On losing heroes...Anne Rice, 1941-2021

She was one of the first modern fantasy authors I read when I was younger, having discovered "Interview" when the boy who sat in front of me in most of my classes handed a faded copy to me under the desk. "You've got to read this!" And I did...and so on through the early Vampire Chronicles and the Mayfair Witches, the spellbinding Feast of All Saints, and Ramses the Damned, etc. 

She turned the Bela Lugosi Dracula and the silent film Nosferatu that terrified me into the beautiful, haunted, cautionary tale of the vampire as Icarus, ever drawing humanity into a dangerous trap just as Anne herself drew us into her stories. 

I am sad to hear this news as I will forever credit her work for being a masterclass for fantasy writers on sympathetic monsters and protagonists that turn into antagonists and then back again.  

Thank you to our Queen of the Damned for sharing your life and work with us, for keeping us to your exacting standards, and for holding space for us in dark and mystical places. Your impact on the world and especially on other writers cannot be measured.