How a Parent's Worst Nightmare Spawned a Literary Classic and Sold Over 80,000,000 Copies

A history mystery

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”—Khalil Gibran

Born in 1941 to a Bohemian mother and a quirky postman father, Anne had a strange childhood, to say the least.

She was born Howard Allen Frances O’Brien into a conservative catholic family in a neighborhood of New Orleans. Growing up as a girl with a name like Howard couldn’t have been easy, but that may have been the exact reason her mother chose the name:

“[Her mother] was a bit of a Bohemian, a bit of mad woman, a bit of a genius, and a great deal of a great teacher. And she had the idea that naming a woman Howard was going to give that woman an unusual advantage in the world.”

On her first day in Catholic school, young Howard was asked by a nun what her name was. She immediately responded “Anne,” as she always thought the name was pretty.

And in this instance, her mother, who accompanied her that day, let it slide.

Anne wanted to be different from the very beginning.

Troubled Youth

The following years were marked by tragedy. At the tender age of 15, Anne lost her mother to the devastating disease of alcoholism. Her father, grappling with his own grief and unable to provide the necessary support for his daughter, made the difficult decision to send her to a boarding school.

“[It was] a dilapidated, awful, medieval type of place. I really hated it and wanted to leave. I felt betrayed by my father.”

Over the next five years, Anne hopped around from school to school and city to city, all the while scribbling thoughts, short stories, and notes on her pads.

While attending a class at university, Anne encountered a budding poet named Stan. The two hit it off instantly. Unfortunately, financial difficulties forced Anne to move into a family friend’s home in San Francisco, where she took a job in the insurance industry.

While they may have been apart physically at this point, Anne and Stan had an inseparable bond. Both Anne and Stan shared a passion for prose, writing, and honing their craft, a love they had nurtured since their earliest memories.

One day, an ornate letter arrived in the mail at Anne’s house in San Francisco. Inside was a surprising marriage proposal from faraway Stan.

She accepted.

And the young Howard-then-Anne then had a further change in name  and promptly moved to Texas to start their new marriage in 1961.

This is a free version of Pryor Thoughts, because they all are.

But just in case you want to help keep this newsletter running:

Back and Forth

Never content with truly settling down in one place, the young couple moved back to San Francisco from Texas.

There they witnessed the birth of acid, the hippie movement, and all of the wonderfully creative nonsensical activities of the moment.

But Anne merely played witness to it.

“In the middle of Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, I was typing away while everybody was dropping acid and smoking grass. I was known as my own square.”

Later in 1965, the couple had their first child.

A beautiful young girl named Michele with had a head full of disentangled blonde locks. Her wafty hairstyle sometimes reminded Anne of the famous actress, Claudia Cardinale, and it became an occasional nickname for the girl.

But five wonderfully short years later, little Michele was diagnosed with leukemia.

She passed away less than two years after.

Write It Out

Fraught with grief, Anne was listless. She had somehow managed to finish her graduate degree in creative writing just before the devastating event.

So, she threw herself into the only thing that ever brought her a form of escape.

Writing.

Anne took out one of her older short stories, a bit of an homage to Gloria Holden’s book, Dracula’s Daughter, and developed it into a full-fledged novel — her very first.

The original short story was only about 30 pages long. After 5 weeks of burying herself into the story, she came out with what many people might recognize as the origins of one of the best vampire movies ever made — Interview with the Vampire.

A movie involving heavy themes of immortality, a blood disease, lost faith, and a young girl ripped away from her caretakers.

A young girl with frizzy hair and the name of Claudia.

Fame, Fortune, and Grief

While it took a while for the novel to get published, Anne Rice fortuitously met her soon-to-be literary agent a year later.

She sold the book’s publishing rights for $12,000, almost $10,000 more than the average back then. Anne figured she was on a straight track to instant fame.

And yet, Interview with the Vampire was received harshly at first. So harshly that it contributed to her developing OCD for some time. But Anne didn’t let that stop her. She went on to publish 11 more books in the same series.

The Vampire Chronicles have since sold over 80,000,000 copies worldwide.

Her original novel sold over 8,000,000 prints itself.

Her spin-off series, Lives of the Mayfair Witches, has also heavily contributed to her success.

If you look at all of her sales combined, the numbers start going well over 150,000,000 units around the world, landing her somewhere in the top 60 writers of all time.

Takeaway

Grief is a powerful force.

But Anne used that grief to bring out her unique perspective on the world of religion, war, loss, and pain.

And even though it was about the fictional world of vampires, her feelings and prose were so strong, her words connected with tens of millions of people all around the world.

While grief may not be a requirement to author works that can emotionally move people, it does show the strength of what one person can do when they truly care about something.

To blot out everything from existence and only focus on the now.

With prose, I suppose authors call that ‘writing in the flow’ these days. To me, it’s the hallmark of obsession. And this story is a reminder of the good side of obsessive behavior. An example of when escapist obsession can lead to amazing things.

But imagine if she hadn’t met that literary agent at that fortuitous event. Imagine she wasn’t able to overcome the OCD. Imagine her success didn’t lead her out of the obsession.

What then, would I be writing about today instead?

Careful to let your obsessions consume you. Swords have edges on both sides for a reason.

I’m just glad Anne swung it in the right direction.

---

J.J. Pryor

👇Click the heart thingy? The algorithm loves it. I love it more.👇

This story about Anne Rice and Interview With the Vampire has been adapted and originally appeared on Threw the Looking Glass.