<\/p>\nAdvocate photo by Steven Forster — The 26th Annual Vampire Ball at The Republic, Friday October 31, 2014. Author Christopher Rice, Author Anne Rice, Author Eric Shaw Quinn<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n
The films trace her early days after moving to Texas, a change that \u201creally broke her heart. She never left New Orleans in her heart,\u201d Rice said. There, she met his father, poet Stan Rice, in high school. The two would eventually pack an old beat-up truck and follow the Beat Generation to San Francisco to become artists. Once her big break came as a novelist in the 1980s, she returned home to New Orleans with her husband.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
These are just a few chapters revealed by the documentaries, with the help of roundtable interviews with people who were close to Anne Rice.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, the documentary films weave in moments that allow her fans to grieve \u2014 they couldn\u2019t do so at a public service when she died during the coronavirus pandemic in 2021 \u2014 and \u201cto walk away inspired by the story of her as a person, as a character, as somebody who could not be trampled on, who followed her dreams at all costs,\u201d Rice said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve put so much into it. It is like making a movie, which then releases and puts out into the world. What do you do next?\u201d he said. \u201cThe answer is: a lot of what we want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The last few years of his career haven\u2019t been entirely consumed by the celebration. Rice and Quinn regularly produce episodes for their true crime podcast, \u201cThe Dinner Party Show.\u201d In 2023, the two helped solve a 1990 cold case murder in Los Angeles. And just this month, Rice was invited to interview actress Donna Mills for a feature in Vogue.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n <\/div><\/div>
\n <\/p>\nChristopher Rice is photographed in New Orleans on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (Staff photo by Brett Duke, The Times-Picayune)<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n
STAFF PHOTO BY BRETT DUKE<\/span> This week, though, his focus centers on Anne Rice and the local haunts she loved. One stop is Commander\u2019s Palace \u2014 she once warned the staff about her mock jazz funeral across the street at Lafayette Cemetery, where she was famously carried in a coffin to a book signing at Garden District Book Shop, another destination on his list. He\u2019s also visiting Vincent\u2019s Italian Cuisine because \u201ctheir corn and crabmeat bisque kept her going for years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Rice\u2019s own relationship with New Orleans is complex. He hasn\u2019t lived here since 2001, when he permanently moved to Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
His first 10 years were in San Francisco, until his parents told him they were spending a summer in New Orleans \u2014 except they had bought a house there and enrolled him in Trinity Episcopal School. Rice quickly realized it wasn\u2019t a vacation; it was a relocation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
He called the move \u201can absolute cultural shock.\u201d At his school in San Francisco, grades weren\u2019t given at all to spare feelings, and students linked arms in protests around City Hall. A private school in Uptown felt worlds away.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n <\/div><\/div>
\n <\/p>\nChristopher Rice stands with his mother, Anne Rice, during a parade outside of her former Lower Garden District home.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n
Courtesy of Christopher Rice<\/span> \u201cI don’t think (my mother) minded me connecting with a bigger set of points of view out in the world,\u201d Rice said. \u201cShe was a lifelong Democrat and a liberal, but she wanted me not to assume that everybody around me felt the way that I did.\u201d<\/p>\n
For high school, he transferred to Isidore Newman School, where he still felt out of place as a closeted gay teenager and theatre kid at an athletics-obsessed institution. He channeled that anger into his first novel, \u201cA Density of Souls,\u201d a New York Times-bestseller written while his mother was in a diabetic coma. In time, though, he realized just how privileged he had been, he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
He never planned to be a novelist. At Brown University, Rice expected to conquer the theatre department, but he never got a call back. That rejection fueled his love for prose. He had written screenplays, but avoided books \u2014 he didn\u2019t want to invite comparisons to his mother. By the time he left Brown, his perspective had shifted. Writing novels was something he could control completely.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody could tell me not to do it,\u201d Rice said. \u201cThey couldn’t stand in between me and the computer.\u201d<\/p>\n
His fear of comparison eventually dissolved. In 2017, he and his mother collaborated for the first time on their novel called \u201cRamses the Damned: The Passion of Cleopatra\u201d \u2014 a sequel to Anne Rice\u2019s book \u201cThe Mummy, or Ramses of the Dead.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
The two spent 6 months working in the desert of Coachella Valley, where she was living at the time. During the writing sessions, Anne Rice would scrawl big notes on a sketchpad while her sister jogged their memories of the first book.<\/p>\n
Collaboration with another writer can feel like a custody battle for the story. That wasn\u2019t the case for Rice and his mother. She offered two gentle suggestions to him: more hats on characters, considering it was set in the Victorian era, and no true villains. Afterall, her vampire characters were mirrors of the human condition \u2014 conflicted, damned and isolated, despite their supernatural nature.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t really do villains,\u201d she told him. \u201cMy whole thing, the world that I created, was about going into the point of view of the vampire and making you relate to them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
During the pandemic, they began the third novel of the series. Meanwhile, Rice grew intrigued by romance fiction and the eBook revolution, when authors were defying the traditional expectations of publishers.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n <\/div><\/div>
\n <\/p>\nChristopher Rice is photographed in New Orleans on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (Staff photo by Brett Duke, The Times-Picayune)<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n
STAFF PHOTO BY BRETT DUKE<\/span> Mornings were for the Ramses novel; afternoons, when he would normally hit the gym, became time for a series of gay romance novels under the pseudonym C. Travis Rice \u2014 his \u201calter ego.\u201d The \u201cSapphire Cove\u201d series began light, then darkened, tackling addiction and suicide beneath the gloss of a posh Southern California beach resort.<\/p>\n
Years prior, in 2013, he had written \u201cThe Heavens Rise\u201d \u2014 his \u201cattempt to write a less angry novel about New Orleans\u201d than his debut. That resentment never returned.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
Growing up, his mother interpreted the city for him \u2014 teaching him to admire the purple sunsets and hum of cicadas. Now he carried his own reverence. When storms approached, especially during Katrina, when the places he loved were washed away, he felt a fierce protectiveness.<\/p>\n
As morning gave way to noon on Wednesday, his love for New Orleans became vivid. Over a second cup of black coffee, he recalled his mother\u2019s legendary vampire balls every Halloween \u2014 he and his theatre friend singing show tunes till dawn in a cabaret room. His favorite were the Mardi Gras parties<\/a>, when her Lower Garden District home became a revelry of king cake, flowing beer and plastic beads flung against windows and live oaks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
\n
\u201cWe were very privileged. I got a great education,\u201d Rice said. \u201cI had fun in the French Quarter during the years when I used to have fun. I think there is a lot of angst and pain any young person goes through growing up. It\u2019s better to do it in New Orleans, where there\u2019s good food.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.nola.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a cool Wednesday morning, sunlight slipped through the curtains of a hotel suite in downtown New Orleans, where Christopher Rice was staying for the week. Starting with the broad balcony overlooking high-rises and a blue sky, he gave a brief tour of the palatial suite before taking a seat at the dining table near […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2128680,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[128321],"class_list":["post-2128679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-hardwall"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Christopher-Rice-speaks-on-New-Orleans-his-mother-Anne-Rice.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2128679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2128679"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2128679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2128681,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2128679\/revisions\/2128681"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2128680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2128679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2128679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2128679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"NO.chrisrice.10282025.1058.JPG\"](\"https:\/\/bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com\/nola.com\/content\/tncms\/assets\/v3\/editorial\/1\/76\/17603409-f52c-53b5-ba6c-38a4fa407139\/6904d14b08177.image.jpg?resize=150%2C100)
\n <\/div><\/div>![\"Christopher,](\"https:\/\/bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com\/nola.com\/content\/tncms\/assets\/v3\/editorial\/3\/ad\/3ad88ec4-fa03-11ef-aecf-7bfdb9c788ce\/67c8b9a21760c.image.png?crop=594%2C901%2C3%2C0&resize=150%2C228&order=crop%2Cresize)
\n <\/div><\/div>![\"NO.chrisrice.10282025.979.JPG\"](\"https:\/\/bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com\/nola.com\/content\/tncms\/assets\/v3\/editorial\/2\/43\/243c33bb-3f41-5ceb-a209-e566a7c3455e\/6904d277171b5.image.jpg?resize=150%2C100)
\n <\/div><\/div>