Battle of the Authors

Rice vs. Meyer
Who will rule this ring?
One will win and one will lose
You get to choose...

Vampires...this word once conjured fear and nightmares in the hearts and minds of women and men. They were creatures of evil, their quest for blood a dreaded fate that fell to those unlucky enough to be caught out after dark. Today though, the word "vampire" brings to mind images of romance and love, of mystery and excitement. How is it that these once loathed creatures have now become one of the most desired and sought after? While there are many out there who are part of this genre movement, two women spring to mind as the forces behind this literary, pop-culture phenomenon...Anne Rice and Stephenie Meyer. Both authors have ultimately carried the torch that lights the way for vampires to feast in our hearts.

68 years ago in New Orleans, Howard Allen O'Brien, a baby girl named after her father, was born. Unwilling to go through her school years with the name Howard, she began calling herself Anne in the first grade. She met Stan Rice in high school and followed him to San Francisco after they were married. There she lived in the renowned Haight-Ashbury district while attending college. She gave birth to her first child in 1966. Sadly, her daughter later died of leukemia before her 6th birthday. A year later she completed her first novel, Interview with the Vampire, though it would be three years before it was published. Anne had another child, a son, in 1978. Though at the beginning of her career Anne left the Catholic Church, she has recently renounced her life as an atheist and chosen only to write books for "Him". Her books on the life of Jesus have been just as popular as the Vampire Chronicles. Anne Rice has sold over 100 million copies of her 30 novels. She writes under pseudonyms such as Anne Rampling and A. N. Roquelaure. There have been three movies and one TV series adapted from her novels.

Also named after her father, Stephenie Morgan was born in Connecticut in 1973 but later moved to Arizona where she grew up. Stephenie met the boy who would later become her husband, Pancho Meyer, when they were both children, though they were not friends. She gave up ideas of going to law school after the first of her three boys was born at which time she decided she just wanted to be a mom. She was just that until a fateful day in June of 2003 when she woke with a dream lingering in her mind. From this dream she wrote what would become Twilight. Stephenie is a devote follower of the Church of Later-Day Saints and, like Anne does now, she instills in her writing the beliefs she possesses. She has now sold over 70 million copies of her five novels. They are now in the process of filming the third book, Eclipse, in the Twilight Saga.

Though both these women have chosen to begin their writing careers with vampires, their take on these beings are very different. Meyer has a very soft approach to her characters. There is love and romance but it's all very safe and appealing to a younger audience. Rice, on the other hand, has very plainly written characters for an adult audience. Her characters and situations are for a more mature reader and often not for the feint of heart. Anne also follows a more traditional/mythological path to the powers of her vampires. Her lead character is a blood-sucking fiend of the night at the best of times while Stephenie's vampires can walk about in the sun and generally have a more human-like approach to the world. While it is possible that many people may cross over from one author to another it is less likely that young Twilight Saga readers will find what they are looking for in a Vampire Chronicles novel. However, one similarity that they both share in their writing is that they do not choose vampires as their only supernatural character. Meyer has intertwined werewolves in her books and Rice delves into witches, ghosts and demons.

Though they may be complete opposites of each other, the characters these two women have written to life are similar in that the readers have grown to love and care immensely for them. They have built up a following that has swept the nation and left us mesmerized in their wake. Our question to you now is this...Which of these women shall live on forever as the Queen of Vampire Fiction? Who will rule the night at CDPL and who will be left to dust? Our former Battle of Authors champion publicly voiced his opinion as this "...Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn. She's not very good." Give us your opinion by posting to this blog or filling out a ballot form in the Circulation area of the library.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Rice

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephenie_Meyer

http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/

http://www.annerice.com/