Guest Post: Anne Rice's Homoerotic Vampires and Gay Culture

By Ryan Field

Anne Rice passed away at 80 last week. She was the author of 40 novels, and was most well-known for her ground-breaking Vampire Chronicles series of books, which were published in the 70s and 80s.

One thing Anne Rice never did was appropriate gay men or gay culture. She wrote characters with a homoerotic twist that didn't always cross the line...but were close to crossing the line.

I remember the first time I read her book, Interview with the Vampire, I was shocked at the homoerotic characters because I'd never seen anything like that before in mainstream fiction. I couldn't put the book down. And I know I'm not the only one. I've had many discussions with gay men over the years about this.

With that said, Rice did leave an impression on gay culture as well.

While the book failed to impress critics, it became an immediate commercial success, in large part because of its popularity among gay readers. The novel centers on vampires Louis and Lestat. Louis tells a young reporter, whom he meets in a dark San Francisco bar, about immortal life alongside his sinister and seductive maker, Lestat.

Here's more. At the time, no one else in the mainstream was doing anything like this. And Interview with the Vampire is not what I would call gay fiction or gay paranormal. The books are all still very hetero, but with that homoerotic twist.

Rice also did some erotic romance under the pen name, Anne Rampling/A. N. Roquelaure [which means under the cloak], which I think are worth checking out.

About the author: Ryan Field is a Lambda-Award winning author of more than 100 LGBT works of fiction. He sometimes writes gay parodies of straight mainstream fiction/films in the same way straight fiction and Hollywood has been parodying gay men for years, without apology. Please check out his website for updates www.ryan-field.blogspot.com