Anne Rice (a.k.a. Anne Rampling, A.N. Roquelaure) is best known for her series, The Vampire Chronicles, and the novels about the Mayfair Witches. She has quickly become the writing authority of the dark underworld. Her novels about these monsters of legend have struck it big in America. Characters like the Vampire Lestat and Louis, Rowan Mayfair and the other Mayfair witches, and Ramses the Damned have achieved hero status. No longer a cult phenomenon, Rice's popularity is immense. And the fever seems to be catching.

With one novel, Interview With the Vampire, already made into a hit film starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, and a sequel in the works, it's easy to see that the world of vampires is a provocative one. Is it that we, as a nation, have become so jaded with death that we idolize a literary figure who is essentially a killer? Or perhaps our enjoyment comes from the characters themselves -- their multifaceted personalities as well as the free and opulent lifestyles that they live.

I think these are legitimate claims, but I think something else is at play here. I liken the vampire ideology to that of America's fascination with angels. While these cherubic, mysterious symbols offer hope that a higher power exists and is protecting us, the vampire appeals to our sense of danger and mystery and seduction. Vampires have been romanticized, given sexuality and sensuousness; they are seen as gateways to passion. They can read our thoughts, know what we are doing at all times, take us away from the dismal reality of our lonely existences and into the mystery of the night. Remember Bram Stoker's Dracula?

Fantastical novels have always found a niche in America. Tolkein's The Hobbit and Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland are still favorites. Both are novels that create entire worlds without boundaries, characters without limits. It is a pleasure to enter a world where we have no expectaions, where we are forced to imagine a microcosm of another dimension -- a dimension that exists solely in the mind of the author.

What makes Rice's novels so intriguing is that she takes this private world, this fantastical dimension, and fuses it with the realities of our world, our cities. Her vampires are not restricted by the human dilemmas of time, money, or class. They are not powerless victims, slaving to carve something out of the rock of life. They need not have the rational fear of accidents, carelessness, or fear itself. They are immortal, supernaturally omnipotent, and highly sexual. They are, in essence, who each of us would like to be.

Which is exactly what Rice herself had in mind when creating Lestat. While the personality of Louis more closely resembles her own, it is Lestat, she has said, who epitomizes who she would like to be. Superstar recording artist Sting even wrote a song -- "Moon Over Bourbon Street" -- about the character.

Rice is married to poet Stan Rice and lives with her son, Christopher, in a large house on First Street in New Orleans. (Sound familiar? It's the same address as the Mayfair Witches). A daughter, Michele, died of leukemia at age 6 in 1972. The child vampire "Claudia" is known to be inspired by her.

The Anne Rice phenomenon goes beyond her best-selling novels. Books detailing the plots and character histories of her novels have been penned, as have biographies about the author herself. But Rice remains a private and mythologized individual, with stories about her funeral-like book signings and coffin-dwelling adding fuel to the fire.

Whatever their reasons, people love Anne Rice and her novels. She has said that there will "always" be a "next" Vampire Chronicle and is currently working on a new novel, Servant of the Bones.