Anne Rice announced on Facebook last week that her next book will revive The Vampire Chronicles series, which began in 1976 with Interview With The Vampire. The new book, titled Prince Lestat, will be published on Oct. 28 by Knopf. News sources from Variety to the New York Times and The Guardian covered the story. As a result, when the preorder links went up on Amazon yesterday, it landed at #48 on the site’s sales rankings.

In a podcast interview on The Dinner Party with Christopher Rice and Eric Shaw Quinn, co-hosted by her son, Rice said Prince Lestat will be a sequel to The Queen of the Damned because, “after that The Vampire Chronicles are kind of memoir books and backstory and other experiments.” She gives more details (including how Lestat deals with the iPhone) during the full interview — listen to it on iTunes, Episode #64, beginning at time stamp 7:00.

It’s been over a decade since the 11th volume, Blood Canticle, was published. In a 2009 statement currently still featured on the official site for the series, Rice claimed this would be the final volume; “the eleven novels of the Vampire Chronicles are best enjoyed as a complete and finished work.” On The Dinner Party she says she really didn’t think she could write a new one, but going back and reading all the books again made her feel she had more to say, so much so that she “feels this is novel one of a new incarnation” and in fact, has signed the contract for a second book. She even has casting ideas for a new film version of Lestat.

Prince Lestat: The Vampire Chronicles

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