[Emphasis has been added]

“Hello, Anne.

I’m sure you receive many, many emails of this kind, but I could not let my gratitude go unexpressed.

The short version of it is that I may not be here today were it not for you.

Now, the longer version of it is that in my 17th summer, my sister went to our town’s sparse public library and brought home a massive stack of paperback novels to get us through the long, hot, enui that can be the countryside days and nights. Interview with the Vampire was among the books, and I happened to grab it first. Honestly, I was more amused by the title than interested, so I decided to see if my predictions for “a little light horror fiction” might come true. Well…

I practically locked myself in my room for three days until I had read it, and then re-read certain passages three and four times over. I had found a new respect for the power of literature.

You see, this was a time when I was beginning to understand my homosexuality, and I had never encountered such rich and erotically charged writing with two male figures. But beyond that–and, more importantly–no work of fiction or fact had ever made me feel that its author had, somehow, reached a hand inside my mind, pulled out the most important philosophical questions that I could not yet put into words, and then laid out the answers in ways that made me hunger for more, and which made me want to live.

The true nature of that time is that I was terribly sad and suicidal because, in my very small and inhibited world, I was sure there were no other boys like me. No one to learn from, no one to take solace with, no one to confess all my fears and doubts to. At 17, as you are aware, I’m sure, the world is always about to end for things that people get through every day. For me it was no different, yet it was insanely compounded by the “gay thing” in the rural south. I won’t go further into that, I know you know what it means.

So, as I read, I saw myself so completely in the character of Louis–and I desperately wanted to be him, sad as he was–that I was able to forget my “family prison”, as I called it, and started thinking about how to really be who I was meant to be. I’ll tell you the part that got me weeping, and that I go back to often when I need to re-feel that old passion that first woke me up…

It’s the section of the book when Louis is in Paris with Armand, and they’re in Armand’s chambers discussing the nature of good and evil, and Louis asks him if they are the children of Satan. Growing up in the Baptist church, I had been taught that “my kind” were just that, and so this was one of my eternal questions brought to the printed page for discussion with a Master (I was shaking by this point!). And then came that beautiful answer–please forgive me if I murder the direct quote: “Exactly. And, consequently, if you believe that God made the world around you, then you must also believe that God made Satan, and that all of Satan’s power comes from God. There are no children of Satan, really.”

And that was it. That was the moment I realized I didn’t need to end my life because I was this aweful thing that didn’t belong in the natural world. I decided to embrace what I was, just as Lestat and Armand had been trying to teach that lesson to Louis, and I have never looked back, hard as the road has been at times.

Now, in my 40th summer, I am studying to be a therapist so I can help others overcome the same suffering I went through and overcame. This confession, though, is not the first time I have revealed to others what, or who, saved my life so long ago. In my efforts to fully connect with others who are struggling, I often tell them of the power of your story, and how it offered a perspective rarely encountered even in the best “self-help” books. Sometimes, a beautiful and tragic allegory can elicit the most catharsis. Lucky for all of us.

In closing, I’ll say again how fortunate I feel to have found you and Louis that summer. He is always with me on some level. I’m not really sure I have the exact words to express all the levels of gratitude I feel, but I hope this letter can convey even a 10th of it.  You may absolutely feel free to share it with others, if you think it would be of benefit. I am forever grateful, and forever changed for the better, because of your incredible spirit and voice.

Love and Light to you always,

Richard Louis Denton”

Anne Rice: From the mailbox: the kind of letter that keeps authors going, through thick and thin.