From: Diana (diana.raabe@comcast.net)

Two summers ago my then-boyfriend, now-husband (and a good friend of Steve Swartz') suggested I read Ammonite. Well, I couldn't put it down and read straight through the rest of your work. I am so glad that the next Aud book is finished and look forward to its release.

We recently attended a program called "Literary Friendships" hosted by Mr. Garrison Keillor of npr. He introduced two authors who are friends (or related) and hosted a friendly discussion between the two. I must admit that when he urged us to make suggestions for next year's (four) programs, I offered up your name and Kelley's. Heaven knows if he will follow up, but I think it would be a wonderful program (if you don't mind Minnesota!).

Thank you for all the great reading material.

Well, that would be very cool. Kelley and I have had and continue to have a profound influence on each other, as people and as writers. We talk about our work at every stage. She's in every line of my fiction; I'm in hers. After writing our first collaborative essay on the subject, I find I enjoy talking about our partnership.

Sometimes Kelley's traits start to appear in my characters--actually, in my characters' love interests [grin]. At the beginning of my latest novel (still not finished, though getting more interesting to me by the minute) I set myself a challenge: the woman Aud finds attractive must look nothing like Kelley; her face, her hands, her hair, her smile, the way she moves, everything, must be different. At first I succeeded so well that I couldn't understand why Aud would be drawn to her, and so Aud wasn't, and so, huh, it didn't go very well. So then I had to work hard to tell myself, over and over: Hey, you're not Aud, Aud is not you, you fancy different things, uh, people. Nonetheless, Aud's love interest changed subtlely; I just can't seem to help it; she started doing things like talk back to the TV, the way Kelley does, and laugh the way she does. But I was ruthless, and cut those bits out, and thought some more, and finally figured out how to make it work. Only I can't explain how, yet. I just did it. Perhaps when it's done I'll figure it all out. For now, though, I just tell myself that making a character is a bit like love itself: mysterious.

From: Jason David Reese (jason@jasondavid.net)

This is in response to a previous post. :)

OH MY GOSH! Would you believe I never knew you actually answered me?

Well I put my name in google to see if anything would show and guess what? My answer from three years ago on this board popped up!

I have been trying to find that old paper now for three days, it is here somewhere. I will send it over as soon as it shows its happy little face. (I got an A.)

Troll Story is still my favorite short story ever. You are very talented.

I have a fondness for "A Troll Story," too. It's my most recently published short fiction. I find myself itching to write other stories, or to at least finish something I've already started. For example, I have a kind of magic realist thing half-formed, and a love-and-science erotic thing mostly done--I think it would make a killer teleplay (very few sets, no special effects, two main characters and fewer than half a dozen bit parts), but I just haven't had time to go learn how to write one. One day, one day...

As for ego-surfing: yep, I do it too. If you want to read a whole essay about a writer Googling himself, pick up a copy of Bookmark Now, edited by Kevin Smokler, which has a piece by Glen David Gold (he wrote Carter Beats the Devil--good book). Unlike Gold, though, I still do it. Not very often, just often enough to keep track of how many links come up (as of today: 17,200). Why does this matter? I've no idea and I don't particularly care. It's fun, in moderation. Harmless time-wasting. Another time-wasting fun activity I've discovered is playing with the new(ish) amazon.com concordance feature, comparing the reading difficulty of my novels to that of authors like Patrick O'Brian. And, my current favourite, watching Angry Alien Productions cartoons. They're 30-second animated precis of famous films, starring bunnies. (Oh, just trust me on this.) The best so far is Jaws, though I'm hoping they'll get around to doing Die Hard soon. I've also been wasting some time thinking about RSS and podcasting. My conclusion is that one of these fine days I'll have to do something about syndicating this site, but right now there are just so many other interesting things in the queue to waste my time on...

From: anonymous

iss judy dench a lesbian

Why, yes she is. All women are lesbians. It's enormous fun.

From: shy (shyannagirl2@aol.com)

i need some info on middle ages farming, esp. pictures of old tools. thankyou

I need ten million dollars. Tell you what, why don't we swap? Also, see previous Do My Homework answers. But, hey, at least you said Thank You. Perhaps there's hope for the world.

However (and here I'm not being sarcastic) I also need some info on farming and old tools, only the stuff I need is from the seventh century, the early middle ages (aka The Heroic Age, and previously known as the Dark Ages, or, in the case of Northumbria, the area I want the info for specifically, the Golden Age). Try wikipedia.org, it's very cool, with articles being added all the time, and competent discussion in many arenas. Some of the articles, though, like the one on me are mere stubs crying out for expansion.

From: anonymous

I have just finished your book The Blue Place. And I would like to ask you a question of a personal nature. I have of recent lost the love of my life. And at the end when Aud is sitting at the bar smelling of gasoline, I not only knew how she felt. I felt what she did. I could smell hear and touch her pain. I have never been affected by a book like this before. It brought back everything. And I know my imagination is not that wild. This book of yours has turned my hobby into a passion. And I would like to thank you for putting such words into a poeticly tragic but also beautiful ending. I passionately hope you get back to me on this matter. If I do not hear from you, it will be a disappointment. But I do realize it is a personal question. However even in the event I do not hear from you I will continue to delight in you works and always wonder. And now for my question, is it all fairy tale or a nightmare of the past? If you wish to speak of these things in a more private place, please email me at xxxxxxx@xxxx.com Sincerely in Awe, My secret name

A reminder to everyone: if you want to be anonymous, don't include your email address in the main body of the question. It's tricky having to constantly make these judgement calls. (If I've made the wrong decision here, just send another AN telling me so and I'll be happy to reinstate your name and contact info.)

The events of The Blue Place are wholly fictitious. I've never had a lover who died. Never even had one I wished would die--though my guess is I had a few who wished I would.

However, two of my sisters have died. I believe that the basic emotions/drives such as anger, fear, lust, hunger and grief are universal. (What we do with those emotions is what makes us individuals.) I think grief can drive us crazy. For a couple of weeks in 1988 it certainly drove me to something very closely resembling insanity. But then, as with all things, it became bearable. It's a bit like illness: I grieve, sometimes, for the days when I was very, very fit; I grieve for the days when my sisters were all about me. But they won't be back, nor will my ability to run and jump and do katas. It's just a thing. We cope. We make new stories, learn to long for the new.

From: anonymous

Where did you acquire your interest in woodworking and carpentry? Your descriptive narratives seem to suggest you have had some first hand involvement with that.

I'm sad to say that I don't know one end of a chisel from another. But I think I would enjoy working wood if I tried. That is, if I tried long enough to learn how. For me joy often comes with expertise, and a particular fitting together of body and mind, a kind of flow, a back-and-forth between senses and thoughts. And I love shape. This is probably why I get such a kick out of making a novel: perfecting the shape and heft, the size and weight, of story, narrative drive, setting, character, theme. Endlessly exacting but freeing.

I often amuse myself pondering What If career scenarios. I love liquid, the way it moves, the way it feels, the way it draws the eye. In another life perhaps I would have combined my interest in physics and biology to become a student of fluid biodynamics--if there even is such a thing. There again, I'd have to be a different kind of person than I am now. I enjoy learning, but I don't like following prescribed learning paths; I never seem to see eye-to-eye with my teachers. Or perhaps it's just that I don't like being The Student. Whatever the reason, I could never stick with a course of study. At grammar school--high school, in American parlance--I was always chopping and changing between arts and sciences. At university, I didn't stay with anything--microbiology, biochemistry, psychology, sociology--longer than a few weeks. It always got tedious and, well, a lot like work. A fondness for liquid is also what attracted me to martial arts. That's all about flow, too. I can definitely see an alternate life as a martial artist. In fact, I came pretty close. At the end of 1987/beginning of 1988 I was restless, ready for a Big Change. I assembled information for a women's martial arts camp in the Netherlands and for Clarion, a writers' workshop in the US. I wrote letters of enquiry to both. Clarion wrote back first. The die was cast. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that many other people's lives grow from such turns of chance.

Perhaps in another life I might have chosen to be a singer. I did that for a while. Singing is like swimming in vibration and air, dancing on a table of sound; pure joy; a connection deep into myself and then far out into the world. A delicious doubling and increase.