From: juanite m. mears (juanitamears@msn.com)

i have only one question. when are you going to publish your next one. i have read them all and look forward to the next book.

thank you

The next book is the third novel about Aud. It's called Always. It will be published on April 5th, 2007, by Riverhead. (More about that below.) The book after that is a memoir. It's currently scheduled for the end of May 2007. My novella, "Yaguara" is also due out Jan/Feb 2007 in Bed: New Lesbian Erotica, ed. Victoria Brownworth. My story isn't exactly new, in fact it's twelve years old and has been reprinted many times. But I imagine there are some people out there who have never seen it. Similarly, one of my stories, "Touching Fire," will be published in an anthology of lesbian science fiction called Periphery, ed. Lynne Jamneck, sometime early next year. That story, too, is an old one. I don't write stories very often.

But what I'm working on now is a memoir, AND NOW WE ARE GOING TO HAVE A PARTY, which will be published at the end of May 2007 by Payseur and Schmidt. Let me tell you a little bit more about that. First of all, it will be a memoir of my life in England, that is, until I left to come live with Kelley here in the US when I was twenty-nine. It's the tale of the old me, the one from so long ago I barely recognise her as me--though, course, as soon as I started to look at old photos and poems and diaries I could see that, essentially, I haven't changed that much. Parties are still the point [g]. The book itself will be a beautiful object: cloth cover, colour illustrations, colour and B&W photos, a CD of my songs, scratch 'n' sniff panels (if we can find anyone to do spilt beer, ashtrays, and opium) and, as a removeable insert, a full-colour reproduction of my first book, made when I was three and a half (for an example from this book, please see a recent What's New entry, dated 12.22.05), and click on the picture.

The photos are of me at six months (see Nicola in a dress!), 11, 12, 19, and then a bunch from my early twenties, including one of my favourites pix of all time, one with Kelley when we realised that, yes, we could make it possible to live together. Such happiness: we look about two years old. There will be around thirty poems--the first, from when I was 11, is called "Sea Journey" and won a BBC poetry prize. The last two are a poem about the death of my little sister, and then a love poem for Kelley. None of them have ever been published. (Oh, trust me, there's a reason for that.) I'll include reproductions of diary entries (see me struggle over rewriting my first, unpublished novel at age 23 [grin] and puzzle over why I have a hangover after six pints of beer--no, I never learn), and three short stories, one of which I wrote at Clarion for Kelley, and which will never be available anywhere else.

What else? Let's see...all sorts of odd things, like my first collage, made when I was four or five, of Jesus on a cross with red demon eyes (that Catholic thing: my grandfather called me Limb of Satan, sigh), my list for Santa when I was seven (fun items: an automatic rifle and a pretty dress), perhaps reproductions of the notes I made to myself on my journey to Clarion and then again on the way home. (No notes for the entire six weeks I was actually at Clarion. Gosh, wonder why.)

Although the book will be stuffed with reproductions of my juvenalia (some of which is very embarrassing, some of which is sort of cute in distantly-fond kind of way, some of which I feel quite proud of--seriously, you have to see that collage) the real reason I'm doing all this is the text. I'm working on a series of anecdotes (funny ha-ha and funny peculiar) of my Bad Old Self (can you spell arson? weapons making? police harrassment?), some essays and meditations on what it all meant, how I felt, how it ties into and influences my current work, and so on. The working title has a subtitle: Liner Notes for a Writer's Early Life.

The book will have a very small print run--four or five hundred copies only--and it will be very, very expensive to produce (my guess is that production will be at least $50 per copy, depending on what we include, and very possibly more). The point is not to make money (we won't, not with these production values) but to make a sincerely beautiful object.

Why am I writing a memoir? It's time. That English Self already seems so long ago and so different that even I am starting to not believe half the things I know happened (I have the bad poetry and photos and diary entries to prove it). At dinner parties when tales of our misspent youth begin I often keep my mouth shut because the stories I want to tell are of the time I chased two robbers with knives, or the time I set some houses on fire, or the time I got thrown in jail for four hours, or the time... And it feels ridiculous to relate such exploits as a teen or a 22-yr-old when one is 45. And yet this is part of who I am; it trails behind me like a wet cloak. But it's beginning to get in my way. So perhaps it's time to lay it all out, once and for all, and then unfasten that cloak and move on to exciting present day things without encumbrance.

From: Jane

As a child I did not enjoy reading for a number of reasons, however, much to the credit of my partner, I have learned to love reading in the past twelve years! (Much to her dismay now as I always have my nose in a book. :-) I read now because I LOVE to escape into someone else's reality and now and again I can even unknowingly get lost in a story to the point where I don't hear the phone ring or the dog bark. When I finally do hear them, I am jolted back into my own reality. Both The Blue Place and Stay accomplished this.

I am by nature a tactile person. I like to touch, feel, smell, and hear the world around me. In graduate school I used to go to the lake or in the woods for hours just to watch the clouds or hear the wind. I identify with Aud in that way. The other thing that drew me into Stay in particular was the conversations that Aud has with Julia. I understand that in Aud's subconscious Julia is there for a reason and that is a common reality for a great number of people. Aud's strength is amazing as well. I think most women yearn to be as strong as she is and although most never act upon it, they secretly have felt anger as she does at some point in their lives.

I wanted to let you know how much I loved reading both of these novels and was wondering if you were writing a new Aud novel?

I have written a new Aud novel. It's big--850 manuscript pages, unedited, which would work out at around 620 typeset pages--and is called Always. It should hit the stores next April. There's lots of nature in it, lots of city, too. Lots of everything, actually. As I say, it's big.

Aud's strength comes from all kinds of places--the natural world, her ability to understand how various ecologies (whether we're talking people or politics or poplar trees) fit together, her knowledge of herself. I think women in general are stronger than most of us believe. Sometimes you just have to act as though you are strong and...you are. It's all about belief, belief in oneself and others' belief in what you can do. My philosophy sometimes: Act As If. Amazing how many times it works. Aud's anger, on the other hand, comes from people fucking with those things, carelessly or deliberately. she doesn't like the order of things being messed with. It's one of the reasons she can't bear injustice.

I know exactly what you mean about being jolted by reality sometimes when reading. That happens to me, too, if the book is good enough. I love reading, love it with a passion. I wrote a very short essay about it a couple of years ago. The total sensory capture can be a very useful way to escape necessary tedium: illness, say, or an uncomfortable plane ride. It gives me great pleasure to think I can do that for someone. Thank you.

From: Tiffany

From: anonymous

Strange question, but you and Kelley have been together quite a while...Do you still get...amorous frequently?

Amorous? All the time. Every time I see Kelley, actually. The way she moves, her smuell, the sound of her laugh... The fact that this beautiful woman loves me--me--makes me smile idiotically. I want to fold her into my arms, run my hand over her curves. And I do. However if the question is, really, How many times a week do you have sex with each other? the answer is, I'm not saying. I've never been a kiss-and-tell kind of person. Sex is a burly, boisterous, elemental thing for me, but also, when it comes to Kelley, rather sacramental. It's private.

I can, though, categorically state that the notion of lesbian bed death is total bullshit.

From: anwar (adharper12@yahoo.com)

Hey Nicola, I want to know do you have advice for aspiring authors that want to write in this genre? Also, I loved your book Bending the Landscape, you really know how to create imagery in the readers mind. P.S. I joined your Yahoo group.

At last count there were about 250 people on my Yahoo group. A fine and varied set of people who have helped me enormously in the last few months. In fact I think it was someone on the list who suggested I write a memoir a while back. I hope you have fun.

Advice for aspiring writers? Write a lot. Live a lot. Think a lot about how it all fits together. Be prepared to do it all again. And again and again and again. This job is one part inspiration and nine parts perspiration. (For more on this, see my essay, Doing the Work.) To be a good writer you have to do the work. You have to trust your instincts. You have to laugh in the face of others' disapproval and be very, very stubborn. Every day, you're alone in the room. (There's a marvelous essay about this that Kelley links to from her website.) If you don't like yourself, you'll hate being a writer. Another thing: find people whose work you admire and ask them to help you. You can't learn from people whose work you either don't like or don't think is better than yours. Find a teacher. Learn from that teacher--even if it's just by reading and re-reading his or her work and analysing it. That's how I've learned in the past: I'd try figure out what I was trying to achieve in a particular scene or chapter, then I think about who had done something similar, then I'd read that passage over and over until I understood how they did it, then I'd figure out how I was going to do it. Learn by imitating and then doing for yourself. Just like being a baby and learning to talk. Easy.

As for Bending the Landscape, I'm afraid I can't take any credit for any imagery in any of those three volumes. The stories were by other people; I simply helped the writers make their work better, and I collected them in one place. In terms of remuneration for the work, editing anthologies is a pretty unrewarding job. What makes it worthwhile is watching sharp stories emerge gleaming from the word swamp, and then getting thanks from readers. So thank you.