Phone Message Transcript: September 15, 1997
[appearing on Anne's fan phone line]

"Hi, this is Anne Rice. It's September 14th right at--midnight I think turning into the 15th. Thank you all for praying for Dannion Brinkley. Last I heard Dannion was doing remarkable better, remarkable. I don't have an updated report though. He's still in the hospital I think but the bleeding has stopped and his brain has stopped swelling and so it was a real turn around.

I am waiting to call South Carolina tomorrow and get an update. As I told you before, Dannion Brinkley is the author of a couple of books on near death experiences. His is one of the most fascinating of all those who had such an experience and written about it, and Dannion believes in doing a great deal of hospice work. Anyway, he is very dear to my heart. I've never met him but I love his tapes and his books, and I thank you very much for thinking of him, focusing on him, and praying for him.

I could be cut off anytime, this is my old machine which is slowly going to pieces. The new machine is coming tomorrow and I hear that the new machine will be better. It's taken us a long time to find anything. We seem to be in some digital twilight zone with this type of machine but tomorrow's will allow many more calls to be recorded before it fills up and stuff like that.

Let me answer quick questions while I can. October 15th at Garden District Book Shop is our first signing for VIOLIN, that's the day VIOLIN hits the book store. Our first signing is at Britton Trice's Garden District Books, Prytania and Washington. You have to buy the book there and there is a very good reason for that. Britton is an independent and if he didn't make that rule he would be probably not able to exist and so we always abide by the way by the book store's rules. We don't come in ourselves. We do want the book store wants and in Britton's case we abide by that rule because people would buy the book the book in the chains at huge discounts and it then bring them to Britton and then he would be destroyed. But anyway, it's usually pretty agreeable especially on the first day people usually get it right there at the store. So I'll be there as long as I can. I don't know when it starts but it is October 15th and then two weeks later we have a signing on Halloween night at some other book store in New Orleans and that will probably be books from all over because people will be coming to town for the fanclub's big Coven Party the following night, Feast of All Saint's November 1st and since there's so many people and the pub date is two weeks earlier we will find some big book store that will allow people to bring in copies from everywhere. People come for the Coven Party from all over the world and kind of always exciting. I am not having anything, I'm not doing any of this year. I can't take any credit for the work; it's all done by Richie Champagne and The Vampire Lestat Fanclub. What is happening the next night is very very important to me is a concert on November 2nd, Sunday night. I've been able to bring the classical violinist, Leila Josefowicz, down to New Orleans to play really just for us and i have an auditorium with 900 seats that I want to fill up with you and us and I hope if you are coming to town for the Ball That you can stay over until Monday because Leila's concert will be early Sunday evening. She could not come the night of the Ball. She had a concert in Boulder but she is a magnificently talented concert violinist and her music was sort of like a comfort to me all the time I was writing VIOLIN and she represented everything that I respected. I've since met her. She's now created, well she has an up and coming CD, believe it or not, that's actually going to be called VIOLIN FOR ANNE RICE. I can hardly believe this. I'm so staggered with honor. The book is about my love affair with a violin and my failure to play it and my, you know, being haunted by this ghost who can play it, and to have this true violinist like Leila honor, honor the book by reading it and accepting the dedication to it, you know, and coming to play for us is just incredible. I am still in a state of shock. But anyway, she's truly wonderful. Her CD's are out. Her most popular CD, the first one, the one that has tchaikovsky's first concerto which is very exciting and romantic and SEBELIUS. Both of those are with orchestras. She is a world class violinist. She's also done a second CD, RUSSIAN RHAPSODY and some wonderful stuff by--and just fabulous stirring music; It's wonderful. If you never heard classical violin you'll love it. Now she, again her concert is on the 2nd of November and there's time for you to leave your name, address, and phone number after the beep for us if you want to see the Leila's concert. If you don't think you'll be here please don't because we've discovered something amazing when you have a free concert it's almost impossible to ration the tickets and we really want to fill up the 900 of this committal. But if you are going to be in town we want you to hear it, that's why we brought Leila down. I mean, I want her to be seen by as many of my readers as possible and I was just thrilled that I was able to manage that.

Violin is a ghost story, and Stephan in the story is the ghost. He's the ghost that plays the violin in masterly fashion with tremendous talent and I went deep back into my love of music to write this book. All the disappointments surrounding music. I guess I haven't been so deep in music itself since I wrote CRY TO HEAVEN many years ago, the book about the opera. Anyway, the first response came from England over the wire the other night. Somebody called from London and thank you for doing that if you ever call back, that was really nice. The book is out in London and it was a nice bit of approval and I really appreciated it, And I hope you all are fine. I think I've answered all the questions. We go to new york for some talk shows and things before our big Halloween weekend so I guess we'll be surfacing on ROSIE and CHARLIE ROSE. The usual shows that I love to do. Live TV is something that I absolutely love. I really hate package TV, and what can I say.

I'm still weeping for Princess Diana. I'm still weeping for Mother Teresa. The millennium is on us and I don't even know how to spell it so I better figure that out fast. I love you all. I hope VIOLIN will be really enjoyable book for you. PANDORA the next vampire book will be out in the spring, that's our (unintelligible) and in production as they say, and I'm writing ARMAND as I should which is a Vampire Chronicle that will appear at the end of1998. I have made this goal for myself of two books a year, one small in the spring, one long in the fall and I don't know if I'm going to be able to live up to this but I'm certainly going to die an interesting death.

By the way when I was dreadfully depressed and so "confessive" to you all, I want to thank you all for your sympathetic messages. You were great. I think part of being an author is going up and going down and being able to express yourself both in words, spoken words, and writing both when you're depressed and also when you're extremely high and I've certainly done this in my books and I've done it on this machine and thank you for putting up with it. God love you. Leave me a message. Again, if you want the tickets it's November 2nd. The concert will be early like six or seven o'clock in a central location in New Orleans; it will 900 tickets. Leave us your name, your address, and telephone number where we can reach you because we have to move very fast to make sure that you come and get your tickets to you. It's Leila Josefowicz. She's...she's absolutely divine.

I noticed on THE VAMPIRE LESTAT Warner Brothers is just, I don't know, in the stratosphere. Congratulations to Randall Wallace, the creator of BRAVEHEART, the starting of the revolution in Scotland. Love tonight to Earl Spencer who is heroically defending his sister, the marvelous Princess of Wales, and God bless you all. We have this saying come see us down here y'all, come see us, as they say for Halloween weekend. Take care guys, love ya."