From: Michelle (mcox@teleport.com)

I've loved your writing ever since AMMONITE, primarily for its intensity, but I wanted to make a comment about SLOW RIVER in particular. It's one of my favorite books of all time, even though I haven't re-read it in quite a while and I hardly remember the characters, plot, etc. What stuck with me about SLOW RIVER was the joy of learning about wastewater treatment. Really, I am not being facetious! It is such an important part of our daily life and is critical to our survival, but it's so taken for granted. (I once heard an NPR piece in which the author asserted that the most important invention ever was the modern sewer system.) I am fascinated by the wonder of seemingly mundane, everyday topics like this, and I loved the way it was woven into the story. I never would have read about it otherwise. Recently I followed up by doing a little internet research on sewage; I also took a tour of a wastewater treatment plant with my 9th graders, and I created a humorous but informative PowerPoint slide show entitled "Sewage: A History." I'd be happy to send you a copy if you're interested. It's very general, as I have only the most basic science education, and technically, I am an "English teacher" by training, not a "Science teacher." (Luckily, however, I work at a school that recognizes that life is not separated into subjects. I can torture the kids with whatever I want - though they have now requested that the places we visit on field trips "not smell like crap.")

Maybe you answered this somewhere already, but how did you come up with the wastewater treatement aspect of SLOW RIVER? (And what other fascinating underappreciated processes can you turn me on to?)

Here are some of my previous thoughts on how I researched all the pollution and engineering stuff in Slow River (there are two references: scroll about a quarter of the way down for the first, and about three-quarters for the second). Here, too, for your amusement, are some comment I made a while ago on education. As for other fascinating, underappreciated processes, you could take a look at Kelley's novel, Solitaire, where the esoteric process is...process itself, in the guise of project management. Interesting corporate and interpersonal dynamics. She's written about this in Virtual Pint (her version of Ask Nicola). She's more organised than I am, though, and has an index [envious sigh].

In my new novel, the third one about Aud (which I'm calling, conveniently, Aud III), there will be a huge amount of info on self defence. (At least I think there will be. I never actually know what's going to end up in the finished novel until it's, well, finished.) I decided it was time that Aud shared her expertise on the subject--plus I've wanted to write about it for years. I don't teach it anymore, but it seems a shame to not share. I'm hoping that will be out late next year.

As for modern sewage systems being the most important human invention...hmmn. I can see how one could argue that, of course, but one could argue for the invention of soap, too. Or even alcohol. (Maybe we should have a poll: What do readers consider to be the five most important human inventions or discoveries or processes? You would, of course, have to define "important." To whom? In what way? Oooh, lots of fun there.) And, of course, the Romans built pretty damn good sewage and water delivery systems two thousand years ago. (See Robert Harris's POMPEII, which I found rather boring, as fiction, but fascinating with regard to how the extensive and impressive Roman aquaduct system was built and maintained.)

From: Diane

Nicola, thank you for providing some of the best writing I've ever had the pleasure to read. I know that you like historical novels so I was wondering if you've read "Dreaming the Eagle" by Manda Scott? It's the first of a series of forthcoming books about the life of Queen Boudica and the Roman invasion of early Britian. I thought it was an enjoyable read. Hope all is going well for you in the writing of the next Aud book.

Well, if I'd answered this when you first sent it, instead of being so horribly behind with these questions, I would have laughed nastily and said, "Going well? Going well?! Oh, ha, ha ha ha." But a few weeks can make a big difference. I'm now feeling pretty damn smug about Aud III. I've completed a draft of the main section (which on its own is longer than anything I've ever written before) and have embarked on the supporting section, a series of self-defence lessons, which will be fairly easy to write (except, oh, I thought that about the main section this time last year).

I have read the Scott book. I'd been putting it off because I was afraid it would be awful--there are so few people who can do this kind of thing with even minimal aplomb--but my worst fears proved unfounded. One of the utterly unexpected aspects of the book was Scott's obvious familiarity with large animals. The text was loaded with the kind of expert detail that it's impossible to fake. Lovely.

From: Amber (angelsslayer99@hotmail.com)

A long, long while back you asked me why I chose the novels I recommended to you instead of the author's more well known works. I believe I recommended Foxfire, The Pillars of Earth, Sleight of Hand, Blackwood Farm, The Rowan, and Outlander.

You commented on those choices, and I kept meaning to reply, but life got in the way! Plus my own shyness at actually "talking" to one of my favorite authors! My response is that I don't choose novels based on how well known they are, nor am I usually even aware of their popularity. A book speaks to me, and I read it. I've many of those author's other works, but those departures or "lesser known works" stand as the most enjoyable for me. I barreled through Ken Follet's rather ordinary "spy novel" catalog until I found a gem in The Pillars of the Earth. I love all of Anne Rice's original Vampire Chronicles but Blackwood Farms stands in my mind as truly memorable, especially of her more recent work.

Diana Gabaldon's work, I randomly picked up the third in the series, Voyager, off the spin-thing in the library (what are those things called anyway?) and was naturally lost. I only recommended the first in the series because first is best. *grins*

There ya go. If you were curious. Now I do have an actual question, and it might sound ignorant, but what exactly is speculative fiction? Is it futuristic in nature, if so, then why are The Blue Place and Stay billed as speculative in nature? Thank you!

Speculative fiction. Hmmn. Tricky. (At this point I wandered downstairs and ate a dozen olives, one of my more pleasant avoidance behaviours. But, okay, I'm back now. I'm ready to deal with this.) The answer is, it depends who you ask.

I first came across the term in reference to fiction written in the sixties, particularly fiction writen by the New Wave writers like Delany, Disch, Ballard, etc. (Yep, mostly boys.) The argument ran something along the lines of: These people are too good to call genre writers, so let's say that what they write is speculative fiction, not science fiction...

At this point I had to go eat more olives. I ate them all. I realised I was being lazy. I sighed. I dragged down Clute and Nicholl's Encyclopedia of Science Fiction--and when I say dragged, I mean it: huge thing--and looked up what they had to say on Speculative Fiction. (I also got lost for a happy half an hour just flipping here and there at random. I love encyclopediae--nearly as much fun as the OED.) However, I remain too lazy to either drag it all the way upstairs to my office where I'm typing this, or to bother inputting their rather cogent entry word-by-word even if I did, so I'll just paraphrase. Apparently, speculative fiction was a term first used in the 1940s (hey, I was only off by twenty years) by Heinlein to describe science fiction's extrapolation from the present. Then it was picked up in the '60s (ah, so that's where I got that notion...) by Judith Merrill, only the science part mysteriously got de-emphasised. Gradually, speculative fiction came to mean "soft" rather than "hard" science fiction, i.e. science fiction that deals with changes in culture rather than the "hard" sciences such as physics and chemistry. (I don't know why people think stuff like biology is "soft" and unscientific--except that it's about soft bodies, to some extent, and not hard things like rocks and metals--which of course can be soft, too, depending on what kind of--oh, god, you don't want this level of detail. Stop me before I Explain Again...) Some people even started using speculative fiction as the uber-category of which science fiction came to be regarded as a sub-category. It's a handy term, though, and, as Gary Wolfe points out, it's useful because it blurs categories and therefore sets the writer free to play beyond the boundaries of genre.

So is The Blue Place speculative fiction? Yes. That is, no. Well, maybe. Yes, in that Aud is larger than life. What she does isn't strictly impossible but her level of infallibility is pretty unlikely. (See my essays, Doing the Work and Beauty and Brilliance and Risk for more thoughts on why fiction should be larger-than-life.) Stay, on the other hand, definitely isn't speculative fiction. By this time Aud is all too human--a metamorphosis I'm accelerating, if anything, in the latest novel.

From: Sofia

Hi, I'm one of your Swedish readers (suppose there must others too, though I'm not sure your books are sold in bookstores here).

I just finished reading "The Blue Place" and of course found it interesting to see your portrayal of Norway and Norwegians. As a scandinavian I recognise some of the typical impressions of the people and landscapes of our countries that seem to strike you "foreigners": everyone's healthy, honest and a bit formal, there is history and myths everywhere and of course we eat a lot of berries and traditional food that we prepared ourselves from homemade recipes. I'm not saying this isn't true, when I take a closer look at myself I feel like something of a cliché right down to the berry-picking ;). However my sister-in-law is Norwegian and she is among the least formal and least healthy people on earth (very sweet though). Meaning: there are always exceptions to the rule and you as a writer are of course very well aware of that. In my own understanding you've made Aud's conception of her Norwegian side a bit mythical even to herself because she's never really settled there. It is a source of strength to her to think of being Norwegian as being strong and connected to nature, trolls and Viking berserks rather than just lazy people eating junk food and watching "Survivor Norway".

If I'm to add a question after this I suppose it's how it came about that you went to Norway, do you have any Norwegian/Scandinavian friends and so on. It would be nice to see you do some reading in Sweden, we just can't seem to get enough of cool lesbian heroines over here, real or fiction!

I think it's true to say that almost all long-term industrial/developed countries have a citizenry that in some ways is the same: TV-addicted, car-driving, Twinkie-eating, celebrity-watching (etc.). So what I wanted to do was try search out the differences between the mythic Norwegian, the mythic American, and the mythic Englishwoman? In my limited understanding of the American psyche, I see the Mythic American as a by-your-bookstraps, beholden-to-no-one, straight-shooting, tame-this-land pioneer type (or immigrant, or cowboy). The Mythic English are "we've always been here, we don't do revolutions, we're all terribly, terribly reasonable and, by the way, we taught you people everything" types. The Norwegian essence seemed, to me, to be clean-limbed, rooted to the land, adventurous-but-satisfied, know-where-the-berries-are types. I was searching for a way to show where Aud thought she came from. The more often people write in a tell me what they think, the more likely I am to work out whether I've succeeded.

And The Blue Place is available from Replik, in Sweden, translated as In i det blå. (If you ever read it, I'd be interested in your opinion of the translation.) I would love to come to Sweden. One of these fine days someone will invite me, and I'll grin, and say, What took you so long?