Anne Rice fans rejoice!

**Peter McCoy** · Dec 1st, 2004, 01:03:26 PM

http://www.annerice.com/msg092604b.htm

The important part in that article:

'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. '

Thats Anne Rice's own words. I doubt when completed and running the show will reach Liverpool, but I'd be willing to travel down to London to see the show should it make its way across the pond.

***Dasquian Belargic*** · Dec 1st, 2004, 01:10:51 PM

I've got a bad feeling about this

**Charley** · Dec 1st, 2004, 01:26:41 PM

I'd much rather watch Cannibal the Musical

***Morgan Evanar*** · Dec 1st, 2004, 03:01:47 PM

My heart is as full as a baked potato!

Voting no to vamp musicals.

Gav Mortis · Dec 1st, 2004, 04:47:44 PM

It does sound lame.

**Zasz Grimm** · Dec 1st, 2004, 07:37:48 PM

Originally posted by Morgan Evanar
My heart is as full as a baked potato!

Voting no to vamp musicals.

**Pierce Tondry** · Dec 2nd, 2004, 11:01:35 AM

Shoot me before I assimilate any more information on this travesty of humanity.

**Peter McCoy** · Dec 2nd, 2004, 06:30:39 PM

http://www.playbill.com/news/article/82554.html

A little more info on the actual musical in the link above. To be honest, I think it has real potential - everything's down to opinion in the end. I'll wait and see how it turns out rather than reinact my pre-AvP behaviour.

Sejah Haversh · Dec 3rd, 2004, 12:51:27 AM

You mean she can't just stick to polluting the literary world with tripe, now she has to assault the performing arts, too?

***Dasquian Belargic*** · Dec 3rd, 2004, 05:08:04 AM

Originally posted by Peter McCoy
http://www.playbill.com/news/article/82554.html

A little more info on the actual musical in the link above. To be honest, I think it has real potential - everything's down to opinion in the end. I'll wait and see how it turns out rather than reinact my pre-AvP behaviour.

So, just to clarify... which book is the musical based on?

Loki Ahmrah · Dec 3rd, 2004, 10:31:42 AM

The Vampire Lestat

***Dasquian Belargic*** · Dec 3rd, 2004, 10:44:33 AM

My least favorite of the books

Shawn · Dec 3rd, 2004, 11:04:44 AM

That's my favorite of her books, actually. Still not interested in a musical, though. Also, after that whole amazon.com debacle, I don't think I'll ever be sending money her way again. It was completely unprofessional for her to insult her readers like she did.

Loki Ahmrah · Dec 3rd, 2004, 11:21:33 AM

What did she do?

Shawn · Dec 3rd, 2004, 11:56:50 AM

Here's a link to the enormous rant she posted on Amazon.com, abusing the reader reviews section so she could trash people who posted negative reviews of her latest book, Blood Canticle.

There's some foul language contained in the link, so be warned.

Loki Ahmrah · Dec 3rd, 2004, 12:13:37 PM

Unprofessional, definately.

Nevertheless, there are stupid readers out there with narrow-minded, occassionally blind views who will be prepared to post complete, unfounded crap about a novel because they didn't like or couldn't understand it. Yes, everyone is more than entitled to their opinion but not everyones opinion is worth the words it uses up.

I'm not a reader of her novels and I haven't read any of her reviews on Amazon but I can sympthise, I think. While what she has done is very, very ill-advised, I have to admire her for being so bold.

There is a counter argument, I would like to add against her favour. One of the best recent pieces of advice I've been given about writing is: "Your reader is very intelligent, don't insult that intelligence."

She has either failed as a writer and written poorly or expects the readers to only see the novel from her perspective which is, conversly, very narrow-minded of her.

There are a lot of stupid readers out there, millions of them are on the internet everyday, but maybe one of them is Anne Rice.

I'm not sure what to think, really.

Shawn · Dec 3rd, 2004, 12:31:12 PM

Originally posted by Loki Ahmrah
I'm not a reader of her novels and I haven't read any of her reviews on Amazon but I can sympthise, I think. While what she has done is very, very ill-advised, I have to admire her for being so bold.

I think everyone can sympathize. However, there will always be at least a few people who post outrageously negative reviews. As a professional, you have to expect this. Lashing out like she did is a very big taboo; It won't serve to convince anyone that she's some literary genius and everyone else is too stupid to understand her book - it will only serve to raise animosity between herself and her readers.

At the time she posted that, the overwhelming majority of the reader reviews were very negative, so it's a very real possibility that the book simply wasn't very good (or would at least be considered that way by most readers). Thus, it's downright insulting to criticize someone for using Amazon's reader review section exactly how it was intended.

Neil Gaiman had this to say on the subject:

I think Anne Rice going on Amazon and lambasting her critics was undoubtedly a very brave and satisfying thing for her to do, was every bit as sensible as kicking a tar baby, and, if ever I do something like that, please shoot me.