These were werewolves I could live with,” says Anne Rice, explaining how she came to interpret lycanthorpes as conflicted, rapist-killing vigilantes in her novel The Wolves Of Midwinter.

“They weren’t four-footed animals, they’re primates. Wolf men. They were conscious – conscious when prowling around and killing, conscious when they turn back into human beings. It’s been exciting trying to bring my gothic and romantic sensibilities into the 20th century. That’s what drove me. Finding a new texture, a new atmosphere and a new cosmology.”
Growing up in New Orleans – “a city of beautiful old gothic houses, shadows, legends, darkness and ghost stories” – Rice discovered these romantic, gothic sensibilities early.
“I wanted stories with shadows and dramatic music, beautiful women falling into the arms of beautiful men as sea crested on rocks. I understood ambience before I even knew the word.”
Rice describes Great Expectations and Jane Eyre as huge influences on her as a child. Surely it is no coincidence that they are the stories of orphans who spend time in huge, lonely buildings. At 15, Rice’s mother died after a long battle with alcoholism. Her father sent his daughters to St. Joseph’s Academy – “a dilapidated, awful, medieval type of place”. Rice admits it took her a long time to recover from that painful period. She couldn’t even find solace in writing.
“I didn’t really write a lot during that period. I was living life and suffering. It was later that I figured a way to write about it. I wrote stories as a child and found it very exciting. There was a huge period from high school to college where I couldn’t express what I was going through. It took me years to be able to write what I was feeling.”
A later tragedy inspired Rice’s most famous works. When her six-year-old daughter Michelle died of leukaemia, Rice turned to writing to exorcise her grief. Perhaps attracted to the idea of endless youth, she turned an unpolished short story into a sensual novel about bisexual vampires, entitled Interview With the Vampire. The book notably featured a young girl, who is given the gift of immortality thanks to a vampire’s kiss. The novel and its subsequent film adaptation by Neil Jordan attracted legions of adoring fans, many of whom viewed it as an empowering portrayal of the disenfranchised LGBT community.
“It’s very rewarding, especially when people come up and say, ‘Your books helped me get through school’ or ‘You helped me at the darkest point of my life’,” she reflects. “It’s the best thing that can happen an author.”
Rice has had many dark moments in her life. Perhaps in response, she loudly returned to Catholicism in 1998, even penning two books about the life of Christ. In the end, however, she didn’t find what she had been looking for.
In 2010, she just as loudly distanced herself from all organised religion, posting a passionate message on Facebook: “I quit. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.”
“I had assumed that the Church was honourable,” says Rice now, “but what I found was sophistry, lies, and what I consider to be dishonourable theology. I had to leave.”
Following the death of Stan, her husband of 41 years, Rice also felt the need to leave New Orleans. She sold not only her home, but the several properties she had amassed there, including the sprawling 19th-century Catholic orphanage where she had thrown infamously elaborate Hallowe’en parties. The ghosts of the city were now all too real.
“I had to move,” she notes simply. “My husband had died, and my son had moved to the West Coast. I was there alone, and I didn’t want to try to continue the kind of wonderful life we had had when we were all together. So I sold my houses and am living in California now. I thrive on novelty, on writing about different settings. And the great Hallowe’en parties we threw in New Orleans are still taking place; the Vampire Lestat Fan Club keeps them going, and people come from all over the world. They’re famous. I went back this year for the first time in eight years and I really enjoyed it. It’s a nice legacy to have there.”
And her legacy is set to grow, as the prolific author has several projects in the pipeline.
“I have so many plans right now I don’t know where to turn. I want to write more about the wolves, and to write more about Tony O’Dare from my Angel novels, which CBS want to turn into a series. I want to do an Atlantis novel too, and I have an idea about a ghost detective. I’m at a very happy crossroads – right now the challenge is choosing which way to go.”

The Wolves Of Midwinter by Anne Rice is published by Random House