When Anne Rice sold the manuscript of her first novel to Knopf more than 30 years ago, the protagonist was a man named Louis who discovers a lost child. A mysterious figure named Lestat is introduced, only to die by fire. However, in the editing and rewrite, the Lestat character was brought back to life. Interview with the Vampire became a bestseller, and Lestat lived on for the entirety of the 10-volume Vampire Chronicles, concluding with 2003's Blood Canticle. Since announcing a "return to faith," the Catholic-born Rice (née O'Brien) has put an end to her Vampire series. And with last week's closing of the Broadway musical Lestat, it is evident that she has left a vacuum. After selling 75 million books in three decades, mostly of the back-from-the-dead variety, there is certainly a market for books about the dark fantasy world of blood lust and evil doings. But who will fill it?
There are no lack of contenders. More vampire fiction has been written in the last 30 years than in the 200 preceding it. Once a subgenre of horror fiction, the vampire tale has become a genre in its own right, with its own imaginative subcategories, branchings and cross-genre fusions. It is safe to say that Rice has even paved the way for iconic television programs such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its offshoot, Angel, and scores of movies, ranging from Neil Jordan's adaptation of Interview to series franchises such as Underworld and Blade. The stunning success last year of TheHistorian, by first-time novelist Elizabeth Kostova, shows that the appeal of vampire tales is still strong. However, Rice built her kingdom on a recurring series—a chronicle—a path that a number of others are already on. Here are a few writers who might have sufficient traction to pick up where Lestat left off.
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro: Her career in vampire fiction dates back to 1978, almost as far as Rice's. Though she's built a solid, loyal base of fans—and is the writer who comes closest to duplicating the romance and sweep of the Lestat novels—her books have never achieved bestseller status. Her hardcover series, Chronicles of Saint Germain, which features a 3,500-year-old vampire count who has lived in hundreds of historical hot spots around the world, will tally its 19th installment this fall with Tor's release of Roman Dusk, set in the third century A.D., at the twilight of the Roman Empire.
Laurell K. Hamilton: While her books outsell any other current vampire fiction, Hamilton owes as much to Buffy the Vampire Slayer as to Rice. In her Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, the undead are villains as often as they're romantic heroes. The Anita Blake books began as a paperback original series from Ace in 1993 with Guilty Pleasures, and the ninth novel, Obsidian Butterfly, debuted as a hardcover in 2000; every installment since, including the recent Danse Macabre, has hit the bestseller lists. Hamilton's last few novels have shifted their focus from Anita's crimefighting to her torrid love affairs with vampires and werewolves, enabling the author to cross-over to the paranormal romance market.
P.N. Elrod: If Hamilton's Anita Blake comes across as something like V.I. Warshawski working the night beat, then P.N. Elrod's long-running Vampire Files series evokes the period noir of Raymond Chandler. Elrod's newspaper reporter hero, Jack Fleming, uses his vampire powers, including invulnerability to bullets (unless they're silver), to fight crime in Depression-era Chicago. Ace published his 11th adventure since 1990, Song in the Dark, in hardcover last year.
Charlaine Harris: This rising star of vampire fiction is the author of the Sookie Stackhouse series, which focuses on a ditsy, mildly psychic waitress who lives in La Bon Temps, a sleepy town in an alternate Louisiana where humans and supernatural beings mingle with caution. Sookie, whose exploits began with the mass market Living Dead in Dallas (2002), gets drawn into crime capers by her vampire and werewolf boyfriends. Ace's recent hardcover publication of Definitely Dead, the sixth in the series, is currently riding bestseller lists with 100,000 copies in print. Alan Hall, producer of Six Feet Under, has written the first three episodes for Southern Vampire, his new, upcoming HBO series based on Harris's books.
MaryJanice Davidson: Another newcomer on the way up, this author lets the children of the night show their lighter side in her Undead series featuring Betsy Taylor, a 30-something single who, in her 2004 mass-market debut, Undead and Unwed, is resurrected from a fatal car accident as a vampire. Think Sexand the City—only the city is Minneapolis and it's filled with demons and vampires. This month, Berkley releases Davidson's fifth novel, Undead and Unpopular, in hardcover.
L.A. Banks: Damali Richards, the heroine of Banks's Vampire Huntress Legend series, is a Buffy-type warrior with a twist—she's a black spoken-word artist whose multi-ethnic band may be the only rainbow coalition of musicians moonlighting as vampire slayers. The series debuted in trade paper with Minion (2003) and quickly established itself as a vampire variant with urban chic. Damali's sixth adventure, Forsaken, is due from St. Martin's this July in trade paper.
Sherrilyn Kenyon: This prolific author is a favorite among fans of paranormal romance. Her Night-Hunter series tells of two eternally warring supernatural species: the vampiric Daimons who prey on humanity, and the self-sacrificing were-beings known as Night Hunters, who regularly save mortal heroines from the clutches of their nemeses. Adventures involving these dark, mysterious and hunky saviors have played out around the globe in 10 novels to date from St. Martin's, beginning with the mass market paperback Fantasy Lover in 2002. The first hardcover in the series, The Dark Side of the Moon, came out in May.
Douglas Clegg: Bram Stoker Award— winner Clegg published the first of his projected Vampyricon trilogy, The Priest of Blood, in hardcover in 2005, becoming one of the few men to venture into a market where women authors rule. Clegg takes a page from Rice with his historical treatment of Aleric Atheffelde, a young man who, during the Crusades, is introduced to the mysteries of an ancient vampire civilization. Clegg relates Aleric's tale as a coming-of-age story, the second installment of which, Lady of the Serpents, is due from Ace this September.
