Christopher Rice

Christopher Travis Rice (born March 11, 1978) is an American author. Rice has written six best-selling novels: A Density of Souls, The Snow Garden, Light Before Day, Blind Fall, The Moonlit Earth, The Heavens Rise, and his latest book, The Vines, which was published in 2014.

Biography
Christopher Rice comes from a family of authors. His parents are Anne Rice and the late poet Stan Rice; his aunt, Alice Borchardt, is a noted writer. He is also friends with fellow author Clive Barker. Unlike his famous mother, he does not write horror novels, but considers his books to be thrillers.

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 now lives in Los Angeles, California.

His sexuality and its role in his work
Rice is 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 his large following in the gay community, 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 2012, Rice launched a streaming Internet radio show called The Dinner Party Show with Christopher Rice and Eric Shaw Quinn. Eric Shaw Quinn, his partner and co-host, was known for having ghost written two books by celebrity Pamela Anderson and a groundbreaking 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. In its early coverage of the show, The Advocate described it as "a Fairy Home Companion", a quote borrowed from Eric Shaw Quinn's sister. 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. Christopher’s mother, Anne Rice, made the show the scene of her exclusive announcement that she would be bringing back the Vampire Lestat in October 2014 with her novel Prince Lestat. In 2014, Rice made his first entry into the supernatural thriller genre with The Heavens Rise. Despite the obvious marketing potential of working in his mother's genre, Rice told the press that publishers were not enthusiastic about the idea. "I had been discouraged from writing a supernatural thriller by everybody, for obvious reasons. There was the marketing potential of it, but everybody's attitude was if I couldn't reinvent a genre, I might as well not bother because anything I do would be mercilessly compared to her." The Heavens Rise received critical acclaim and was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel. (It lost to Dr. Sleep by Stephen King.) In 2014, Rice announced through his social media channels that he was scheduled to publish several works of erotic romance, the first of which, The Flame, would be published in November 2014 as part of the 1,001 Dark Nights series. When some fans expressed outrage over the prospect of a gay author writing straight erotic romance, Rice tweeted, "My novella, THE FLAME, won't be gay. It won't be straight. It's something in between."

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