http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1505103/20050705/story.jhtml

Upcoming unplugged album will feature several new tracks.

While it seemed like Alicia Keys’ Diary was never going to end, the songstress is finally turning to new material.

The 24-year-old Keys had extended her Diary Tour through the end of June and kept the limelight on her sophomore release when she won Best Female R&B Artist at the 2005 BET Awards earlier this month.

But Keys is hardly stagnating. Now at home in New York, the R&B singer is ready to get back into the recording studio. She’s currently prepping her forthcoming unplugged album, which will include Diary songs as well as a few new tracks.

“I’m creating about three or four new songs, and I’m really excited about putting that together,” Keys said. “I’m going to tape it in July and it’s going to be released in October. … One of [the tracks] is kind of classic me. Another one is like a fusion of blues-rock and soul. It’s crazy! And the other one I’m thinking of doing is this particular remake that I’m not going to tell you about yet, because I don’t want to say it and then it doesn’t happen.”

Following that project, she’ll start recording her third studio album. But Keys has a few more irons in the fire, including a second book, which will be the follow-up to 2004’s “Tears for Water.” While she previously said the book will be strictly autobiographical, now she’s saying it might have a slightly different bent.

“It’ll be a more fiction-based book,” she explained. “It’ll be based on my life, but I want to turn it into a more fictitious character. I love the written word so much, I know it’s gonna flow naturally.”

The wheels are starting to turn on Keys’ biopic, too, in which she’ll portray 1950s biracial piano prodigy Phillipa Schuyler. “[Producer] Halle [Berry’s] developing the film, and it’s in its screenwriting phase right now,” she said. “It takes a minute for movies, you know?”

Source: MTV