From: anonymous

This is Charlie again. I'd like to know where I can get the magazines your short stories appeared in. That is, if they are still available. Thanks.

Well, your best bet is to search amazon.com or B&N.com second hand dealers lists for the out-of-print anthologies and back-issue magazines. For handy reference, here's a mostly complete list of my publications in this and other countries.

From: Erika (Erika_Loran@yahoo.com)

I want to tell you how much your books have effected me. In addition to being wonderfully entertaining, Ammonite made clear some of my own personal feelings and helped me think about what I had in common with the lead character. Long after I read your first novel, Ammonite, I can still imagine the rich world and its wonderfully diverse characters--Ammonite has long been my favorite novel not only because of its rich contextualism, but also because of its wonderful juxtaposition of the type of "hard science fiction" characters, and the evolving natives on the planet. Wonderful exploration of humanity, science fiction at its best. I have read all of your novels, and love each one. You have an unusual talent to be able to write/focus on the same themes of humanity and social interaction while doing so in such different styles/genres. I suppose my only question would be how is the new novel coming along? What is the setting?

It's coming along pretty well--lots of ups and downs, as there always are in the first half of writing a novel (at least for me--whenever I meet a writer who says, "Hey, it's easy," I want to rips their guts out and feed them to a dog, when I believe them, that is). In some ways it's easy, because it's another novel about Aud, but in other ways it's extremely hard, because yet again I'm unmaking and remaking; yet again, she's changing. This is going to be a bigger novel than the others, in terms of both texture and length. It might end up as long as Ammonite. There again, it could be really short. (I sometimes don't know why I talk about this stuff because everything always changes before I get finished...)

Anyway, the novel (working title ALWAYS, or maybe ANTIQUE DRESSING TABLE, or, hey, CITY OF SURPRISES, see above paragraph) is set in Atlanta and Seattle, so I get to talk about all my favourite places here--bars and restaurants, parks and hotels, coffee shops and hardware shops, streets and neighbourhoods. It's shocking, actually, to discover how little I know this city. I'll be getting out and about more. I love it when you can make a trip to a peep show tax deductible ("research, y'know").

Thank you for the comment about focusing on the same themes while playing in different genres. It's a particular concern of mine. I believe that if you're good enough, and work at it long enough, you should be able to write about love or change or class or compromise--any theme you choose--in any context: regency bodice ripper, western, space opera, campus novel, picaresque, confessional, fantasy, coming-of-age, fantasy, political thriller, whatever. It's all one big playground--some of the kids are bigger and some of the games are more complicated, that's all.

From: cara (its_cara@hotmail.com

Dear Nicola, (little formal sounding, huh) I am 14 and have published poems and written a lot of things, but I never knew writing could be as incredible as "the blue place"... I feel I am a lot like Aud, in many ways, and your writing is incredibly inspiring. If there's anyway I can get your autograph or something... I'd send a self addresed envelope or whatever...you know, nevermind, I just wanted to tell you if in a sense this book was an autobiography, you're my hero.

Well, in some senses, Aud is a bit like me, in some she's not. (See my BookSense interview for more on this, and for more on Aud in general. For those that are interested in Aud's attitude to violence, I've talked about that a bit in my Nan A. Talese interview. And there's L. Timmel Duchamp's essay on the subject.) Aud and I think the most alike at the beginning of a novel and tend to grow apart by the end.

What happens is that I become intensely interested in some aspect of Aud's life, for example grief, because it relates to my own, and I set out to write about it. Then, as I write, I discover (over and over; some lessons I never seem to learn, sigh) that what Aud thinks and feels about something is not and cannot be the same as what I think and feel. We're different: different beginning, different upbringing, different now. In order to write about her convincingly, though, I have to climb inside her skin and walk around in her emotional world. I have to become her. (I'm guessing this isn't making anything clearer, but, hey, if I had a clear understood of how all this stuff works, I probably wouldn't be motivated to write about any of it.)

As for autographs, the best way to get one is to contact Duane Wilkins at University Book Store here in Seattle, tell him what book of mine you want to buy. I'll go in and personalise it for you, and he'll mail it out. Having said all that, I do occasionally work out a way to do the autograph thing without anyone having to spend any extra money. I can't do that, though, unless the original Ask Nicola question either (a) includes the sender's email address in the body of the text, or (b) the "use info" option is checked. If a user chooses the anonymous option, there's no way I can figure out who sent it and so can't get in touch privately.

Although it might seem an invitation to disaster, or at least abuse by wacko readers, I set things up this way for two reasons. The first, the Golly-aren't-I-a-nice-person? explanation, is that I think some people are braver when they know I don't know who they are, and I want readers to be brave, to feel comfortable. This is true, as far as it goes, but probably the overriding reason is that it's a self-protective move. Every now and again, I get a cry for help email, one of those "I think I might kill myself because I'm a lesbian (or sick and in pain, or my dog died, or I can't figure out my math homework)" type of things. If I don't know who it's from, then I don't have to try do anything about it. I've spent years dealing with family members, and friends, and clients talking about suicide, and, frankly, I'm done with it. So when I get an anonymous Ask Nicola from a reader saying, "I'm going to kill myself right now!", all I can do is think, "Well, gosh, I hope you don't," and go have a beer.

From: Lindsey Main(beanmain@yahoo.com)

Wow! So many new responses...What a pleasant surprise. re: your response to Adam Diamond, writing fiction, non-ficticion and being in your head. Well, I'm not a novelist but I do find myself in my head quite a bit...because I walk wherever I need to go (I don't drive-- a JME thing). On my way to work, I have to go over this drawbridge, and there's always something for me to think about: How did these panty hose get here? Did some woman get a run,whip them off and chuck them out the window? How does an entire trashbag full of bagels end up in the middle of the bridge at quarter to four in the morning? And why haven't the seagulls tried to eat them? They should go for them while it's slow. In a couple of hours, they'll be doughy tiretreads.

It's a pain in the ass sometimes, constantly examining how I feel about something. But I've recently discovered a new kind of "in your head." I'm doing this film project with some friends (well...digital) and I'm not a writer, but in order for our other friends to act in it, we need something for them to read. So, my friend would give me an idea of what he wanted to see on camera, then I'd go home and write the scene(s). And sometimes I'd think of something to add to the idea. Just the other day, I made up two people... And I was in their heads instead of my own. It was so cool. Now, my job isn't as fun as I thought it was...I don't want to work. I'd rather make up people.

What I really want to ask is, have you ever dreamed about Aud or your other characters? Last night, the main character of our story came to me in my sleep. You know like, when football players crash through that paper hoop thing. Only it wasn't paper. It was metal and it pulled itself apart from different directions, to form a starburst like opening. She stood in there for a second,then drew her gun from her shoulder holster and leapt. I wondered where she went. Then her hand was around my throat. She looked possessed. But then she smiled, let go and ran back to the opening. When I woke up, I knew I had to tone down one of the other characters. Nate was pissed because I made Agent Tallent stronger than her. She was reminding me that she was the kick-ass of all kick-asses. Has something like that ever happened to you? I like it, but at the same time, it's a little freaky.

Uh, well, no, I haven't had any dream visits from my characters. Except for one dream, twelve years ago, about a woman waking up in the middle of the night to find a gun at her head--the dream that triggered (sorry, couldn't resist) the creation of Aud. Oh, and a dream about two people racing across moorland towards a strange, futuristic building while the ground burned behind them, which became the first story I ever sold, "Mirrors and Burnstone," which in turn was the prequel to Ammonite. And then there was that dream I had repeatedly when I was a teenager, that turned into the first story I ever wrote, "Down the Path of the Sun." And, oh, okay, I had a dream about a dream of someone figuring out something in a dream that became a sequence in Ammonite. So I guess I lied. Except I didn't: I have dreams from which my characters are born, but they never seem to come back to play once I pin them to the page.

From: Krista (crowinator@hotmail.com)

I have to say, your books have awed me. Rarely have I had characters stick with me for so long; I found myself mulling over Spanner, Lore, Aud, and Julia like they were real people I had met and wanted to know more about. You have the right balance between when to give the background and motivation of your characters and when not to -- you don't overexplain and I think that's rare.

I have a question about how you research the setting, occupations, hobbies, etc. of your characters. I'm thinking mostly of The Blue Place. You give a lot of details about Norway, wood-working, police business, some of which are technical and some of which are more characteristics (like how Norwegians behave). How did you find out what you needed to to present them realistically? Did you do library research, talk to experts, have experts read your drafts; did you visit Norway and hang around in police stations? For example, let's say I want to write a character who is a travel photographer, but I don't know much about photography. How would you go about gaining enough knowledge to make it sound real? Or do you think that writers (who are not writing speculative fiction, anyway) should stick with writing about what they've experienced (in which case all of my characters would live in Chicago!).

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts, since you write with such familiarity on a variety of subjects. I think it's great that you respond to your readers, as well. I am somewhat long-winded, so sorry. Can't wait to read Stay. It's next on my list.

I know nothing about photography, but it didn't stop me writing a novella about a photographer who travels to Belize, a place I've never been, to take pictures of Mayan pictographs, a subject on which I'm clueless. Because that wasn't the point. The point was how she felt about it all. And for that, imagination is just fine. (If you're interested, it's called "Yaguara." It's the only fiction of mine I've never shown my mother; it's a little, ah, racy.)

I've never been to Norway, never had a beer with a Norwegian, never been in a police station (except, uh, when I was dragged into one in the UK a couple of times for, well, let's just pretend it was a case of mistaken identity). I don't talk to experts, either. What I do is come across an old magazine, or a catalogue, or a battered old textbook from the forties on Norwegian architecture, or a poem, or a piece of old shoe stuck in the dirt, and some aspect of it really strikes me. For example, with The Blue Place it was the notion that houses are built the way they are in Norway because of the climate--which led to me wondering how the internal structure of a house influences the internal emotional structure of a family, a village, a whole national culture, and then how it would be if you took someone from that culture and put them somewhere else. Anyway, once I've suffered this coup de foudre (and it is a bit like that strike of lightning, that sense of falling in love), then go off and read a more sturdy, up-to-date book on, say, cool tourist spots in Norway. In the case of Stay it was a book on forest ecology. For Slow River it was back issues of Garbage magazine, and Pollution Engineering. Once I've done this bit of reading, I sit around and think about it. And that's about it.

When I first started doing this, I thought it was because I'm lazy (which, of course, is absolutely true), but then I realised (oh, lucky me) that I actually get better results this way. Too many facts tend to stunt my imagination. If I have just a taste of the reality, I can fling my imagination into the air and weave all kinds of fantastical structures that the experts wouldn't dream of attempting. They would know it was impossible.