From EW, a "lengthy letter that will accompany advance review copies of the book this summer" that screams of self-importance. Just write the fucking book, dude.

Dear Reader,

For over ten years I've wanted to do this book—Jesus in his own words. For five years I've been obsessed with how to do it, and for the last three years I've been consumed with nothing else.

The ultimate questions, the ones distilled from a thousand others, were so obvious as to be frightening. What did it feel like to be Jesus? What did it feel like to be God and Man as a child?... In all my career, I don't think I've ever faced such a daunting task. And there were moments when I came near to giving up. I prayed. I asked for guidance. I scrapped hundreds of pages. At moments, I was on the verge of accepting that perhaps I couldn't do what had to be done here...

I'm not a priest. I can't be one. I'll never be able to go to the altar of the Lord and say the words of consecration at Mass, "This is my body. This is my blood." No, I can't work that magnificent Eucharistic miracle. But in humility, I have attempted something transformative which we writers dare to call a miracle in the imperfect human idiom we possess. It's to bring Him here in the form of a story, and that story is Christ The Lord.

Sincerely,
ANNE RICE

Hey, Jesus rose from the grave, it's right up Anne's alley . . .

Well, someone had to say it!

I'll go back to the Illumantus! trilogy now, never mind.

I know one book I'm going to pretend never existed. la, la,la.

So, what, she's completely unaware of the existance of Nikos Kazantzakis?

Actually, that doesn't surprise me.

Probably. I really enjoyed that book, though. I enjoyed getting a picture of what His life might have looked like, but Anne's prose is not good for me anymore. And a big old "Yasou" to you for spelling his name...I'm impressed. The movie of "Last Temptation" felt like a month. Really detailed writing doesn't hit the screen very well, I guess.

Oops...Phoenix hiccuped. Nothing to see here. Move along.

I don't know if I spelled it right. I THINK so, but my copy of it (1st Edition, may I mention) is somewhere in the bowels of my basement. In the storage area behind my teenage son's room. Ain't no WAY I'm going thru that.

For five years I've been obsessed with how to do it, and for the last three years I've been consumed with nothing else.

So the snits with fans were on her coffee breaks, then?

So Isabel Allende has written a Zorro novel. Apparently it's marvelous. [link]

I saw a review of it in Friday's paper, and I'm something like 127 out of 138 on the Seattle library hold queue.