"September 26, 2004:

What's happening with movies and plays is what I mean. I couldn't think of a catch all phrase that didn't sound contractual, but here is the news for those of you who have asked. I want my books to have a life in film and on the stage. And these are good times!

We're still working with NBC on the long mini series of the Witching Hour, discussing casting and final script writing and we hope to actually get a green light to go into production maybe even this year. The mini-series, in case you're unfamiliar with this little story, will be made up of all three Witching Hour books, and of course Mona will have a prominent role. I cannot think of the Witching Hour now without Mona and I don't think anyone else can either. I am not only consulted in this development but talk almost daily to the producers and the writer and the guardian angel agent who has been involved all along. These are extraordinarily thoughtful and gentle people, and I hope that we're going to be able to work on other projects. Which now brings me to

This "stand alone" book, which was terrific fun to write, and moves so fast because it involves multiple points of view and a great deal of comic action as well as dark drama, is now being set up for a feature film or a mini-series. I'm not quite sure how the final deal will work. I'm torn. I'm in love with the big screen, no secret on that. But long form television could do something magical with this book and even go on into a regular series. It's pretty tempting. What is so different about Ramses is that he isn't technically "damned" as the title implies. He does not have to kill people to be immortal, and therefore he functions in life in an entirely different way from my beloved outcasts, Louis and Lestat. As a consequence, Ramses can have a dimension which the vampire material actually precludes. And this appeals to me now, more than it ever did.

I know many of you prize the darkness in my work, the sense of doom, the bitter loneliness of the characters, their misery as they roam through a world that can never really be theirs in any fruitful way. And God knows that I felt a deep drive to share that dark vision, and a strong identity with the outcast and the damned was the engine driving my writing for years.

But I've changed. And Ramses is a book which prophetically revealed more of my optimism and humour, though it is still firmly rooted in the concerns I never leave for long: those concerns of course have to do with redemption, the inescapable encounter with a world that is sacramental even if we deny the existence of a deity who could have made it sacramental, and the need to make our lives sacramental even if no one else ever knows how or why we've done it, because something inside us will not accept the verdict of Eden without a fight to the death.

Well, I have high hopes for Ramses. I have high hopes that it can transcend genre as Interview with the Vampire transcended genre in the hands of David Geffen and Neil Jordan. Something wonderful will happen.

Do we have to accept the Verdict of Eden? Or can we fight? Can we claim the light here in what is supposed to be a "veil of tears?" Has the incarnation sanctified birth and labor and death? The Incarnation was always presented so simply to us when I was a child; but it's absolutely unfathomable: and be aware of this:

The Incarnation is the key way that Jewish Monotheism was imported from the East into the West, the way that the Law, the Prophets, the Psalms, the Lord conquered the gods of Rome. 

I sit here trying to think of any other Eastern body of ideas that has successfully made the transition from East to West, and I can't think of any, and then I look at Christianity, and I realize that not only did it make the transition, it transformed the West! It became the West. For 2000 years we have wrestled with the Roman concept of law through reason together with the concept of Law revealed by God on to Moses. That is our constant dialogue! And it came form East to West because of Bethlehem, Golgotha, the Road to Damascus, the vision of the Cross over the Bridge by which Constantine conquered.

I wonder if you care about what I'm saying. Look, my mind has always wanted to deal with world encompassing concepts. In my early books I had a youthful and more timid vision: Louis bemoaned the loss of his secure philosophical place in history; Lestat looked for a structure that would allow him to have meaning without God. But then my vision demanded that I take on world-encompassing concepts: Memnoch was born. Blood Canticle rises out of the flames of Memnoch.

What was I saying?

Let's return to Creation itself:

Let me report that the musical, the Vampire Lestat, with the score by Elton John and the lyrics by Bernie Taupin, and a whole group of splendid people is coming along magically, providing all kinds of lessons to me as I am in daily email contact with one of the top bosses, whom I have come to totally love. 

I tell you, we have a new generation of producers in this world now -- people who know how to get the job done without hurting others. It's indicative of some kind of massive shift of consciousness. You can see it in popular entertainment if you look around.

And speaking of popular entertainment, why didn't everybody at the Emmys mention Ian McShane every time an award was won! Why wasn't the name Ian McShane on everyone's lips? Oh, I watched hoping only for mentions of the passed over Ian McShane. Deadwood (HBO) is genius. David Milch is a genius. Catch it in reruns; get the DVDs as soon as they are born. Ian McShane is The Man. Talk about not accepting the Verdict of Eden. Ian MacShane raises his voice and his fist in that series. He is damned, but he dares to love.

My love,
Anne Rice
Little Paradise