Phone Message Transcript: Dec. 19, 1997
[appearing on Anne's fan phone line]

"Hi, it's December 19, 1997, If any of you who have seen THE TITANIC, the new movie by James Cameron with Leonardo DiCaprio please call and give me your impressions. I'd love to know or rather please give me your impressions if you are on the line. If I get cut off remember there is a one minute message time or actually I think it's even longer. You can leave a longer message than one minute. Leave me a message and tell me what you thought. I didn't get to see the movie today but I am tremendously excited about it, and I sent James Cameron 200 roses and wished him luck with it in the appropriate theatrical way.

What we are expecting here, those of us who fool around with this phone line, is this sort of battle over machines. We had a very complicated machine that didn't turn out to be suited to our needs. Now we are back to our simple old machine that cuts us off anytime it wants. But, at least we can get a phone message out. Before, I think I was a little intimated by the equipment.

What else do I have to tell you? Oh, I want to thank Gary in Knoxville very, very much for the radio. The radio was perfect. I am working on a radio show right now trying to fix up some way to get a regular show. This old radio is on my desk, Gary. I really love it.

I want to thank you all for the different calls and your different expressions of interest and sympathy when I wasn't putting any messages up. Nothing was wrong really. As I said, I was just having a little problem with the equipment. I wish I could answer you personally but it's not possible. But I do listen to every thing that you say on this line and I do keep all the messages. So, I have a wonderful record of responses from our readers. VIOLIN is still out there. It's hanging on the best sellers list, I think it's doing better than anybody expected it to do. If you have a response to that book, I would love to hear it as well as anything else that you want to respond to. I am going to sign off. We don't have anymore book signings or public appearances scheduled for the near future. PANDORA the next vampire novel comes out in the spring and we may be able to do some promotions then. I really miss having not seen my readers this year. I thought it would be good to spend the time writing instead of going out on tour. But, I really miss what the tour gives me and that's the firsthand experience with those who actually purchase the books and care enough about them to read them and come out to the signings. Of course, I got a lot of wonderful feedback at the few signings that we did. That was good but it was nothing like the long tour. So I hope I can go out again soon.

One other thing that I wanted to mention. One of you called and asked me what I thought about the Virgin Mega Store signing in New York. Well, what did I think about it. That signing was several weeks ago and Leila Josefowicz was playing the violin there and I thought the signings was wonderful in terms of being able to acquaint a lot of people with a genuine classical violinist genius like Leila Josefowicz. It was good to hear her in person and hear what a violin can do to people. I mean, the sound that comes out of Leila's violin is really extraordinary and her talent is extraordinary. There weren't as many people in the signing as I had thought. Our Manhattan signings have generally been very, very crowded and I wonder if perhaps the Times Square location had to do with the lack of people. That it was just hard for people to get to Mid-Town and that location in Times Square may be hard to park, I don't know. Also, it was sometime after the book had come out and maybe people had already read the book and there was no reason to come to the signing.

Whatever, I had a pretty positive feeling about the whole thing. I kind of found the space itself awesome, those big escalators going way up to the floor above us. People looking down on us, as well as people milling around on the floor where we signed. I kind of liked it all.

In any event, I am going to sign off before this machine gets me. Please leave me a message. Take care and remember if you want to see a genius flick, see THE TITANIC. I say so on perfect faith at this point and that faith is in James Cameron and Leonardo DiCaprio. Leonardo as you know is the guy that I want desperately to play the Vampire Lestat. I mean desperately, and I have launched my one women campaign to see that that happens. I have no power. Warner Brothers have all the power when it comes to Lestat. They have him in jail until the year 2000 at which time The Chronicles will revert back to me, and when that happens I want to do everything I can to persuade Leonardo to play Lestat and to get the movies made. In the meantime lets be thankful we have James Cameron. Take care and love everybody and do leave me a message."