History of the Official Anne Rice Vampire Lestat Fan Club Part 2

Guest Post Written by: Suzie Quiroz, president of the Official Vampire Lestat Fan club
"There are always new fans who do not know the fan club story.  We have been in operation for 24 years!  It is hard to believe it has been that long, I guess time does pass quickly when you are having fun!  LOL

Maybe I will discuss the first Ball held in October, 1989 when Anne, Stan and Christopher Rice (age 11) came with some of her publishers from Random House (the paperback publisher of Knopf Publishing Group) with about 200 people attending.  For the first few Gatherings, we made specialty cakes.  Anne's editor and publicist "Loved" the three cakes we made of the paperback "Interview"; "Vampire Lestat" and "Queen".   Interview was red, VL was gold and Queen was black...the icing must have been nasty with all the food coloring!   Random House gave Anne a rubber skeleton (about 4' tall) which Anne put in the upstairs bathroom by the tv room...people were startled by it when they used the rest room!  We filmed the first Ball but I am not sure the tape survived Katrina (August, 2005), I lost a lot of signed books, comics, and manuscripts that Anne had signed for me.  I try not to think too hard about what I lost, but two really cool things did not make it out of my house intact...The gold coffin Anne used to arrive at the booksigning for "Servant of the Bones" (used in October 1996 or 97) and my two mannequins, Lestat and Louis.  I have replaced the Lestat and Louis mannequins, but the gold coffin was irreplaceable.  But when my house was checked for dead bodies, all they found were two mannequins...Lestat had lost a boot and his foot was spray painted orange and was sticking out of the big bay window.  I would have loved to have seen their faces when the found him!   LOL

The second Ball was at the Delta Steamboat boarding site by the MS River.  We had dressed some mannequins and made a banner for "Satan's Night Out" the band that awakened Lestat when he went underground.  Anne Rice, Vicky Wilson (her publisher at Knopf) and her publicist Janice Goldklang, Katherine Ramsland (her biographer) and David Campiti (Innovation Comic Books) were our guests.  Everyone there had a chance to go talk with Anne for a few minutes.  I think we all made an impression on Anne and her publisher."

If you haven't seen this video of Anne Rice's casket being dramatically led to one of the Vampire Lestat balls (Memnoch Ball in 1995 to be exact), you should definitely watch this!

More Information about the Memnoch Ball in 1995, the iconic ball:
 



"People have always thought that Anne organized all of the Balls, but in fact, she organized the Memnoch Ball, and what an operation that was!   The staff at St. Elizabeth's worked tirelessly on all facets of the Ball.  We had to get permission from the city to close the street in front of St. E's (Napoleon Ave.) and both side streets, Prytania and Perrier Sts.) to have enough space for the 1,000s of people that came to the Memnoch Ball.  St. Elizabeth's had two wings off each side of the main building facing Napoleon Avenue.  In the back yard between the two wings there was a tented area with tarot readers and other things going on such as the brass band parading in the video.  The Perrier St. side had the Abita Beer truck disbursing Victim beer.  Anne had purchased a vat of beer and my sister Melanie Scott had drawn the art work for the label.  On the Prytania St. side I believe there was a group of Cajun dancers teaching the crowd the dance steps...I was with Anne the on the small float in front of St. E's with Kirstin Duntst who had permission from Warner Bros. to wear the blue dress from the movie, Interview with the Vampire.  Her mom and aunt were in the crowd below.  Other costumed celebrities stopped by to say hi to Anne such as Linda Hamilton, James Cameron and Stan Winston who had seen Pumpkinhead in one of the rooms at St. E's with a framed poem Anne wrote about him.  So later, Anne had us send him a copy. " (Suzie Q.)