From: anonymous

Was Aud ever in love before she met Julia? If so, will we ever meet or hear from Aud about this past love?

You know, I'm not sure. That is, I'm not sure what she would say if she were answering this question. It all depends on how one defines love. What is it, exactly? For example, does one have to consciously understand the process? Is it love if it's not returned? (Is love a give-and-take feedback kind of thing or is it more like an ambient field?) How many kinds of love are there?

Okay, clearly this is going to be complicated. Bear with me while I wander about a bit.

To me it appears self-evident that one must have known love in order to be able to give it, and, particularly after writing my latest book, Always, I understand that Aud got a lot of love from her mother, and loved her mother in return, even though they were both extremely bad at expressing anything verbally. I also know that Aud has cared deeply for friends. She's definitely had a lot of sex. My guess is that she kinda sorta loved a woman or two in the past, but not consciously, and certainly not with that give-it-up love that she felt for Julia. I think there are several layers, several gradations of love. At least for me there have been.

I first fell in love when I was fifteen. My lover was fifteen, too. We were at the same catholic school. I loved her with a total, innocent, monogamous passion. We had sex everywhere: in the classroom, on the chaplain's desk, on floors in public buildings, in graveyards, even, on very happy occasions, in beds. I liked her a lot, too. Intellectually we were not matched. And I knew right from the beginning that it wouldn't last (I used to have The Graduate-type dreams, where I was at the chapel upstairs in the choir hammering on the glass, shouting "No!" as she and her husband-to-be walked down the aisle). But I was an adolescent. I told myself all sorts of contradictory stories and believed them all: I knew she'd end up getting married (and she did) but at the same time we started buying dishes and bedding for a flat we would live in together. I refused to leave town to go to university (I was supposed to UCL--University College, London--to study molecular biology) and went instead to Leeds University to begin a degree in Microbiology. (Dear god, that was so damn boring that I left after eight weeks.) I wrote her a lot of searingly bad romantic poetry. Then, inevitably, she got engaged to a boy and left me. I’ve heard that she’s happy, and running a successful small business, but I’ve never tried to contact her. If she contacted me, there’s nothing I’d like better than to go out for a pint and reminisce. (Mind you, if my first real, i.e. only [grin], boyfriend, Martin—-who I was with for a few months before I started with girlfriends—were to get in touch, I’d get a kick out of that, too. He was a fine person just, you know, a boy. Not his fault.)

Ah, I’m wandering. So, anyway, after my first girlfriend, I spent a few months having many, many (several a week; it was rather tiring) girlfriends. And then I met the woman I lived with for ten years. I most certainly loved her (still do) but it was an older and wiser love. We actually talked about things. We learned and grew, we changed, we had good time and bad times. We starved together and partied and made music together. We had an open relationship. (For one exhausting summer I had four lovers simultaneously. I didn’t seem to need sleep then.) But we loved (liked, cared for, respected, looked after, trusted etc. etc.) each other. We bought a house together. We thought we would spend our lives together. We were partners. And then I met Kelley.

What I felt for Kelley was recognisably love, but it was different. For one thing, once we started living together, I found the notion of having sex with anyone else uninteresting. I just wasn’t attracted, even superficially, to any other women. It was as though the DNA in my cells was iron filings and Kelley a big magnet; my cells just lined up and pointed at her and nowhere else. I actually felt it happen. It was like this enormous, tangible seroconversion, a slow, irresistible turning, and click, that was that. I haven’t even kissed anyone else since. If she got hit by a truck and died tomorrow I have no doubt that I’d find another girlfriend pretty quickly, it’s just that while she’s alive, she’s all I need.

So, uh, back to Aud. I can imagine her caring and lusting for people, and liking them, but not really falling for them as in “falling in love.” She was too wary, too self-protective, too careful. At some point, maybe a month before that rainy night in April, maybe not until that day, she began to change. By the time she ran into Julia, she had changed just enough to fall in love. And once that’s happened, it’s much more likely to happen again.

From: anonymous

Just curious. How do you know the work of Lu Jian Jun?

Kelley and I own a painting of his, “Antique Dressing Table." In 2002 we were in San Francisco doing publicity for Stay and the hotel felt too small—it was actually a fine hotel, but hotels always make me feel cooped up, no matter how big and how airy the room—so we went out for a stroll. The hotel is surrounded by galleries and every now and again we’d stop to window shop. At one, the Weinstein Gallery, about two blocks from the hotel, we stopped, and looked, and that was it, we couldn’t walk away.I want to make clear here that we weren't planning on buying anything. I was wholly focused on my novel and the readings I was doing, the booksellers I was meeting, and so on. The last thing in the world I was interested in was shopping. I just wanted some fresh air. But the painting we saw through the window was utterly arresting. We went inside. On every wall were the most astonishing set of paintings I’ve ever seen: complex and huge, technically brilliant and emotionally gob-stopping. The one we kept coming back to was the figure of a woman reclining in front of an antique dressing table; she was rendered in exacting hyperreality; the background was semi-abstract. Everything--the wood, the wall, her skin, her clothes, her jewellery--used the same palette. It was like looking at water or flames; endless and irresistible. We literally couldn’t tear ourselves away. We gawped, we marvelled, we told each other we couldn’t afford it--which we couldn’t really. Nonetheless, ninety minutes later we walked away the proud possessors of the picture: considerably poorer, money-wise, but much richer in every other way.

We went home, and looked around our house, and thought, My god, where are we going to put this thing? We lived in a craftsman bungalow in the Wallingford neighbourhood of Seattle. Oh, it was a nice enough house, don't get me wrong, but small. To accomodate the painting we ended up having to completely redo our living room: move the furniture, repaint everything, put in lights; go here to see what the room looked like when we were done). We’ve since moved to a different house, and just last week hung the painting on one of the living room walls. The house instantly became home.

"Antique Dressing Table" has become such a part of my life that it appears in the latest Aud book, Always. In fact it plays such a big part that I was tempted, briefly, to title the book "Antique Dressing Table." But "Always" is not only snappier and easier to design around, it's a more fitting title. However, if, when I've finished the novel, the marketing and design team at Riverhead wanted to use the painting as the cover image, I'd be delighted.

From: Lindsey Main (beanmain@yahoo.com)

Jeri Ryan as a Seven of Nine-esque Marghe in Ammonite. I liked The Blue Place, but I think Ammonite would make a better film. That is all.

Lindsey, hey. Haven't heard from you for a while. How's things? Seven-of-Nine as Marghe? Interesting. I've always kind of seen Marghe as a vaguely celtic-looking woman: chestnut hair, with a curl to it (not tight curls, maybe more wavy), tan, with apple cheeks, and bright eyes that are more or less hazel. But as long as the part was written and directed in the spirit of the book, I think she could be played by anyone. Casting Marghe wouldn't be nearly as tricky as casting Aud. All we'd need is someone who can act. For Aud, we need someone who can act *and* move like water. There aren't many of those around. Though one intriguing suggestion I had recently was Michelle Wolff.

Another intriguing suggestion, made in a recent Ask Nicola, is that The Blue Place might make a cool TV series because each of the chapters is to some extent self-contained, with it's own mini plot arc and its own setting. I find that I quite like the idea. But would Ammonite make a better film? I don't know. There are two ways I could see it going: an arealistic, very arty production (cf. Daughters of the Dust) or a fast-moving skiffy thriller type. But as I've said a hundred times before, I'm not a film maker. I have no clue what it would take to turn any of my books into a movie. The closest I've ever come to Hollywood is saying No to a film offer for Slow River a few years ago, and to watching the most recent Project Greenlight on Bravo. (What were they thinking when they combined that script with that director? Can you spell car crash?)

From: Nicola Collie (ndcollie@hotmail.com)

Hello from another Nicola! I've recently re-read Ammonite, which was the first of your books I read, many years ago. And it was even more involving and intriguing then the first time. I think my attitudes to SF, writing and sexuality have, ahem, matured since then, which enabled Marghe and the other characters to speak to me in a different way. I love Aud and Lore as well, but one always has a special place for one's first....

Anyway, enough fangirling. I've been skimming through the other answers posted on your website, wondering about a sequel. I'm glad to see that you haven't completely ruled out the idea - maybe my voice can be more encouragement to get those ideas churning around!

I've learnt that one can never predict writing. I might not feel the urge to write a sequel to Ammonite right now, but in five years, who knows? Maybe all my thoughts of those big historical novels, or of Aud, will get pushed to one side in an urgent, desperate need to explore the Further Adventures of Marghe Taishan. Maybe I'll want to revisit the magnesium and zinc clouds of Jeep; maybe I'll want to check in on Danner and see if she and Sarah Hiam ever did get together. Maybe I'll want to know if Letitia Dogias went completely bonkers, or if she finally worked out that she should learn to be a viajera. If Leifin came a cropper or, in the way the world usually works, the woman who does hideous things to other living beings is very happy and doing nicely, thank you. I'm occasionally curious about Gerrel, and what Thenike and Marghe's children would look like (or if they survived--even if Thenike and Marghe themselves survived childbirth, come to that). I consider how Company might be reacting. And what does Dentro de un rata look like? I wonder what the rest of the planet looks like, beyond the tiny patch of one continent that I explored in Ammonite. I wonder, oh, all kinds of things. But never enough, quite, to set pen to paper and start writing. But questions like yours keep the spark alive. Thank you.