Howard Allen Frances O’Brien is an author best known by her pen name of Anne Rampling.
In 1961, she married Stan Rice, a poet and painter, subsequently changing her name.
Rice wrote The Vampire Chronicles, which were subject of two film adaptations, Interview with the Vampire (1994) and Queen of the Damned (2002). She has also written erotican, Christian literature and other gothic fiction.
Type 1 diabetes diagnosis
In 1998, Rice fell into a coma as her husband called for an ambulance – she was told afterwards that she was roughly 10 minutes away from death.
Rice was informed that she was type 1 diabetic and immediately began insulin treatment.
Previously, she had experienced cramps after meals and began to lose weight.
Following her diagnosis, she feared she could not write to the level she had before.
“I was sitting at the computer, and trying to write, and the simplest descriptions were impossible for me. I simply couldn’t find the words,” Rice told abc news.
In 2003, following the death of her husband, Rice underwent gastric bypass surgery and lost over 100 pounds.
She now eats small meals with little carbohydrate and lots of protein.
Rice continues to write, with her most recent release, Beauty’s Kingdom, coming in 2015 under the pseudonym of A. N. Roquelaure.