Anne Rice and Ellen Gilchrist: Separated at Birth?

I confess: I am reading Anne Rice. These things happen; what can I say? I am addicted to cheap paperbacks and Anne Rice is a cheap paperback drug like crack, or possibly crystal meth, or more possibly still, some incredibly cheap and grungy home made drug that is totally gross yet evilly addictive as hell. And I went to Downtown Books and News about a week ago and I've already read all the good stuff I got there - most notably, a Charles de Lint, Trader and Women Who Run With the Wolves, about which I will no doubt be waxing dreamy eyed in some post to come, since I think rereading it, along with my qigong practicing zen buddhist new age therapist, is kind of changing my life, or at least my brain state, which is after all the same thing. Anyway, back to the drug that is Anne Rice: specifically, I am reading Blackwood Farm and it's alarming me. Yesterday as I was lying around reading this unmitigated piece of crack literature I found myself thinking, "Hmm. This relationship doesn't ring true." No! What a sterling piece of insight! How utterly literary of me to note that something doesn't quite ring true in an Anne Rice novel.
The thing that's really alarming me about this book, though, is that it keeps reminding me of Ellen Gilchrist. I recently rediscovered Ellen Gilchrist, who is a "real" writer, and who I used to like, and I read The Courts of Love a month or so ago. It sounds uncannily like Anne Rice, in that both books involve disgustingly wealthy people in New Orleans and San Francisco doing whatever the hell they feel like, which in Anne Rices' case is, of course, drinking blood and talking in purple sentences to ghosts, and in Ellen Gilchrist's case is having children and talking about love and being sort of unrealistically happy and good, all of which is made possibly by giant goops of lovely luchre coming from apparently unending founts of filthy material goodness. Not that I'm biased against the rich or anything, although I am, of course, but what really gets me is that there's a serious, eerie similarity in the sentence structure. They are both fond of short choppy sentences and a lot of sort of repetitive declarations. They are both prone to having their characters fall into a strange kind of love at first sight, and then they are both absolutely delighted with the many, many possibilities afforded to one by giant wads of cash, and they dwell dreamily on interior design and architecture and just exactly how cool a house you can have if money is no object at all.

So I think they are the same person, or possibly they were separated at birth, or maybe that's just the way everyone from New Orleans writes. I can't believe that I'm the first person who has noticed this, but then it is very possible that Anne Rice and Ellen Gilchrist fans do not, in the ordinary way of things, overlap. I like the idea that they're the same person, since Anne Rice is, according to the internet anyway, utterly unhinged and Ellen Gilchrist, as far as I know, is one of those Southern women who always looks immaculate and goes about teaching at various universities and having lovely lunches (probably chicken salad, the kind with the grapes and almonds and just a tiny touch of dijon mustard, served on mesclun or watercress) with wealthy people. So I enjoy the idea that in secret she is crazy Anne Rice, writing about vampires and wigging out on Amazon. You never know. Read them both:Courts of Love excerpt here and Blackwood Farm excerpt here and see what you think.