Former Gothic horror queen Anne Rice, who turned her back on her best-selling past when she returned to the Catholic faith of her childhood, is to pen another book about her famous vampire character Lestat.

Rice announced her plans as she prepared for the March 4 publication of her second faith-based book, Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana (Knopf), a sequel to 2005's Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, which told of Christ's childhood.

But the new Lestat story will "have a definite Christian framework and a focus on the theme of redemption," reported Time magazine. Rice did not see the project as a violation of her earlier vow never to write about vampires again because she "won't be (doing so) in the same way," she told the magazine.