From: Candace (clove883@aol.com)

"Besides, I'm still at that proud, stand-on-top-of-the-empire-state-building and-yell-it-to-the-world stage of marriage to Kelley. She's a gorgeous, brilliant woman, and I'm thrilled that she loves me. It makes me feel smug and pleased with myself. (I suspect it always will.)"

As someone who is contemplating marriage, I have to ask: Is it still that way all these years later?

The quote is from a 1994 interview with Ruud Van Kruisveg for Holland SF. I remember typing those sentences. I remember thinking, Oh, wow, do I really want to say such revealing things about me and Kelley? But then I thought, Well, huh, I am fucking proud, so I will fucking shout out. And I've been doing it ever since. It's surprisingly addictive. And, no, it's not the same now, twelve years later, as it was; it's better: richer, more complex, simpler, safer, less safe, wilder, tamer, pleasing, exhilarating, refreshing. A bit like running outside into a storm. My opinion on marriage? If it's the right person, it makes things even better. If it's not the right person, nothing will make it better. Marriage really does change everything.

For more on this, read the essay I wrote with Kelley, "As We Mean To Go On," which is our rumination on seventeen years together as writers.

From: Susanne Weber (sw.da@t-online.de)

Dear Mrs. Griffith, I've read your books "Blue Place" and "Stay" and I love them. It's such a great fiction! After "Blue Place" I couldn't read another book for quiet a long time and I felt really sad and some kind of destroyed after finishing it. I like the way you described Aud, her being before and the changes which came with Julia. I felt her loss as if it was mine. In "Stay" you found the same incredible way describing her pain, her rage and finally her growing and changes for me, making it very real. But there is one point I don't quiet understand: the End. Every time it left me feeling confused, incredulous and even baffled. As often as I've reread it, I kept looking for some added pages I'd missed, but there weren't. ;-)

So I took all my willpower and pushed my hesitation away writing to you. Because I'd really like to know, to understand. What does it mean? The last scene, even the last sentence, what's the sense in it? I've tried really hard to understand, but I have to admit I failed. I'm a little bit afraid to admit it too, but maybe I didn't understand anything at all...?

Are you planning on writing another book about Aud? I couldn't find any hint about it neither on your homepage nor your publisher's. I really really deeply hope so!!

I looked on your homepage in your "Ask Nicola Archives" and I found it interesting. Why isn't there a link for your book "Stay"? Didn't you get a lot of questions about it, like mine?

Anyway, I really do enjoy your books though, and look forward to reading your work in the future.

My archives are in a very sad state. They really need organising and updating but I don't have the time. There are, in fact, a fair few AN questions and answers about Stay, you'll probably find many of them in the Not Yet Archived section of the archives. Or you could search the site for more AN answers that aren't even in the "To Do" archives yet.

Yes, I'm writing a sequel to Stay. It's called Always (at least it is at the moment), and for more on how that's coming along, see a previous Ask Nicola. Actually, if you do another search, you'll find a couple of dozen mentions of the book.

As for the ending of Stay, well, I'm sorry you felt as though something was missing. I know at times like that (almost every time I read a New Yorker story, for example) I flap the pages indignantly thinking, That's it? That's it?! So, as I say, I'm sorry if after plunking down your money you felt that way about Stay. My aim is leave every reader satisfied. But, hey, maybe there really were some pages missing from your copy. The last two sentences are "So faint. So very, very faint." If you've got that, then you've got everything and I'm at a loss as to how to describe what I meant without simply repeating what's there.. But, hmmn, okay. Baldly speaking, Aud leaves her cabin, shuts it up tight (I'm thinking she'll go back in the spring and add things like a rooftop solar array for power). She has one last conversation with Julia, in the cab of her truck, where she finally admits to herself that Julia isn't real, that she's been inventing the visions in order to hang on. She then goes back to Atlanta, to find a message from her mother (with all that implies i.e. hints of a rapprochement to come). For a few minutes she thinks Mrs. Miclasz has washed Julia's clothes, that the very last hint of Julia will be removed from her life. My intent was to show the reader what a terrible thing grief is, how visceral, how the scent of the beloved's clothes can bring it all home, the love and the loss, how that can almost destroy the fragile peace one achieves a few months after someone you love dies. I wanted to show how very delicate Aud's recovery is--but I also wanted to show that she is beginning to recover. But then of course she finds the clothes, and in smelling them once again and realising how faint Julia's scent is now, she acknowledges that her memories and therefore love of Julia will fade, with time, and so, therefore, will her own grief. Aud, in other words, will start living in the world again, instead of just going through the motions. This is to some extent what Alwayswill be about. I hope this helps.

From: Lauren (rockwild15@yahoo.com)

When do you use the word "swang"?

The most irritating time, for most readers, was on page two of Stay (if you don't have your own copy you can read the first chapter here). For some of the years'-long discussion of my use of the word swang, here's a place to begin.

From: Adam Diamond (secbanana@aol.com)

In reading your responses for November 9th, I'm struck by a couple of points you made to the point I must write.

First of all, a resounding "yes" in agreement to the letter writer who wrote of "meditative" reading experiences, and to your response - I, too, have had this experience many a time, often with re-reads of favorites but also on rare occasions with new finds. Reading the Ask Nicola responses feels good in a similar, if different way - it's not refreshing in a regenerative, meditative way so much as it is reassuring to my literate brain. Kind of like, "wow, intelligent, incisive, literate, yet casual conversation does exist!"

But I feel I must take issue with a throw-away comment earlier in the same response. In writing about your process (something else I am most appreciative to read about) in writing the non-sex scene between Aud and Tammy in Stay, you make a reference to Tammy's treating Aud like a "boy-like sex machine". Now, as a sensitive, non-stereotypical male, I'm used to a certain amount (a large amount) of assumptions being bandied about, and while I take issue with this characterization, I wouldn't necessarily have felt compelled to call you on it. Except that one letter earlier, you wrote eloquently about the importance of choosing words carefully and being aware of the emotional baggage they carry. So here I am.

Sure, men are portrayed all the time as indiscriminate sex machines. Well, it's no more true of men than it is of women. Men have historically had a great deal more license to express themselves sexually without negative consequences than women, but that doesn't mean that all men act so casually toward sex or even that we all want to. Contrary to popular belief, this particular stereotype can be very damaging, and as difficult to live up to as the body image demands placed on women. I'm wary of being hyper-sensitive here, but neither do I want to be marginalized, especially when I don't think that was your intention. Men don't all view sex as separate from emotional attachment, and men are not all able to perform at the drop of a hat, no more than all women are.

Okay, 'nuff said. Not trying to sound like some kind of victim, but I keep getting my foot stuck in this soap box...

You're absolutely right. That was a careless mistake on my part. What I intended to say was that in Stay Tammy treated Aud the way Tammy would treat a man, i.e. as a being helpless before the offer of sex with a good-looking woman. Let me emphasise: that's Tammy's attitude, not mine. While I believe that both women and men sometimes do utterly stupid things in the name of lust , and while (as you point out) men historically have been freer to pursue their particular idiocies than women, I don't believe men are inherently more dim, more at the mercy of their sex drives, than women.

My guess is that the notion of masculinity is as, ah, hard to live up to as that of femininity. Both ideas are, in my opinion, pernicious nonsense.

From: Earl Morris (earl_morris@hotmail.com)

Were your two short stories "The Other" (Ignorant Armies, ed. David Pringle, GW Books, 1989) and "The Voyage South" (Red Thirst, ed. David Pringle, GW Books, 1989) ever re-published under different names somewhere else?

I am having some difficulty finding the anthologies they first appeared in. I enjoyed them when I read them back then and would like to read them again.

Ignorant Armies, including my short story "The Other," was reissued four years ago as a paperback called The Laughter of Dark Gods (Black Library, 2002). It's available on amazon.com. Red Thirst, with my novella "The Voyage South," is available used at the same site.

Those stories may one day reappear as part of the bone structure of a whole new novel I have mapped out (working title: THE BURNT MAN), which would be a young adult fantasy, complete with swords and magic and mayhem. It's something I'd love to write; I'm just not sure when I'll have time to write it, or what the market might be for it if I did. I'd post the stories here for your enjoyment but I don't own the rights. The rights still belong to Games Workshop, for whom I wrote the stories (plus an unpublished novella) as works-for-hire back in the late eighties. I loved writing them--focusing purely on plot taught me a great deal--and I'm itching to resurrect the characters in my own milieu.