Angel Time are set in the Mission Inn and its environs. “A giant confection and confabulation of a building ... an extravagant and engulfing place sprawling over two city blocks ... unfailingly lively and warm and inviting, and throbbing with cheerful voices and gaiety and laughter,” is how Rice describes the hotel in the novel’s noirish opening pages.

“The hero comes here,” she says. It is his refuge, as it has been Rice’s. “He’s given an assignment to assassinate someone here. It’s upsetting to him. I was dreaming of the book when I visited the Mission Inn. I got a huge lift from being here.”

She hopes to do for angels what she did for vampires. She loves the idea of powerful messengers of God coming down to Earth to answer prayers. Rice’s angels aren’t weak. A being from heaven, living in the presence of God, she imagines, would be a strong, complex spirit. “I really want to write about the good guys,” she says, “to prove that they can be as interesting.”

Angels, with their wings and halos, sound like a tough sell to a jaded public. But then again, a generation ago, one might have said pretty much the same thing about vampires.

As it turns out, Rice needn’t have worried about people not showing up. The fans, a mixed bunch as predicted, are lined up around the block. They clap when they spot their idol, the former queen of the vampires, in her long, black-velvet skirt. Rice’s assistants stand at the ready with extra pens and Diet Coke. “She’ll be signing books for hours,” says the doorman.

The Angels Among Us (Anne Rice)

From Parade --

The Angels Among Us --

By Anne Rice --
published: 12/20/2009 --

Author Anne Rice started the vampire craze 33 years ago with her novel “Interview With the Vampire.” Recently, she has turned her thoughts—and writing—to angels. (Her latest novel is “Angel Time.”) In this season of holiday spirit, we asked Rice why we need angels.

What are angels? Did we invent them the way we invented Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Boogey Man who frightens little children into being good? Where do angels come from?

These days, we see angels everywhere. Gift shops offer gold-and-silver angels as Christmas ornaments and statuettes. Angel faces are featured in beautifully framed paintings and on greeting cards. Angels in plastic or porcelain decorate mantelpieces and dashboards. Countless books on angels, some filled with accounts of visitations, others claiming to know secrets about angels, fill shelves. Some even suggest how to talk to angels and how to hear their voices in return.

Almost any schoolchild can describe angels. They are nearly always tall, slender beings with soft shoulder-length hair and graceful flowing robes. They may wear sandals, but they never wear shoes. Most of the time, their toes peek out from beneath their gowns. But what really makes an angel is a pair of huge, spreading, white-feathered wings. Even roly-poly baby angels, called cherubs, have those all-important white wings.

Wherever and however they appear, angels offer consolation. They smile with infinite patience; they look lovingly on those of us whom they guard. Friends offering angel gifts are seeking to remind us that angels provide safety and peace.

Angels are not a modern invention. And they may not be an invention at all. They come to us right out of the pages of the Bible, complete with their powerful wings. In the Book of Exodus, winged cherubim are carved on the Ark of the Covenant. And in the Book of Isaiah, the prophet sees the powerful winged seraphim singing before the throne of God.

A choir of angels sings to celebrate the birth of Jesus. And Jesus assures us that little children have their special guardian angels, while later on, in the garden of Gethsemane, an angel comes to comfort Jesus himself.

Indeed, all we know about angels comes from holy writ, and countless biblical scholars have developed our notions of guardian angels and angels sent to Earth in answer to our prayers.

Though no female angel appears in the Bible, there is no reason, apparently, that angels cannot take a female form. They themselves are beyond gender, and the bodies in which they appear are either illusions or specially made for a particular purpose and soon discarded once no longer in use. Angels are pure spirit; their natural dwelling place is Heaven. But they are always very busy on our behalf here on Earth.

It is no surprise that these beings fascinate us, splendid and ethereal as they are. We cannot help but wonder what angels think about as they come and go, intervening in our lives for the good. Do they have feelings? Do they like one assignment better than another? Do they learn from us as we learn from them?

Hollywood films have given us a variety of angel personalities, from the delightful little Clarence Oddbody of It’s a Wonderful Life to John Travolta’s beer-drinking, belching angel in Michael. In the TV shows Touched by an Angel and Highway to Heaven, the angelic stars, played by Roma Downey and Michael Landon, were known by their innate serenity and tireless good will.

Today, as readers and audiences obsess over vampires, one can’t help but wonder if those fans aren’t really seeking angels. After all, in the best-selling book (and blockbuster movie) Twilight, Edward the vampire is the protector of the young heroine Bella, saving her from evil humans as well as evil immortals. A good vampire also strives to protect against a bad vampire in the Vampire Diaries novels, now a show on the CW network. And in True Blood, the HBO series based on the popular books, waitress Sookie Stackhouse finds a stalwart guardian in the person of a handsome vampire as well.

Like angels, vampires are powerful and mysterious beings who aren’t subject to the ravages of old age or time. Like angels, vampires are often described and portrayed as extremely beautiful. Like angels, vampires look human and sound human, though they are not.

But vampires are sad creatures. They speak to us of confusion and the longing to be human. They struggle in the darkness, lamenting the loss of the light.

Perhaps the whole vampire craze can be related to the age-old yearning for a loving, eloquent supernatural presence that will save us from the perils and disasters of ordinary life.

With angels we are most certainly on surer ground. Our oldest religious texts assure us that the Almighty does indeed have such wondrous messengers and helpers, and that He sends them to Earth only to do good. One cannot help but be glad that once the present vampire craze is over, angels will still be busy guarding their earthly charges and answering prayers.

Angels are dazzling expressions of God’s love for his children. Not only do they bring hope to the weary, but they are always pointing upward, promising that at the end of life’s journey, they will be there to carry us to that greatest of all mysteries, the bliss and splendor of our heavenly home.

Anne Rice masterfully ascends to angels in latest thriller

From USA TODAY --

Anne Rice masterfully ascends to angels in latest thriller --

By Carol Memmott --
2009-12-15 --

Angels, not vampires, are the supernatural creatures at the center of Angel Time, a metaphysical thriller by Anne Rice.

Billed as first in a series titled The Songs of the Seraphim, Angel Time is the story of Toby O'Dare, a young man who suffered unbearable hardships growing up in New Orleans (the city where numerous Rice novels have been set). A family tragedy on the day of his high school graduation turns him into a killer. He's a government assassin who operates, seemingly, without a conscience, but after a decade of dispatching people to the afterlife, he's visited by the angel Malchiah, who assures him it's not too late to change his ways.

To make amends, Malchiah says, Toby must travel back to 13th-century England to protect a Jewish family accused of the ritual murder of their young daughter.

Though the segue from modern-day America to the 13th century seems abrupt and awkward, Rice's fascination with the time period and the treatment of Jews more than makes up for it.

As always, Rice brings an energy and sincerity to her story. Toby, like outcasts in her other novels — vampires, the castrati and people of mixed blood, for example — is a sympathetic character who will evoke an emotional response in fans.

Readers can enjoy the story's sense of urgency as Toby attempts to save himself and take or leave Rice's overriding message, based on her own religious fervor, that God can forgive the transgressions of all who seek him out.

'Angel Time' an engaging tale (Anne Rice)

From The Macomb Daily (Michigan) --

'Angel Time' an engaging tale --

By Rasha Madkour --
December 14, 2009 --

Angel Time
By Anne Rice
(Alfred A. Knopf, 288 pages, $25.95)

A hardened 28-year-old hit man is given a second chance at life when an angel asks him to use his wits, cunning and courage to help answer people's prayers, instead of cutting them short.

This is the premise of Anne Rice's latest novel, "Angel Time," which recounts Toby O'Dare's tragic childhood and how he became a roving killer. After accepting his new assignment, O'Dare is taken back to Norwich, England, in the Middle Ages to help a Jewish family facing accusations of murder by an incensed mob. This comes at a time when Jews were forced to wear yellow patches to distinguish themselves from the rest of society, and when two Christian boys — Little St. William and Little St. Hugh — were said to have been victims of ritual murder by Jews. In this case, the family is accused of killing their daughter because she attended a Christmas pageant.

What follows is a relatively engaging tale, rooted in both the supernatural and real history. Angel time is defined as being in contrast to humans' natural time, since the celestial beings see all eras with equal clarity. This novel is the first in Rice's new series, "Songs of the Seraphim."

Rice, known best for "Interview With the Vampire" and other books in her "Vampire Chronicles" series, made a commitment in 2002 to dedicate her writing entirely to Jesus Christ. This promise is overtly carried out in "Angel Time," where parts of the book dealing with redemption and salvation come off sounding preachy.

Rice's religious zeal is rivaled only by her apparent obsession with architecture, as she rambles on with descriptions of the Mission Inn and various chapels.

Despite the novel's shortcomings, its unusual story line and cliffhanger ending are intriguing enough to make a reader look forward to the next installment.

Q&A with Anne Rice on 'Angel Time'

From Southern California's Press-Enterprise --

Q&A with Anne Rice on 'Angel Time' --

By JENNIFER DEAN --
December 12, 2009 --

Bestselling author Anne Rice held her first book signing event in four years Saturday at The Mission Inn. Her new book, "Angel Time" is set at the historic inn and is the first in a new series called "Songs of Seraphim."

While writing portions of the novel, she stayed in the Amistad Suite - where much of the action in the book takes place.

Before the signing event, we met in the Keeper of the Inn suite next door to the Amistad suite to discuss how "Angel Time" came about.

Dean: What made you choose The Mission Inn as the setting for the novel?

Rice: We came and I fell in love with it. I thought right away, I'm going to put my hero here and have him experience The Mission Inn. That's a great thing for a writer, when you see a place sparks your imagination and you begin to think of a story in details. And, I really didn't have any thought before that. I just fell in love with the place and I stayed in the Amistad Suite, which they've renamed the Anne Rice suite. So this became a big part of the book for me. And I think loving New Orleans as I do, it was natural for me to fall in love with this place. It has history, it's charming and excessive and all that. This is the Inn Keepers. I was in the Amistad both times and I wrote quite a few notes and plans and stuff. And did a lot of thinking and dreaming and meditating. Taking photographs and so forth.

Dean: How long have you been in Rancho Mirage and what made you choose the area?

Rice: Since 2006, spring. I left New Orleans because my son had moved out to New Orleans and my husband was gone. And I wanted to be closer to my son. He lives in LA. The weather was a big deal to me because I'm a Southerner and I really like the sun and warmth. Christopher suggested that Palm Springs - that area - would be perfect and we've found it to be really nice. And one of the great things about being there, of course, is you can take all these side trips - there's the snow in Big Bear and Idyllwild, and you can come here for something completely different. We've been enjoying that aspect of California.

Dean: Do you identify with your main character, Toby O'Dare?

Rice: I don't think a book is going to be very good if you don't identify to some extent with your characters, even though they seem extravagantly different. He's 28 years old, but he's from New Orleans and he has a past that's very troubled , he's very conflicted. So I see continuity between the book and the other books I've written. And I see the same concerns. It's really fun though to write about him because he has a bright future now. He has real possibility. And that's what challenges me and gives me a new creative energy.

Dean: Do you know how many novels will be in the "Songs of the Seraphim" series?

Rice: I'd love to just do a continuing series with Toby. I'd never really planned a series before. I've done books that turned out to be series, but they were never planned that way. And when you plan it, you can develop all kinds of wonderful themes that move book to book to book and I'm really enjoying that.

Dean: Will the other books in the series be set at The Mission Inn as well?

Rice: The second book is set at The Mission Inn too and the third, I'm sure it will continue to be a really important place.

Dean: Was there a lot of research involved in "Angel Time?" I understand the story of little Saint William of Norwich was real.

Rice: I made a fictional story about that community but there really was a little Saint William and the Jews were accused of killing him ritualistically. That was the first time they were ever accused of that in the middle ages and that became a common accusation in Europe for a long time. And I thought, I didn't feel I could do justice to that story so I made up a similar story.

Dean: Is Malchiah modeled after a Biblical figure?

Rice: He's a fictional angel and his name is fictional but we do know about the Seraphim from the Bible. There's a beautiful description by the prophet Isaiah of seeing the Seraphim singing before the throne of God. So of course I read a lot of theology, a lot on angels and what we believe about angels. It's always been believed that maybe special people could have special guardian angels ... that a special angel might come to recruit somebody as special. He'd have a guardian angel too, but he has come to the attention of this higher angel. But all angels are constantly answering prayers. That's what the Bible tells us, that they are looking out for people and answering prayers.

Dean: What is a Seraphim? Are the terms angel and Seraph interchangeable?

Rice: It's a choir of angles. There are archangels like Gabriel who serve certain functions and then there are the Seraphim who are before the throne of God. I love that name, Seraphim, and I love the idea of them singing constantly before the throne of God. I think it's beautiful.

Dean: How does it feel to write about angels rather than vampires and witches?

Rice: It's very energizing because for me, writing about vampires and witches always had to do with the sadness and grief and searching for faith, yet not finding faith ... and struggling in a kind of nihilistic darkness and I really did enough of that. I felt I had no more stories to tell with those characters. On Facebook my readers are always asking, "Will you write one more book with the vampires? Will you write one more book with the witches?" But I can't. I really don't see the world that way anymore and that universe is not my universe anymore. It used to be. I used to feel that way before my faith came back to me and it was natural to talk about it in that way. And I loved those characters. But this is to me much more exciting and in some ways this is a huge challenge. I mean, it's hard to make an angel interesting. I'm not sure that Malchiah is at all as interesting as he will get in the books as they go on. If you are trying to make him true to the Biblical idea of a powerful angel, it's quite a challenge. It's easier to take a vampire and make up anything you want for that character.

I'm kind of enthralled with that. And I'm curious how it'll work out, whether other angels will come into the picture.

Dean: What do you think of the current vampire types like those in "Twilight" and "True Blood?"

Rice: It's fun. I think there's nothing there to be frightened about or upset about. I've seen both the "Twilight" series and I think they were just romances for young teens. I mean, it's the same formula as "Jane Eyre" basically. The young girl ... the other mysterious figure takes an interest in her and is both protective and yet is a threat. And it's kind of, I think, Stephenie Meyer hit on that formula and it's a formula that always works. She's just done it in a new way. I'm amazed that parents are kind of frightened. I think the kids reading the book know that it's fiction. There were people a hundred years ago frightened when people were reading the book "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë. There's nothing to be frightened about. It's just fiction.

And I think "True Blood" is very clever. I really like Bill Compton. I think he's a nice, really melancholy, tormented vampire. I think Southerners really like "True Blood" because they got the South right. It took a vampire show to get it right. So often they get it totally wrong, but somehow or another, it totally works.

Dean: How have you felt while writing this series? I understand how close you must get to the characters and storyline. Can you describe the feeling?

Rice: I get into that character and I start seeing the world from his point of view and the roadmap for the book kind of goes out the window and the book becomes a series of discoveries and surprises. I really enjoyed it, very, very much. As I said, I felt a huge surge of energy that Toby had hope and would be doing things and one thing that means a lot to me is I really like to do historical research and I really like to wander through history. I did it in the vampire chronicles and I really, fixing this device the angels can take him to any time and place in history. Well I was setting that up for myself because I really love that. I really love that. I want him to go to Renaissance Italy and I want him to go back to England in the later middle ages. And I want him to go in Elizabethan times and who knows where. Ancient times and some modern times. But he probably won't go into the future just because that's not something that interests me. But there's no telling where he could show up.

Dean: Why did you decide to do a book signing again after four years?

Rice: The mission inn invited us to do a signing and we thought it would be a great idea. They've been very gracious to us. I never expected them to respond this way. I sent them the book, but only after it was set in type, so I thought, maybe they won't like this. But they were wonderful, they were very gracious. They invited us to come and they've treated us wonderfully. We're really enjoying ourselves. We're enjoying the Festival of Lights. We really love the hotel, I mean, you can tell by the book. So this is really fun. The next book is written. I'll come here often. It's really nice to get away and come here.

Dean: Have you ever thought of writing children's fiction?

Rice: I have. I just haven't developed anything, but I've been invited to do that by my publisher and I'm thinking about it. And one thing I'd really like to do is write a very big Christmas book. But I don't know yet when I'm going to get that done. There are so many things I want to do.

Author Anne Rice finds inspiration at the Mission Inn for new series

From Southern California's Press-Enterprise --

Author Anne Rice finds inspiration at the Mission Inn for new series --

By JENNIFER DEAN --
December 12, 2009 --

Best-selling author Anne Rice sat before a fire blazing in a stone fireplace at the Mission Inn in Riverside on Saturday, readying for her first book signing in four years.

Outside, hundreds of stalwart Rice fans stood in the chilly rain waiting to meet the author who has sold more than 75 million copies of her books worldwide and is considered by many to be among the top fiction writers for adults in the century. Her best-sellers include "Interview With the Vampire" and "The Witching Hour." On Saturday, she was signing copies of "Angel Time."

The novel, which was released in October, is the first in her new series titled "Songs of the Seraphim" and is set at the Mission Inn. Rice said inspiration for the setting struck her during her first stay shortly after she moved from New Orleans to Rancho Mirage in 2006.

"We came and I fell in love," Rice said during an interview in the Keeper of the Inn suite at the historic hotel. "I thought right away, I'm going to put my hero here. That's a great thing for a writer ... when you see a place sparks your imagination."

Mission Inn owners Duane and Kelly Roberts had no idea the makings of a book were going on under the Inn's roof until it was a completed product.

"I sent them the book, but only after it was set in type," Rice said. "I thought, maybe they won't like this ... but they were wonderful. They invited us to do the signing. We're really enjoying ourselves."

While researching and writing the first two novels, Rice spent a great deal of time in the Inn's Amistad Suite, which is where most of the book's action takes place. The suite already bears a dedication to Canadian author Anne Cameron, and the owners decided to surprise Rice with a similar dedication on the other side of the suite's entrance.

"They've been very gracious," Rice said. "I'm so honored."

signed copies

Starting with Saturday's book signing, the Inn's gift shop began selling signed copies of "Angel Time."

"Since she moved to the Palm Springs area, the Mission Inn has been a great getaway for her," said Duane Roberts. "It's really very exciting having an author of her stature write about the Inn."

"Angel Time" follows the story of Toby O'Dare, an assassin with a tragic past who often takes refuge at the Mission Inn and visits surrounding real missions like the Mission San Juan Capistrano.

Throughout the book are vivid descriptions of the Inn, including the Amistad Suite, scene of O'Dare's final murder.

Rather than vampires or witches, the book focuses on a different host of supernatural beings -- angels. O'Dare is given the option of returning to his lost faith and becoming a helper to a very powerful type of angel called a seraph who goes by the name of Malchiah.

He makes the leap and soon finds himself in 12th-century England, charged with the task of saving two Jewish settlers who have been wrongly accused of ritualistically murdering their own daughter.

Character connection

Rice feels a strong connection to her lead character, as she has in the past with several others.

"I don't think a book is going to be very good if you don't identify to some extent with your characters," Rice said. "He's from New Orleans and has a past that's very troubled; he's very conflicted. So I see continuity between the book and other books I've written.

"It's really fun to write about him because he has a bright future now. He has real possibility. That's what challenges me and gives me a new creative energy."

The sequel to "Angel Time" has already been completed and Rice has begun working on the next in the series.

"The second book is set at the Mission Inn, and in the third, I'm sure it will continue to be a really important place," Rice said.

Rice plans to continue telling O'Dare's story for quite some time, and with the way the plot is set up, there are seemingly infinite possibilities.

The seraph Malchiah will send O'Dare all over history, each time tasking him with a mission that utilizes the skills he once used for evil.

"I really like to do historical research and I really like to wander through history," Rice said. "I did it in the 'Vampire Chronicles.' In this ... the angels can take him to any time and place in history.

"I want him to go to Renaissance Italy, and I want him to go back to England in the later Middle Ages. I want him to go in Elizabethan times and who knows where."

While writing of O'Dare's adventures, Rice will continue visiting the Mission Inn for meditation and inspiration.

"I'll come here often," she said. "It's really nice to get away and come here."

Mystery Novels Guaranteed to Excite and Thrill: Murder, Murder, More Murder, and a Search for Napoleon’s Missing Treasure (Anne Rice)

From Tucson Citizen --

Mystery Novels Guaranteed to Excite and Thrill: Murder, Murder, More Murder, and a Search for Napoleon’s Missing Treasure --

By Larry Cox --
Dec.12, 2009 --


Angel Time by Anne Rice (Alfred A. Knopf, $25.95)

Anne Rice is based in Rancho Mirage, California, and the author of twenty-nine books, most of which focus on vampires and the supernatural. Think of her as Stephen King in drag. Her latest novel is set in the present and at the center is Toby O’Dare, a contract killer who takes his orders from “The Right Man.” When he accepts an assignment to kill again, he meets a mysterious stranger who offers him a chance to save lives, not destroy them. Without a doubt, Anne Rice still has the ability to write prose that shocks and sticks to the literary ribs long after the final pages have been read. “Angel Time” is no exception. Intriguing characters and a climax that hits the reader like a runaway freight train is what gives this book its power and punch.