Weaver Goodbye

Dear Anne Rice,

I read The Vampire Lestat before I read Interview and I think it shaped not only how I saw your books but how I saw life. Lestat was exactly everything I wanted a vampire to be and I honestly never believed things from Louis's perspective. Ever. I loved it when later Lestat burned down his house.

The beautiful thing about Lestat was that he was a charming as hell narcissist. No one you would want in your actual life, but fun as hell to read about. I wasn't in love with him. I reveled in him. I was thrilled by him, the same way I adore Starscream and Sauron. Here were these fey creatures who defied gender and norms and rules and everything. It was an energy I connected with and found solace in. For a young teen who felt that the world didn't love, respect, or understand her enough, characters like Lestat were soothing. 

I have liked your other books over the years, but I feel the universe NEEDED you to write The Vampire Chronicles. I think our society collectively needed all that lust and drama and decadence. I think we needed the pulse you gave to us. I'm so grateful you wrote what you did.

I've roleplayed with some people for over 20 years, and your work has informed a great deal of that world-building. Even in places where there are no vampires, the way you tackled secrecy and sensuality and ancient things and darkness and wickedness still leave a trace in what I build. Others have added to it, but I can always feel your threads and I thank you for that.

Outside of your writing, you were sometimes a kook. You let your husband put his bad poetry in your books and you went religious for a while and maybe I lost interest in your writing as I got older. And that's fine. It doesn't change the foundation you gave to me. It doesn't alter that you brought happiness and joy to me when I needed it as a teen. 

I am saddened by your death. It is weird to think of the world not having you in it. Then again, the world WILL always have you in it because your books changed so many of us and your characters live on inside us. 

Thank you.