The actress died on Aug. 14 after she was taken off life support following a fiery car crash.
The sequel to Anne Heche's first book now has a release date, and fans of the late actress can find it on bookshelves on Jan. 24, 2023.
The 140-page memoir is dubbed Call Me Anne, and the book's publisher and distributor, Viva Editions and Simon & Schuster, promises the book is as personal as it gets while "offering a peek inside the mind of the late Emmy-award winning actress." The memoir will consist of "personal anecdotes of her rise to fame: how Harrison Ford became her on-set mentor, her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres, her encounter with Harvey Weinstein, her history of childhood sexual abuse, her relationship with God, her journey to love herself, and more."
The memoir is also being described as "part self-acceptance workbook" consisting of "personal stories [that] are interwoven with poems, prompts, and exercises that got Anne through tough times."
In an except obtained by The Associated Press, Heche recalls the label she was anointed with amid her relationship with DeGeneres.
"I was labeled 'outrageous' because I fell in love with a woman. I had never ben with a woman before I dated Ellen," she writes in the book.
"I did not, personally, identify as a lesbian. I simply fell in love! It was, to be clear, as odd to me as anyone else. There were no words to describe how I felt," she continues. "Gay didn’t feel right, and neither did straight. Alien might be the best fit, I sometimes thought. What, why, and how I fell in love with a person instead of their gender, I would have loved to have answered if anyone had asked, but as I said earlier, no one ever did. I am happy that I was able to tell you in this book -- once and for all.”
The Associated Press also reported that Heche signed her book deal in May and she turned in her manuscript shortly before she died. Heche died on Aug. 14 after she was "peacefully" taken off life support. Two days prior, the actress had been deemed brain dead. She had been held on life support in order to preserve her organs, which ultimately found organ donor recipients.
The actress died following a fiery car crash on Aug. 5 in the Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles. It took nearly 60 Los Angeles City firefighters to rescue her from the wreckage that ignited a massive fire. It would later be revealed that firefighters didn't spot Heche inside her scorched Mini Cooper until 24 minutes after they arrived at the scene, and it took at least another 20 minutes before firefighters could extract her from the vehicle.
Following her untimely death, there was renewed interest in her 2001 memoir, Call Me Crazy. So much so that her book was being sold on Amazon as a "collectible," with the surprisingly steep price tag of between $739 and as high as $949, depending on the seller. When first released, the book was priced at $26.
The memoir details Heche's struggles with mental health while living in the public eye, as well as her trauma resulting from childhood abuse and her high-profile past relationship with DeGeneres, which lasted three years until they split in 2000.
According to reports at the time, following their breakup, Heche parked her car on a highway in central California and strolled down the road into a desert for a mile, before getting to a stranger’s home. By the time police arrived, Heche had claimed she was God and would take everyone back to heaven "in some sort of spaceship." She later confessed to Larry King that she had had a "hit of ecstasy" when she got out of her SUV and was under the influence of the drug when making those statements.
"But also part of why I did it," Heche continued, "is because people watched me go through real crazy moments in my life in public and they didn't know what was behind it, so I think it was my responsibility as a public figure -- funnily enough, I only figured I was a public figure when people were making fun of me and calling me crazy. Maybe they need the whole story here. And then, sure, feel either way about it that you want to feel, but at least you know the story and I feel it is important."
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