Anne Rice (born Oct 4, 1941) is an American author of gothic fiction, Christian literature, and erotic literature. She is best known for her series of novels The Vampire Chronicles, which revolve around the central character Lestat. She was raised in an observant Catholic family, but became an agnostic as a young adult. She began her professional writing career with the publication of Interview with the Vampire in 1976, while living in California, and began writing sequels to the novel in the 1980s. In the mid-2000s, following a publicized return to Catholicism, Rice published the novels Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, fictionalized accounts of certain incidents in the life of Jesus. Rice's books have sold nearly 100 million copies. Less