a Novel but lost to Dr. Sleep by Stephen King and Blood Kin by Steve Rasnic Tem, in their respective years. On the publication of The Heavens Rise in 2013, Rice told The Advocate magazine that part of his motivation for writing the novel came from a desire to tell a New Orleans-set story with a more sympathetic ensemble of characters than the one featured in his debut, A Density of Souls. "I said my first novel put the city through such hell, both figuratively and literally, at least certain neighborhoods. But honestly, what happened to me is that I grew up. And I saw my perspective on the city and some of its communities in A Density of Souls to be youthful and unforgiving. And I had a desire to back and write a kinder, gentler New Orleans story, which, because I'm a Rice, turned into a horror novel." In 2012, Rice launched a streaming Internet radio show called The Dinner Party Show with Eric Shaw Quinn, his producing partner and co-host, who was known for having ghost written two books by celebrity Pamela Anderson and a 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 and celebrity interviews Guests have included Patricia Cornwell, Dan Savage, transgender activist Chaz Bono and Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin. In 2019, after placing the show on hiatus to begin development of The Vampire Chronicles television series, Rice and Quinn returned with a new podcast entitled TDPS Presents CHRISTOPHER & ERIC, which included a regular series focused on true crime television documentaries they called Christopher & Eric's True Crime TV Club. In 2014, Rice announced through his social media channels that he was scheduled to publish several works of erotic romance. The first of them, The Flame, was published in November 2014 as part of the 1,001 Dark Nights series. On November 26, 2016, Anne Rice announced that the film and television rights to her entire Vampire Chronicles franchise had reverted to her after unsuccessful attempts to launch them as a film franchise with Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment. Her announcement included the detail that she and Christopher would be executive producers on a planned TV series based on the franchise. On February 28, 2017, the Rices announced their first novel written in