In a 2014 interview with the Independent, Anne Rice, who passed away in 2021, discussed what drew her to vampires. “I was a sad, broken and despairing atheist when I wrote Interview with the Vampire,” she told the outlet.
The book poured out of her after her 5 year-old daughter Michele died of leukemia in 1972.
“That was my response to seeing something die and something pass out of my hands like that, and seeing this beautiful child die, no matter what I did or anybody else did,” she told ABC in a 1993 interview (via the New York Times).
Source: https://www.distractify.com/p/what-happens-to-lestat-interview-with-the-vampire