Speaker 1: Uncensored, unfiltered, fun hinged.
Speaker 2: It's the Corell Cast.
Speaker 3: Listen daily on your favorite streaming service. It is the Cralcast.
Speaker 3: I am Carell.
Speaker 4: Happy New Year's Eve, So very glad you are joining
Speaker 4: me now. As you all know, it's the last day
Speaker 4: of twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five. It's already twenty
Speaker 4: twenty five in Australia in places like that, it's just
Speaker 4: around the corner for us, and I hope we're going
Speaker 4: to try to make it a good one. I've been
Speaker 4: so grateful for you in twenty twenty four. I love
Speaker 4: you so very much. I've done one hundred and like
Speaker 4: eighty five shows for you this year, and I can't
Speaker 4: thank you for indulging me on days that I can't
Speaker 4: do shows, or on days where I gotta do them
Speaker 4: late because of my back or whatever. But you've stuck
Speaker 4: with me, and I can't thank you enough. Thank you,
Speaker 4: thank you, thank you, thank you to all the Patronspatreon
Speaker 4: dot com, forward slash really Corel. Now you're gonna be
Speaker 4: safe tonight because I need you in the new year.
Speaker 4: Why don't you be like me and go to a
Speaker 4: pub at four o'clock in the afternoon and celebrate New
Speaker 4: Year's even Ireland. That's what I do. I'm home by
Speaker 4: five and then at midnight, me and emberor Blissully in bed.
Speaker 4: All right, we're going to end the year with one
Speaker 4: of my favorite interviews from like six seven, eight years ago,
Speaker 4: and it was one of her last interviews. I was
Speaker 4: so lucky to get to go to Anne Rice's house
Speaker 4: in Los Angeles, sit with her and Chris Rice and
Speaker 4: talk about.
Speaker 3: All the books, just all the books.
Speaker 4: She I had met in New Orleans years New Orleans
Speaker 4: years earlier, she remembered me. Of course we became friends afterwards.
Speaker 4: I'm still friends with Chris. Writing and literature is so important,
Speaker 4: and if you don't want to spend time reading, do
Speaker 4: an audiobook. But it's important that we continue to revere
Speaker 4: and respect and be interested in authors and people who write.
Speaker 4: And I certainly was inted in Anne Rice. I wish
Speaker 4: she could have lived to see the success of her
Speaker 4: TV show. Interview with the Vampire is currently on the
Speaker 4: AMC networks. It's in season two, highly successful. I'm sure
Speaker 4: there'll be a season three. Also, The Mayfair Witches on
Speaker 4: the AMC network. So we sat down and talked with Anne,
Speaker 4: and she was developing them at this time with her son.
Speaker 4: He is still with us, she is not. But what
Speaker 4: a glorious interview was. And yeah, I talk a lot
Speaker 4: in the interview. I was so thrilled to see her.
Speaker 4: I just rawra but you know what you're used to that.
Speaker 4: So here is Anne Rice and Christopher Rice at their
Speaker 4: home in Los Angeles. And thanks to Brandon Riley Miller
Speaker 4: for editing all of this video for me originally on
Speaker 4: life and segments. All Right, have a safe, happy New
Speaker 4: Year's Eve. You know I love you. You know I'm grateful
Speaker 4: for you. You know I want to see all of
Speaker 4: you in twenty twenty five and enjoy this interview with
Speaker 4: Anne and Rice, and then I'll see you tomorrow. We're
Speaker 4: gonna go to Ireland tomorrow. Oh, the Obama Museum and
Speaker 4: we're gonna talk to Panty Bliss. Oh We've just oh,
Speaker 4: there's so many people this week on these best ofs.
Speaker 4: I'm just so excited. So here we go with Ann
Speaker 4: and Christopher Rice. We'll see you tomorrow. Comment down below,
Speaker 4: like and subscribe the videos, and of course, become a
Speaker 4: patron at patreon dot com. Forward slash really correl you
Speaker 4: know some of the most beautiful and peaceful places in
Speaker 4: the world are cemeteries. This is mine, and I mean
Speaker 4: I'm buried here, at least I don't think so, at
Speaker 4: least not yet. But in nineteen seventy five I first
Speaker 4: came to this cemetery, and I've been visiting cemeteries.
Speaker 3: All over the world.
Speaker 4: The names on these headstones around this cemetery are the
Speaker 4: names on the streets all over Long Beach. The founders
Speaker 4: of my city reside here. This is where the original
Speaker 4: Long Beachians live. I come to this cemetery a lot
Speaker 4: to think, to contemplate, and I wonder why people are
Speaker 4: of the dead and cemeteries make them all creepy and
Speaker 4: creep them out.
Speaker 3: Let's be real.
Speaker 4: As humans, we have a preoccupation with what comes next,
Speaker 4: and writers for years and years and years.
Speaker 3: Have been fantasizing about it. Now.
Speaker 4: One of my favorite someone whose books I have read
Speaker 4: in this very cemetery, maybe right here by Miss may Davis.
Speaker 4: Honey Sarahlida may Davis is Anne Rice, and I met
Speaker 4: her son many years ago, about ten now, who when
Speaker 4: he came out as a gay person. I first interviewed
Speaker 4: her in Arlands. Now Irelands as they call it now
Speaker 4: Arlands with my late husband Andrew Howard on a trip
Speaker 4: going through there. And I've interviewed her many times throughout
Speaker 4: the year.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: She writes about vampires and ghosts and goblins and you know,
Speaker 4: mummies and things that come up and come out of
Speaker 4: the ground. Trust me, I've been here many a night.
Speaker 4: Nothing really has come out of the ground around here now.
Speaker 4: If you know Anne Rice, and you know the Vampire Chronicles,
Speaker 4: which is not her new book, by the way, her
Speaker 4: new book. Her new book is about Ramses and Cleopatra Ramses,
Speaker 4: of course another character she has created, the Mummy, But
Speaker 4: the Vampire Chronicles. Certainly, Lestatt and Louis her favorites, uh
Speaker 4: and my favorites. And I always vacillate on which one
Speaker 4: I would be. Would I be Lestotte with his fabulous
Speaker 4: fashion sense that he has, or would I be Louis
Speaker 4: with you know, his brooding and his temperament.
Speaker 3: I never do know.
Speaker 4: One thing I do know is Anne Rice is a delight.
Speaker 4: Her son is a joy. And we got to sit
Speaker 4: down with them in their West Hollywood apartment, in his
Speaker 4: West Hollywood apartment and live somelve But she was visiting
Speaker 4: for the book tour and have tea in one of
Speaker 4: her favorite and not my favorite chee scents.
Speaker 2: Shain say.
Speaker 4: In the year two thousand, two thousand and one, so
Speaker 4: this would be sixteen seventeen years ago. We were on
Speaker 4: the ten Freeway, my late husband and I on our
Speaker 4: way to KFI Radio, and I said, do you know
Speaker 4: this freeway touches so many cities and states across the country.
Speaker 4: It goes from the Santa Monica Pier to Jacksonville, Florida.
Speaker 4: Wouldn't it be great to broadcast all across the way,
Speaker 4: never going more than ten miles north or south of it.
Speaker 4: Well we did, and what an adventure. That's we're making that.
Speaker 4: Brandon and I are making a documentary out of that.
Speaker 4: We're gonna do the trip again. But when we got
Speaker 4: to New Orleans, we opened up the phone book because
Speaker 4: I had heard that Anne Reis, my favorite author's phone
Speaker 4: number was in the phone book, and I thought, no,
Speaker 4: this just cannot be true. It was true, and there
Speaker 4: were phone books. Actually they were in the Google or
Speaker 4: whatever were the white pages.
Speaker 3: I opened it up.
Speaker 4: A wonderful person answered the phone. I said, I am
Speaker 4: a radio host. I am from Los Angeles. I have
Speaker 4: a major show that I'm traveling with. I would love
Speaker 4: to interview Miss.
Speaker 3: Rice the next day. The very next day, we arrive
Speaker 3: at her door.
Speaker 4: Me carrying the only store bought version of Queen of
Speaker 4: the Dan that I could get, which was a paperback,
Speaker 4: And you answer, Lestatt, Louis and Claudia dolls are right
Speaker 4: by the front door.
Speaker 3: I'll never forget it. We go in and do the interview.
Speaker 3: You were upstairs, you were nineteen years old. Who knows,
Speaker 3: I say, And I don't want to know what you
Speaker 3: were doing up there.
Speaker 4: No, And all this artwork around us is by your
Speaker 4: late husband Stan, he was there painting. You gave us
Speaker 4: a grand tour, You showed us where Lasher was born,
Speaker 4: and you dissed all this wonderful stuff. And I just
Speaker 4: never forgot the generosity of spirit and sharing of the
Speaker 4: time and meeting Anne Rice, which was pretty freaking cool.
Speaker 4: So it's even more cool now to be sitting in
Speaker 4: her son's apartment in West Hollywood, her openly gay son,
Speaker 4: by the way, which I think is pretty.
Speaker 3: Cool, open open as.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 3: Successfully.
Speaker 4: Yes, we got the toaster oven, so it's a really
Speaker 4: great thing. It's sort of like a coming full circle
Speaker 4: for me, at least in terms of interviews. I'm here
Speaker 4: because they have a new book that's out and I
Speaker 4: really want to talk about that so much so that
Speaker 4: I dressed for it.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: And I also want to talk about just life as
Speaker 4: the rices these days. First of all, thank you all,
Speaker 4: and thank you for inviting me up to the house.
Speaker 3: It's very nice.
Speaker 4: They did a six hour gab fest yesterday.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: And we're the last thing they're doing, and we thank
Speaker 4: them for that. You know, I sent you the itinerary
Speaker 4: that we're going to talk about, but I want to
Speaker 4: jump around because I do want to start with the
Speaker 4: new book. On the way up here, I had a
Speaker 4: friend of mine try to google how many mothers son.
Speaker 3: Writing teams there are.
Speaker 4: It was very hard to find a lot of resources
Speaker 4: on that. There's not a lot of mother son or
Speaker 4: father's son. Stephen King just did one with his son, Yeah,
Speaker 4: with Owen, but there's not a lot of collaborations with family,
Speaker 4: So you two are sort of unique in that. And
Speaker 4: I wanted to ask because a lot of celebrity kids
Speaker 4: try to either run from their parents or run from
Speaker 4: their parents' job. You know, I don't want to be,
Speaker 4: and yet you have not only embraced your mom in
Speaker 4: a really great way, because you too remind me of
Speaker 4: me and my mom before she passed, we were inseparable,
Speaker 4: but you've also now written with her.
Speaker 3: Who asked who to collaborate? How did that? Did you
Speaker 3: ask him or did he say to you this would
Speaker 3: be a good idea. How did that happen?
Speaker 5: I asked him. I don't think Christopher would have ever
Speaker 5: come to me and said, can I collaborate with you
Speaker 5: on one of your series? Wanted to know he wouldn't
Speaker 5: have done that, but I asked him.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 6: It's kind of presumptuous, you know, and I think it's propriety.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it's a little.
Speaker 6: It's a little presumptuous, you know. I think also what
Speaker 6: we were looking at, too, is that my books are
Speaker 6: very different from hers, so if it was going to
Speaker 6: be a combination, it needed to be the right formula
Speaker 6: for the right project and this book, you know. Really
Speaker 6: to answer the question of how we came to collaborate
Speaker 6: working together on various Hollywood projects, specifically adaptations of her books,
Speaker 6: is how this became to seem less like an extraordinary
Speaker 6: or out of the Pales thing.
Speaker 3: It's sort of like the the and it's the Vampire Chronics.
Speaker 4: Are we allowed to YEA yeah, if the Vampire Chronicle,
Speaker 4: if they're being made for television, finally, I hope that
Speaker 4: you'll be happy with them.
Speaker 3: I had interviewed executive producer.
Speaker 5: I'm an executive producer. Chris is an executive producer, and
Speaker 5: he's writing the scripts. So we are collaborating on that.
Speaker 3: In so far as I read this, you've trusted your
Speaker 3: other children to your chitle.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 6: But I mean even before that, we were working on
Speaker 6: a movie version that didn't work out, thank god, because
Speaker 6: it wasn't ultimately what we wanted to do with the project,
Speaker 6: but we were working to make it the best and
Speaker 6: Rice adaptation that it could be. So it paved the
Speaker 6: way for us to work together on a book because
Speaker 6: I think at the stake are higher for Hollywood adaptations
Speaker 6: in collaboration because there's so many other people you have
Speaker 6: to collaborate, right, whereas with the book, it's the editor
Speaker 6: and talk.
Speaker 3: About high stakes.
Speaker 4: In reading about this new book coming out, the fans
Speaker 4: were clamoring they wanted more of Ramsey.
Speaker 3: And eighty nine.
Speaker 4: I believe it was when I read that book, or
Speaker 4: was it it was eighty nine eighty nine when I
Speaker 4: read that. I still don't understand the whole beef with Cleopatra.
Speaker 7: Will get into that, but I read the sequel. Yeah right, yeah,
Speaker 7: I gotta get to the thing. I got my hands
Speaker 7: on that Thinguel. What took Was it just life or
Speaker 7: was it not his time?
Speaker 5: A number of things happened. I mean, there was a
Speaker 5: lot of commotion at that time. My father died at
Speaker 5: that time, right at the time when Ramses was on
Speaker 5: the best seller list and I was working on the
Speaker 5: Vampire Chronicles. The Queen of the Damned was my first
Speaker 5: New York Times number one best seller, and that changed
Speaker 5: our lives just really.
Speaker 3: Queen of the dam was the first one of the
Speaker 3: Chronicles to be number one.
Speaker 5: Best thing it was, it was, and that was an
Speaker 5: amazing experience.
Speaker 3: It's an amazing book.
Speaker 5: And within a few years the movie was made, you know,
Speaker 5: and that made that I always have to take some
Speaker 5: time out after a movie. I've to absorb that, you know.
Speaker 5: So all of those different things happened. James Cameron had
Speaker 5: bought the rights really, you know, through a studio to
Speaker 5: the first Ramsay's book, and he was going to make
Speaker 5: a movie out of it. We'd talked on the phone,
Speaker 5: I'd met him. He's a charming guy. But then he
Speaker 5: made the Titanic, and the Titanic was a huge success,
Speaker 5: and it just wasn't in the cards to come back
Speaker 5: to this project. So all of those things kind of
Speaker 5: it's all.
Speaker 4: Very for us because we're here. This is typical Hollywood.
Speaker 4: This is how projects get shuffled and then.
Speaker 3: Get made Sure.
Speaker 4: Took them thirty years to make Antelope, to have things
Speaker 4: fall into place to where she could actually get.
Speaker 5: To that's really, that's really it. I mean, I was
Speaker 5: free to write it in anytime, always keep the literary
Speaker 5: rights on anything. But all that was going on in
Speaker 5: my mind, and then I reread the book and I
Speaker 5: found I wanted to do something new, So I did
Speaker 5: the Wolf Gift books. But I thought, maybe if I
Speaker 5: invite Christopher in on this and he wants to do it,
Speaker 5: maybe he'll have fresh ideas about this and he'll certainly
Speaker 5: bring fresh energy and we can we can do something
Speaker 5: with it.
Speaker 4: When she called and said let's do this with the Mummy,
Speaker 4: with that particular book with Ramsey, what did you think?
Speaker 6: I thought it was very exciting. But I thought it
Speaker 6: was a tremendous responsibility because the book doesn't have charge
Speaker 6: to vote in fans it does, and it's like nobody
Speaker 6: wanted me to muscle in and make fifty percent of
Speaker 6: it at Christopher Rice novel because up until that point,
Speaker 6: Christopher rice novels had been mostly contemporary, gritty crime thrillers
Speaker 6: with a lot of gay characters and some political themes
Speaker 6: in them, but nothing historical, nothing period unless you're counting
Speaker 6: one flashback scene to the sixties historical, you know which,
Speaker 6: So there was nothing like invoking Edwardian atmosphere and detail
Speaker 6: and all that sort of.
Speaker 3: Stuff, and fans get very possessive.
Speaker 6: Those are all reasons why I wouldn't do it alone.
Speaker 6: To do it in collaboration with Mom, that makes sense.
Speaker 3: As a writer.
Speaker 4: I'm curious how it were, and then we'll move on
Speaker 4: from it. Bed I'm really I'm curious because I used
Speaker 4: to co write with a writer. But really what I
Speaker 4: did is I wrote it, and then I gave it
Speaker 4: to her and she added some flavor, and then I
Speaker 4: changed it a little bit more, and then we turned
Speaker 4: it in.
Speaker 3: But that was our process. That's how we did it.
Speaker 3: What was your process? How did you to merge together
Speaker 3: to write it?
Speaker 6: Well, we sat down together at a table much like
Speaker 6: this one, with a lot of caffeine and some cats
Speaker 6: on the periphery.
Speaker 3: And some relatives and the sketch track.
Speaker 6: The sketch She loves the sketch pad and felt detail
Speaker 6: because I think it's make a nap.
Speaker 5: I can see in the sketch pad, and I need that.
Speaker 5: I see music. It's like they're like mountain ranges to me.
Speaker 4: When I do shows, I have computers, iPads everything. I
Speaker 4: need a piece of paper. I need to write out
Speaker 4: my segments. I need to write out teezers.
Speaker 6: Because my active writing it out is also part.
Speaker 5: Of the Often don't even go back to the map.
Speaker 5: Got it in your head?
Speaker 6: No, But but that was the first part of the answer.
Speaker 6: So we had that big intensive meeting and then she
Speaker 6: had the faith in me to go off and write
Speaker 6: a complete draft on my own. Was going to happen,
Speaker 6: to plot the beats the island, And then she pulled
Speaker 6: that draft apart. We sat down again and then I
Speaker 6: went off and wrote a second draft and she did
Speaker 6: the final pass. And I think the final pass was
Speaker 6: key because we really that was the last opportunity. We
Speaker 6: had to make sure this was truly a book that
Speaker 6: continued on the themes and the promises of the first one.
Speaker 3: And I think it does.
Speaker 4: It's almost like you were a chef and you were
Speaker 4: the head cook, and you assembled the ingredients and got
Speaker 4: the base going and then came in with the seasonings
Speaker 4: and the flavorings and the things that make the dish
Speaker 4: the dish. That's that's really quite cool. I want to
Speaker 4: ask you you tell the story. In fact, it was
Speaker 4: read to me last night. You have a lot of fans,
Speaker 4: both of you do, and I said, I'm bring up
Speaker 4: to the rices to interview them. People were fainting. I
Speaker 4: think it were about you. People faint around me.
Speaker 3: Just out a correl girl here, he's here.
Speaker 4: But you were quoted about being a fish out of
Speaker 4: water in New Orleans when you got there from San Francisco.
Speaker 4: That's one of the quotes in the media. You know, here,
Speaker 4: I was suddenly a polo shirt wearing whatever in the
Speaker 4: middle of Orleans. When I visited you, you were very
Speaker 4: entrenched in Orleans, and you even owned the convent at
Speaker 4: the time as well.
Speaker 5: I did the whole block, the whole block city block.
Speaker 3: What was it that made you come to the West Coast.
Speaker 5: Well, two things. Christopher moved back out to the West Coast.
Speaker 5: He'd been born in northern California and it was really
Speaker 5: his home California. He was much more Californian than a
Speaker 5: Southern boy. He moved back out, and my husband died
Speaker 5: and I was alone in that vast house. There was
Speaker 5: no son, you know, coming in and out with his friends.
Speaker 5: There was no husband. He was gone, and I realized
Speaker 5: I wanted to be out near Christopher.
Speaker 4: I really did.
Speaker 5: And also, I've spent many, many years of my life
Speaker 5: in California.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: I lived in northern California for years, and at this
Speaker 5: point I've lived in California longer than I ever lived
Speaker 5: in anywhere. Yeah, it's righted, Well, sure, it's my home.
Speaker 5: It's influenced New Orleans has influenced all of my writing.
Speaker 5: But I've also I came to California for the first
Speaker 5: time at four years old on a train with my mom.
Speaker 5: We stayed in Echo Park area, you know, visitor our aunt.
Speaker 5: I remember La really well. I remember the places we went,
Speaker 5: the things we did, so it was natural to come
Speaker 5: back out here. Now if he'd moved to Bangladesh. I
Speaker 5: might have had second thoughts.
Speaker 4: Let's talk two things I love to talk at parties,
Speaker 4: sex and politics and religion, because these are themes of
Speaker 4: your books. One of the Wikipedia things they say about
Speaker 4: the original Ramses, it was interesting to me they talked
Speaker 4: about sexual fluidity.
Speaker 3: The sexual fluidity of.
Speaker 4: Rice's characters are continued in this book because of course
Speaker 4: they see Lestott and Louis's sexually fluid, and so I
Speaker 4: guess they saw some of the characters in Ramses as
Speaker 4: sexually fluid.
Speaker 3: Sexual fluidity is a.
Speaker 4: Big topic nowadays, a non binary gender and all this
Speaker 4: kind of stuff. You have written your characters, even characters.
Speaker 3: Back in the day. I don't want to say it's
Speaker 3: sexually ambiguous, but they sort of.
Speaker 4: Follow their hearts and their passions and wherever their passions lead.
Speaker 4: So how do your characters fit into this sexual fluidity
Speaker 4: conversation that's going on.
Speaker 5: I have real trouble remembering that I have a gender.
Speaker 5: I have never felt comfortable being talked about as a
Speaker 5: woman or identified as a female.
Speaker 3: I justin neither. But it happens miss your beard croatia.
Speaker 5: But it's something I've never been comfortable with. And when
Speaker 5: I started to write, I didn't even think about it.
Speaker 5: I didn't even think about gay overtones to Louis and
Speaker 5: the Stot. I simply wrote about them in the way
Speaker 5: that seemed natural to me. And I remember a brilliant man,
Speaker 5: Richard Silbert, who was the head of Paramount at that time,
Speaker 5: briefly the head of Paramount. He was actually a famous
Speaker 5: you know, working on the craft of movies. He was
Speaker 5: a sect designer or a brilliant said design But anyway,
Speaker 5: he said to me, it's polymorphous sexuality. They love Claudia,
Speaker 5: they love everybody, and they drink blood from and so forth.
Speaker 5: It's polymorphous sexuality. And I guess that was It was
Speaker 5: just completely natural to me, which.
Speaker 3: It comes across in the writing. It doesn't come across
Speaker 3: as contrived.
Speaker 4: It comes as Stilton and the characters would do this.
Speaker 3: That's it just seems like talk religion.
Speaker 4: You had a small falling out with the Catholics, at
Speaker 4: least it was written about. And nowadays, where are you
Speaker 4: with your faith? I don't want to say your faith,
Speaker 4: but with your spirituality versus you know, we could all
Speaker 4: bast a Catholic church. I always tell people big child rapering.
Speaker 4: You know, I don't really pay attention to it, and
Speaker 4: I don't. I think anyone that's a member of it
Speaker 4: is a member of the largest child rapering in the world.
Speaker 4: And I'm very vocal about that. I'm sorry if it
Speaker 4: offends anybody, but to me, that's.
Speaker 3: Just what it is.
Speaker 5: I can understand.
Speaker 4: And yet my mom with a devout Catholic, and I
Speaker 4: buried her in the church, and I was respectful to
Speaker 4: the church and everything, because.
Speaker 3: That's what you do, you know. But where are you
Speaker 3: now with that?
Speaker 4: In that evolutionary process?
Speaker 5: To sum it up briefly, I went back to the
Speaker 5: church in nineteen ninety eight. I experienced a great desire
Speaker 5: to go back to God, to go back to the
Speaker 5: banquet table, to go back to the church that believed
Speaker 5: in the real presence on the altar and in communion.
Speaker 5: And for twelve long years I lived as a Catholic,
Speaker 5: studied as a Catholic, went to church every Sunday, lived
Speaker 5: and breathed as a Catholic. And what the intense study
Speaker 5: of the Bible led me to was a total collapse
Speaker 5: of faith. In my view, the Bible simply does not
Speaker 5: support the Christian belief system, whether it's whether it's Catholic
Speaker 5: or Protestant or Episcopal or whatever. The idea of the
Speaker 5: need for a savior is simply not supported by the Bible.
Speaker 5: It's not in the Old Testament. It really isn't in
Speaker 5: the New Testament either, and I felt very uncomfortable. And
Speaker 5: then as the Catholic Church got a very high profile
Speaker 5: against gays, behaving very badly about the revelations of child abuse.
Speaker 4: And.
Speaker 5: Really in a sense it had a very bad public
Speaker 5: profile that I couldn't exist with, and I frankly felt
Speaker 5: that way about all of it, the whole system. So
Speaker 5: it quit Christianity publicly. I said, you know, I'm in
Speaker 5: bed with the devil, and I'm getting it.
Speaker 4: I'm an atheist, but I'm not. You know, I know
Speaker 4: there's wonder and marvel out there. I just don't even
Speaker 4: worry about it because I figure I'll get to it
Speaker 4: when I get to it. And if you live a
Speaker 4: good life, that's a good person, then that's all you
Speaker 4: can do.
Speaker 5: That's not what Christianity really teaches, you know. They at
Speaker 5: this point they are they're very vengeful. No, they're down
Speaker 5: to the idea that faith in Jesus is what saves,
Speaker 5: and that basically living a good life isn't the point.
Speaker 5: We'll see. For me, it is the point, right, And
Speaker 5: I have a lot of feelings about how that theological
Speaker 5: idea permeates and poisons a great deal of their positions
Speaker 5: and theologies. And a lot of people, who of course
Speaker 5: are good Christians and well behaved people, don't know that.
Speaker 5: They don't go that far with the theology. That's fine
Speaker 5: for them. When I when I went back, I thought
Speaker 5: theology didn't matter. God knew. I don't have to know.
Speaker 5: When I quit, I felt it mattered very much.
Speaker 3: I think you does.
Speaker 5: That was very much.
Speaker 3: Actually, how fun was it to write Cleopatra? It was
Speaker 3: a lot of harm on. Well, here's what's interesting, Cleopatra.
Speaker 6: Well, it's interesting because when we sat down to have
Speaker 6: our first creative meeting about the book, I was insistent
Speaker 6: the first book ends with the big cliffhanger.
Speaker 3: You know that Cleopatra was.
Speaker 4: She survived, I'm sorry, she survived the horrible inferno that
Speaker 4: no one could survive.
Speaker 3: Right, and she.
Speaker 6: But the hallmark of her character in that book and
Speaker 6: in the sequel is that she was brought back from
Speaker 6: death against her will and without her consent, and thousands
Speaker 6: of years before, when was her immortal counselor and offered
Speaker 6: her the elixir, she said, no, I want to die
Speaker 6: as a queen. So she's not real, right as we
Speaker 6: all do. And she is not happy to have been
Speaker 6: brought back from death against your will. So the question
Speaker 6: of whether or not she's actually even really Cleopatra, if
Speaker 6: the soul of the real Cleopatra exists in her her form,
Speaker 6: her physical form, that hangs over the first book very much,
Speaker 6: and it hangs over this book. But I went into
Speaker 6: that first meeting insisting that she was going to be
Speaker 6: the monster of this book, that she was going to
Speaker 6: be a pure villain.
Speaker 4: Does seem to be a likable guy, money, a dead person,
Speaker 4: seem to be a wonderful moment.
Speaker 6: And Mom was said, look, there's complexity to this character.
Speaker 6: There's richness to this character that you're going to miss
Speaker 6: if we take this approach. But she said, I'll let
Speaker 6: you try it. And I went off in that first
Speaker 6: draft and I tried it.
Speaker 5: I was wrong.
Speaker 3: I was dead wrong.
Speaker 6: She was right, and I started writing what it needed
Speaker 6: to be right away, and I got into her character,
Speaker 6: and I got into the idea that the physical construct
Speaker 6: we'd set up in the mythology of the Book of
Speaker 6: her not knowing if she was the real Cleopatra also
Speaker 6: kind of dovetailed with the scholarship about her because her
Speaker 6: history has been written by her defeaters, if you will,
Speaker 6: the Romans wrote her story.
Speaker 4: Hard queen quote in a movie that everything we know
Speaker 4: about the Vikings was written by Christians who hated them,
Speaker 4: the records, right, so everything, So everything we know about them,
Speaker 4: it's completely wrong.
Speaker 3: Right you totally.
Speaker 6: And then and there are contemporary scholars like Stacy Schiff
Speaker 6: and and you know, other books that have been written
Speaker 6: about Cleopatrick that are informed by this, this modern sensibility
Speaker 6: to do a lot.
Speaker 3: Of research about the real Cleopatra when you were.
Speaker 6: Last, yes, I did some because it's interesting. There are
Speaker 6: some things out there that were not true, that were
Speaker 6: invented by novelists and writers and and other things, and
Speaker 6: we didn't necessarily want to use those. But I think, look,
Speaker 6: nobody is We're not making a historical point that Cleopatra
Speaker 6: and Ramsays are immortal solip for.
Speaker 3: Thousands of years. It's got it.
Speaker 6: It's not a history, but it's not a piece of
Speaker 6: historical fiction.
Speaker 3: It's this sort of you'll believe everybody.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, it's it's funny because I think about
Speaker 4: your villains, they're never.
Speaker 5: Really villain No, No, I don't really do they have?
Speaker 5: They have, just don't.
Speaker 4: I mean, even Akasha when she's on her killing spree,
Speaker 4: she in her mind has a logic for what she's
Speaker 4: doing and why she's doing it. And you know, Marius,
Speaker 4: all of them when they go do some some of
Speaker 4: them do some pretty terrible things.
Speaker 3: But when they do them, a lot of times it's.
Speaker 4: Not maleficent, it's not evil, it's they're seeing it as
Speaker 4: something that must be done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think they're the villain.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So Cleopatra, I think you know, in this new book,
Speaker 4: she wakes up pissed, she almost gets burned.
Speaker 3: Now she's really goodare But let.
Speaker 5: Me let me say something about Christopher's relationship with Cleopatra.
Speaker 5: I think christ Chris described it eloquently, But what I
Speaker 5: saw when I was reading that draft was that he
Speaker 5: had fallen in love with that character. We have to writing.
Speaker 5: All the writing, all the pro surrounding Cleopatra really was perfect.
Speaker 3: Do you fall in love with the character when you're right? Yeah,
Speaker 3: all the time. All of them are just one or
Speaker 3: two more in love with some less Who do you
Speaker 3: more in love?
Speaker 5: Oh? I love the vampire less Stott was my whole.
Speaker 3: You like him because he's a terrible infant. You love him,
Speaker 3: you love that.
Speaker 5: I love him because he's really what I would like
Speaker 5: to be.
Speaker 3: Oh see, Louis is who I would like to be.
Speaker 3: Or Marius. Okay, louis a little whiny.
Speaker 4: Okay, but Marius, you know, with the well I'd like
Speaker 4: to be armand but who doesn't want to be sixteen and.
Speaker 5: Greet Marius has ruthless side.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, with the keeper of those who must see?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean he thinks nothing of burning to a
Speaker 5: cinder somebody.
Speaker 4: I thought about being one of the redheaded twins, but
Speaker 4: just because they were red headed twins and that would
Speaker 4: be fun. I can't wait for everything you're working on.
Speaker 4: I am your client, both of you.
Speaker 5: I am.
Speaker 3: I am your consumer. I will be in front of
Speaker 3: the Vambire Chronicles weekly. I will be there.
Speaker 4: I can't wait to get a hold of the new
Speaker 4: book and read it. I've read all the others. I
Speaker 4: just finished Atlantis. I was a little slow on Atlantis.
Speaker 4: I like you know, but I got to it, and
Speaker 4: I read the original back in eighty nine, so I've
Speaker 4: already read the first book of this sequence. I cannot
Speaker 4: wait to get to it. The Vampire Chronicles had a
Speaker 4: long life. Hazzle Hazle is still living. They are immortal.
Speaker 4: Is Ramsey on the track now to become another immortal?
Speaker 5: Another immortal?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, another you know, like four or five, six,
Speaker 3: seven books?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I think that could happen. I you know,
Speaker 5: I think that, well, you know, when I reached the
Speaker 5: point that I can't write them any longer. I think
Speaker 5: Christopher could write the Ramses books and continue them if
Speaker 5: he wants to do it.
Speaker 4: Do you know if my mother were a famous writer
Speaker 4: and she just said I could pass the mantle to
Speaker 4: my son, I would be jumping up and down and screaming.
Speaker 3: She said it while ago, So I jumped up and down.
Speaker 3: Then yes, yeah, we.
Speaker 5: Wanted to do the third book. We've got a plot.
Speaker 5: We want to take it right into the war, you know,
Speaker 5: and we want to use war responsibly, which I think
Speaker 5: you should do in a fantasy novel.
Speaker 6: What does it mean for immortals to have to look
Speaker 6: at war and see to not be able.
Speaker 5: To really and have to see it.
Speaker 3: It repeating, because one thing I've learned.
Speaker 4: I'm only fifty five, but I have learned now that
Speaker 4: I've been in entertainment and talk radio and everything. I
Speaker 4: basically do the same show now I did twenty five
Speaker 4: years ago. It's the same topics. It's just different people.
Speaker 4: It's just you know that the headlines change, but they don't,
Speaker 4: you know. And so if you were an immortal, you
Speaker 4: would know that. You would know that there's cycles of
Speaker 4: human nature and you would know which one. Oh, they're
Speaker 4: in their war cycle now, then they'll come their peace
Speaker 4: and then they're renaissance. Then they'll destroy everything. Then they'll
Speaker 4: you know, and you would know that. And I wonder
Speaker 4: if you would get weary of viewing them?
Speaker 3: Do you think they before I let you both go?
Speaker 4: Now you've written immortals too, Do they pity us?
Speaker 3: Do they envy us? Do they?
Speaker 6: The longer they're immortal, the more they fall in love
Speaker 6: with us. The longer you're with someone, the more you
Speaker 6: can see, you can see their beauty. I think that's
Speaker 6: what I got out of the Vampire Chronicles.
Speaker 5: Eventually they appreciate, they appreciate us, and they respect us.
Speaker 3: How many times have either of you been asked would
Speaker 3: you become immortal? Many?
Speaker 5: Many times, countless times. Of course I would anything. Well,
Speaker 5: I wouldn't say anything.
Speaker 4: But I'm determined I'm going to be a downloaded intelligence
Speaker 4: that they'll download me to a computer and to let
Speaker 4: the san Ja nippero on Netflix, so they'll upload me
Speaker 4: to the cloud.
Speaker 3: And I'm hoping it's a Mac and not a PC,
Speaker 3: so I do a crash. I'm upping. We're going to continue.
Speaker 4: I could talk for an hour and a half to
Speaker 4: these two. I've loved talking to Anne over the years
Speaker 4: that she's come on my show. Like I counted last night,
Speaker 4: she's been on my show twelve times, every time around
Speaker 4: a book or something that was going on, and it's
Speaker 4: always a delight and a joy to speak with her.
Speaker 4: Chris has become a friend. We're both local. His Instagram's hysterical.
Speaker 4: You're so supportive of authors.
Speaker 3: No I know you know this, but you really are.
Speaker 4: And you show up at the book events and you
Speaker 4: both treat books like they're still golden little marvels, and
Speaker 4: their respect for the written word and the respect for
Speaker 4: other you promote. You both promote other novelists and other
Speaker 4: people who that you are excited about. That's important today
Speaker 4: when the arts are very frowned upon and reading more
Speaker 4: than one hundred and twenty eight characters is not really
Speaker 4: what people do. So I know they're going to enjoy
Speaker 4: the book. We're all going to enjoy the movies. I
Speaker 4: don't know whose house we're going to meet again in
Speaker 4: seventeen years, but wherever it.
Speaker 3: Is, I hope we'll be having a good time. Thank you. Well, hey,
Speaker 3: you know what, it could happen. It could happen.
Speaker 4: We just talked about being immrtal It could happen.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I'm surprised to be alive at all.
Speaker 3: Actually, so am.
Speaker 4: I I lived when there was the eighties, the seventies,
Speaker 4: the nineties, the Lord. I'm glad you are, and I'm
Speaker 4: glad you're still writing, and I'm glad you're writing with
Speaker 4: your son, Chris.
Speaker 3: It's an exciting collaboration.
Speaker 5: Thank you, exciting.
Speaker 4: I'm perrel I'm going to continue to be the luckiest
Speaker 4: guy in Los Angeles today as I sit having coffee
Speaker 4: while I'm having tea with two of the most prolific
Speaker 4: and important writers in America today.
Speaker 3: And that's a non overstatement. Just because I'm here with them.
Speaker 3: Look it up.
Speaker 4: They are read a book. It's actually good for you.
Speaker 4: You can read it on your iPad if you want to,
Speaker 4: but read a book.
Speaker 3: Read there. They're really good. I am Corel. Be who
Speaker 3: you want to be, so long as it doesn't hurt anybody, and.
Speaker 1: Happy freaking New Year's Yeah, it's broadcasting from a completely
Speaker 1: different point of view.
Speaker 2: Yours.
Speaker 3: Listen daily to.
Speaker 1: The Corel cast on your favorite streaming service. It's broadcasting
Speaker 1: from a completely different point of view.
Speaker 2: Yours.
Speaker 1: Listen daily to the Corel cast on your favorite streaming service.