Phone Message Transcript: August 28, 1997
[appearing on Anne's fan phone line]

"Hi, this is Anne Rice. It' s August 29th, 1997. Let me give you an information line about the Fan Club ball and about their activities. It' s 504-596-2208. I can tell you that they' re going to have their Fan Club ball this year on November 1st, but I don' t know the location of it. And we will have a signing on Halloween, and it will be a signing to which you can bring copies of VIOLIN you' ve bought at other stores. But it is going to be very, very crowded because people will be coming in for the ball the next night from all over the world. So I recommend that you come to our first signing in New Orleans, if you' re a New Orleanian or, you know, from around here. Come to our first signing, which is going to be October 15th at Britton Trice' s store. You do have to buy VIOLIN at Britton' s store to have it signed but, believe me, I think that would be a much better thing to do than to wait for midnight. I mean, not midnight, wait for Halloween. Okay, again, the number to call for Fan Club information is 504-596-2208.

I wanted to give you a progress report. I can' t name names, and say all the exciting things that I want to say, but it looks like our TV series that we' re planning, RAG AND BONE, is really moving along. We' re rlly taking steps toward development. This is something very dear to my heart. It' ll be a TV series that I' m involved in all the time. I won' t, I' m not going to be on camera, but I' ll be involved in the writing and it will concern a policeman/priest and also a ghost who emerges and is almost called forth by the spirit of the priest and then becomes both a liability and an asset. I want to keep it quite rich and romantic and quite dark and quite spiritual, and the network is so far responding wonderfully, and we' ve got wonderful people involved. We also have SERVANT OF THE BONES in development at Showtime for a miniseries. That'll be, as you know, an uninterrupted miniseries, not mini, yeah, uninterrupted miniseries. You won' t have commercial breaks, so it should be something of much higher quality than we get from the commercial TV channels. And we have FEAST OF ALL SAINTS, one the early books I wrote about New Orleans, about the free people of color, which is really my tribute to the black population of our city and to all of their accomplishments, and to their marvelous, marvelous history, which very few people know. So I just wanted to tell you all those good things are happening, so we' re really cheerful, we' re really cheerful.

Now regarding that Halloween signing, the one that' s going to happen on October 31st. I don' t know the book store yet, but I just know that you will be able to bring copies of VIOLIN from other parts of the country and other stores. Because, you know, it' s going to be two weeks after pub time to start with, and we want you to have them. But again, if you' re in the New Orleans area or Kenner, or anywhere around here, I strongly advise you to come to our first signing--October 15th at Britton Trice' s Garden District Book Store. Britton can give you, you know we always have this signing here, those of you who come regularly, Britton can give you the times. We' ll make it as comfortable as possible for you. You do have to buy the book at Britton' s store but, boy, it won' t be (laugh) the mad house that that Halloween signing has been. We' ve never had a book signing and the ball wind up in the same weekend before.

Now let me tell you one more time about Leila (pronounced Layla) Josefowicz. It' s Leila (pronounced Leela), actually, is her name. She is this young violinist who is world famous already. She' s performed at Carnegie Hall. I' ve been able to bring her down her as a gift to all of you to perform. She will be performing in a large auditorium somewhere in the City, we have to arrange it, on November 2nd, that' s Sunday night. If you' re going to come in for the weekend, please consider staying Sunday night to hear Leila. This concert will be free or involve a very minimal donation. We may have to put a donation for the local AIDS Foundation just to ration tickets. But Leila is fabulous. Her name is Leila Josefowicz. Unfortunately I don' t have the disk right in front of me and I' m not going to take a stab at Josefowicz, but she has two disks out. One is "Hungarian Rhapsody" and the other is"Tchaikovsky and Sebelius," and she is genuinely gifted. I mean, she has, she is a fabulous talent and she, you know, her recent coming here was one of the high points of my life. So if you, please stay for her concert. We have nine hundred seats available and if we find a bigger auditorium we' ll have even more than that. Anyway, she will be gone by the end of Sunday. The weekend will have concluded itself.

That' s all the news pertaining to the publication of VIOLIN, VIOLIN, VIOLIN. Now, to the vampires. There is a short vampire novel called PANDORA coming out in the Spring. It' s already scheduled. I am going to be doing two books a year, one kind of heavy duty book in the Fall and a shorter book in the Spring. They' re all going to be equally heavy and dark, I think you all know that, but anyway, that' s the way it goes.

Let me give you that Fan Club Number again. Call 504-596-2208. We are in the meantime getting a bigger machine so I can leave a longer message and where you can leave a longer message. And we' ll have that equipment pretty soon.

My love to all of you. I can' t think of any other questions people have been asking me. I don' t know a darn thing about the vampire movies and Warner Bros. If you want to call Billy Gerber, the President, I highly recommend it. Ask him what' s going on and why THE VAMPIRE LESTAT isn' t being made and why THE WITCHING HOUR isn' t being made. The only thing you can do is annoy him. Again, his name is Billy Gerber and he is the President of Warner Bros., and he controls all of that, and I don' t have any answers. Ahh, one last thing I forgot to mention. The great James Cameron, my hero, the great James Cameron is working on THE MUMMY, full steam ahead. And he will make, I think, a fabulous film out of THE MUMMY. So all this is very good media news.

Good writing news for me is that I' m going to have time to write ARMAND before the end of this year in the peace and quite of my crazy room full of busts of Beethoven and Shakespeare and stuff like that. And, by the way, you remember, if you call regularly, a couple days back, a couple of weeks back, I mentioned that I had seen Kenneth Branagh' s HAMLET. Still think it' s absolutely brilliant. I' ve been reading a whole lot of books on Shakespeare and apparently there are a lot of theories that Shakespeare wasn' t written by Shakespeare. And I' m falling in love with this idea that the real Shakespeare was Edward Devere, the Earl of Oxford. So I' d love to hear any of your opinions out there, you Shakespearean scholars, and you' ve got a one minute message time. Give it to me, man, tell me what you think about this. It' s is astonishing what the Edward Devere camp has turned up in the way of research to explain all kinds of mysteries of the plays and the life of the so-called Shakespeare. Very, very interesting stuff. And also Queen Elizabeth had a very strange relationship with Edward Devere. She really pardoned him for things that she would have just, you know, decapitated other people and there' s strong evidence that he was Shakespeare, and that a lot of the plays were published after his death. Okay, that' s it. I just wanted to throw that out."