Phone Message Transcript: Jan. 23, 1997
[appearing on Anne's fan phone line]

"Hello, everybody. It's Thursday, January 23, 1997 and this is Anne Rice, and I want to thank you for calling and thank you for the calls that I've bee receiving for days from you, and all of your encouragement on a number of subjects. And also thank you for your answers on the questions I've been asking you about Hollywood.

This message will be brief. It's a frank plug for my sister's book, BEGUILED. I've mentioned it to you before. Alice Borchardt is her name--B-O-R-C-H-A-R-D-T. She's my older sister and she was Alice O'Brien, just as I was Anne O'Brien, when we were little girls. Well, her novel BEGUILED is being published to rave reviews, I'm very pleased to say. And she's going to have a signing here in New Orleans this Saturday. It's going to be at the Garden District Book Shop at 2727 Prytania Street in New Orleans and it will last from about 1:00 to 3:00, and I just want to recommend from my heart her book. If I didn't think she was a terrific writer, if I didn't think that she wrote better than I did, I wouldn't bother you about it. You wouldn't hear me mention it. (Laughing) I just wanted to tell, so if you're in the New Orleans area and you want to pick up her novel BEGUILED. I think she's really on her way to a great career as a storyteller. Now her novels so far have been very, very rich and sensuous historical sagas, and BEGUILED is that also. It has a great deal in common with a movie like BRAVEHEART. It's really about people battling it out in the 9th century against an attack of the Vikings. And Alice knows her history inside and out. It's just marvelous and she has a gift of language that seems to descend in Irish families. Some of us get it, some of us don't. I think Alice got perhaps the best and the finest strain of that gift. In any event, I just wanted you to know the singing is Saturday, 1:00 to 3:00, at 2727 Prytania Street, which is Britton Trice's Garden District Book Shop. And I hope you all will make it. I am not going to attend the singing myself. I'm a little bit under the weather and also I think Alice should, you know, have her own singing and her own time in the light.

So, thank all of youf or listening to this and thank you for the many movie recommendations. I finally did see EVITA. I thought it was an absolute masterpiece. I recommend it. To those of you who called, to those of you who haven't seen it, go see it. It is genious. Just a genius film. And Antonio is absolutely fabulous in it. I can't recommend it more highly. Love to everybody. Take care. Bye-bye."