Happy Birthday to Bestselling Novelist Christopher Rice

Christopher Rice was born today, March 11, in 1978. He is an author who has penned multiple bestselling novels, including: A Density of Souls, The Snow Garden, Light Before Day, Blind Fall, The Moonlit Earth, The Heavens Rise, and The Vines. His work has been described as spanning multiple genres, including suspense, crime, supernatural thriller, and erotic romance. With his mother, Anne Rice, he also co-authored the historical horror novel Ramses the Damned: The Passion of Cleopatra.

Christopher Rice comes from a family of authors. In addition to his mother, renowned horror novelist Anne Rice, his father is the late poet Stan Rice and his aunt is Alice Borchardt, another noted writer.

Rice has lived in New Orleans, Louisiana, and is a 1996 graduate of the prestigious Isidore Newman School. Rice went on to attend Brown University and the Tisch School of the Arts. He did not graduate from either school; instead, he moved to Los Angeles to explore writing screenplays.

Rice is out as gay, and his works consist of descriptions of contemporary American life for the gay male. When asked in 2002 about "being pegged a 'gay writer,'" he replied:

That's not what I do. I might be more open to that label if I hadn't introduced ensemble casts of characters. Granted, A Density of Souls is as close to a gay book as you can get. It revolves around a character's homosexuality, and others are described in terms of their reaction to the one character's sexuality. In that sense it's at the core of the book. The Snow Garden is about identity. With this book, I'm trying to shrug off the term "gay" author.

Nonetheless, Rice is proud of the reaction of the gay community to his writing, explaining "it was incredibly rewarding when I got a huge positive response from the character Stephen in The Density of Souls. More than a thousand young gay men contacted me and said that I captured what it was like for them going through those years. That means everything to me."

In December 1998, Anne Rice suffered a medical crisis and nearly died when she fell into a diabetic coma. Her son Christopher wrote his first novel, A Density of Souls, upon returning home to New Orleans during her recuperation. Published the following year, Souls generated buzz in the gay and mainstream press, and became a New York Times Best Seller.

Early in his career, Rice distinguished himself by saying that unlike his famous mother, he did not write horror novels, instead considering his books to be thrillers. However, as years went by, Rice became more comfortable experimenting in different genres, exploring his own version of the supernatural with works such as The Heavens Rise and The Vines. Both of these novels met with critical acclaim, and each were nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel.

In 2012, Rice launched a streaming Internet radio show called "The Dinner Party Show." Eric Shaw Quinn, his partner and co-host, was known for having ghost written two books by celebrity Pamela Anderson and a 1992 novel about gay adoption called Say Uncle. The show describes itself as "the Internet's first live comedy variety show" and became known for its hard-hitting satire. After a year on the air, the show dropped its run time to one hour and focused on celebrity interviews and scripted specials. Guests have included Patricia Cornwell, Dan Savage, transgender activist Chaz Bono and Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin.

In 2014, Rice announced through his social media channels that he was scheduled to publish several works of erotic romance. The first of them, The Flame, was published in November 2014 as part of the 1,001 Dark Nights series.

Rice also writes a regular feature for the LGBT-related biweekly news magazine The Advocate called "Coastal Disturbances," in which he discusses various topics.

On November 26, 2016, Anne Rice announced that the film and television rights to her entire Vampire Chronicles franchise had reverted to her after unsuccessful attempts to launch them as a film franchise with Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment. Her announcement included the detail that she and Christopher would be executive producers on a planned TV series based on the franchise.