Phone Message Transcript: May 19, 1998
[appearing on Anne's fan phone line]

"Hello everybody, it's Anne Rice and it's May 19th, I think, 1998. I wanted to remind you that St. Elizabeth's Orphanage, my museum at 1314 Napoleon Ave. in New Orleans is open every day except Monday to the public. It's open from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. and I invite you very much to go up there and see it. It's a beautiful building architecturally. It's got a very very big doll collection in it and a wonderful collection of the paintings of Stan Rice and it's worth seeing as a building. There is a donation requested which goes to St. Mary's and St. Alphonsus Churches and we can't accommodate large commercial groups or commercial tour guides. It's really intended for you, the people of New Orleans and the people visiting New Orleans and there are people to take you through the building. Again the hours are 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. every day except Monday and the address is 1314 Napoleon Avenue. Let me answer a few of the questions you all have been asking me over the phone. The novel for fall is called THE VAMPIRE ARMAND. It's finished and it will be published sometime I think by October 17th. I believe that's the date, somewhere around in there in October. It will be mid October, I'm not sure which. And we will have one great big signing in New Orleans but the date is not set for that signing. I'm not sure when it's going to be.

I have completed another vampire novel. And that's for the spring of 1999. One of you called and asked what the title was, it's VITTORIO. That's the name V-I-T-T-O-R-I-O, VITTORIO THE VAMPIRE. Vittorio is a new character. He's sixteen, he's from Tuscany, he was born in Florence, born in Tuscany and his story is entirely told during the time of the Renaissance in Florence and it's a vampire novel but it doesn't have anything to do with the other vampires. But it's my vampire ROMEO AND JULIET, and it will be out in the spring of 1999.

With regard to PANDORA, keep giving me responses. I love hearing what you think. The reviews haven't taught me very much. I'm really grateful just to hear what you have to say about PANDORA and I know there are a lot of you waiting for your signed copies that you ordered from Britton Trice's Garden District Book Store. There's something like 1,700 copies over there to be signed and I am going over and signing in batches and I'll keep that up.

Thank you all for your opinions on everything. And thank you for your tremendously warm and supportive response to Dr. Annelle Blanchard whose story was written up in the Mother's Day Sunday Times-Picayune paper. The story I don't think was really very complete and Dr. Blanchard is an outstanding doctor and she's suffering a lot of criticism as you know from other doctors and I'm devoted to her and many many of her patients are. Again, thanks for your support on that. Thanks for your understanding that we shut down our tour company. It was absolutely necessary. We really got such vicious criticism from as far away as The Los Angeles Times, people reached two thousand miles to call us names and to vilify us and accuse us of things. So there was no choice but to, for my sanity really, but to take down the tour company, which we did. We are answering the questions on the Internet website, www.annerice.com, and we're getting them posted as fast as we can.

I can't think of any other news to tell you right now except the Coven Party will have it's big vampire ball the Saturday of Halloween and so there's not much else coming up. I will have a very, a wonderful concert in August with a wonderful local pianist, Michael Koerber. A boy of 13 or 14 who is just an astonishing virtuoso and I'll later announce the time of that concert. It will be open to the public. It will be private in the sense that there will be no admission charge but it will be open to the public. Michael will be performing Chopin for us. I also am hoping that Michael will be performing at my book signing in the fall. In ARMAND, Beethoven's sonata, The Appassionata is very significant and Michael will perform that for us at the signing so that you all will get a chance to hear it.

Please leave me a message at the beep. I have set the machine back on one minute. Unfortunately, I had to do that because we had a couple of people who were calling and they were leaving messages that took up all of the space on the machine. It was very very unfortunate. We love them very dearly and we enjoyed their messages but nobody else could leave a message. So leave us a brief message and do visit St. Elizabeth's if you can. It's really worth it.

My house by the way, is now open every Monday, free of charge. I invite you as my guest to come between 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. There are people to show you through the house. My other house at 2524 St. Charles Avenue is open from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., I believe. And again there are people to show you through the house. Again we don't deal with large groups. We can't deal with commercial tours. We can't deal with other tour guides. We just invite you as our guests to come through. And there's no charge for that, these are our private houses and we're very happy to have you come through.

God bless you and keep you and leave me a message.

Bye Bye"