From: LM (RiverCityBard@aol.com)

This is more of a commentary than a question...but you did voluntarily open the door to all who would enter.

I spent a good portion of time Sunday in a resale book store. The Gay and Lesbian section is relegated to one small corner of two lower shelves at the back of the aisle. I have to sit on the floor and look sideways to see what is there.

The books with Lesbian themes are at the the bottom of the two bottom bookshelves. But I am undaunted in my weekly quest.

I found BLUE PLACE. I read BLUE PLACE. I was blown away by the intelligent, artistic, and suspenseful story about two women who simply and matter of factly meet at a designated point and place in time in the universe, loved each other, and in a moment, were parted. (I've never been able to live with the ending of Xena either but loved every moment of the series.)

At times, I felt I was reading tender prose, a detailed and lyrical sonnet, and at other times, reading a hard and fast, can't put it down, "who dunnit".

I love to read and do so voraciously. I also love to write and do so with a rediscovered lost passion.

I am well over the 50 mark and after living a lifetime mirroring what was expected of me, I came out almost two years ago.

I have written and lived out who I am through my character's lives. Now I can BE who I am--all of me. Writing is cathartic and empowering...

Authors such as yourself give hope that novels featuring strong women, who just happen to love one another, can someday find a place of general acceptance--and not be found in a small corner on the bottom row of the bookshelf.

I am going in search of STAY, and will watch for ALWAYS, and, along with BLUE PLACE, all will find their way to the top shelf of my personal library. I am pleased to read that Aud will continue.

(BTW: Ditto Michelle Wolff as Aud. Go search for Lauren Himmel to make your film.) LM

Here's the thing about retailers: they always put the stuff people really, really want in the hard-to-get-to places. When a shopper goes into the supermarket, for example, the bread is there when you walk in, yes, along with the fresh, brightly coloured fruits and vegetables, but you then have to cross the entire floor to get to the milk and butter and eggs, walk the length of the place to find the meat, trek to the centre of the Palace of Stuff for the catfood... The whole place is beautifully laid out to make sure that the majority of shoppers pass along as many aisles as possible; it's designed to raise the odds of impulse purchases. Same with bookshops: they put science fiction and gay stuff at the back and in the ugly dark corners not because they believe we're second-class citizens (well, not only because they believe that) but because they know the true faithful need their skiffy and queer fiction and will walk through the whole shop to get there, unlike the dilettante hey-just-looking shoppers. Of course, one of the reasons SF fans and dykes are so committed to their fiction in the first place is that we've been ostracised to some extent already, and reading about people whose values are like ours is a comfort. But mainly this positioning of product is about retailer greed. And optimistic as I am, I know, deep down, that greed isn't going anywhere. As long as there are shops--and therefore capitalism (aka truth, justice and the American way), we're going to be in the back. All I can say is, bless the web and all retailers who thrive there. Oh, they're greedy, too--profit is, after all, their raison d'etre (and, hey, nothing wrong with that)--but they're finally figuring out that Click World uses slightly different rules to Brick World: you don't have to make people troop through the whole store in order to make money. You simply re-display inventory electronically so that everyone's favourite things are within easy reach. No one (except, you know, poor people with neither credit nor web access) has to be treated like a second-class citizen. So now that Google and Amazon and others are coming into their own, I'm going to sit back and watch the whole world change. Maybe.

Writing, as you say, is a Good Thing. It keep me sane, it makes me feel pretty damn special and clever, it earns me money but, oh, more important than any of that, it helps me learn. I learn about myself, I learn about others, I learn how it all fits together. Writing is about discovering myself and, at the same time, reaching out to other people. It's a very, very cool apparent paradox. I can't imagine doing anything else with my life. Except, ah, of course I just did.

From: Doctor Wu (doctorwu51@excite.com)

One of my favorite authors, George Pelecanos, gave praise to "The Blue Place" in a recent article; I picked up the book based on that recommendation. I'm glad for the tip because I love the book & would possibly not have otherwise found it.

Do you have any recommendations of your own regarding other authors or particular books you enjoy (especially those in the "noir" category)?

Being a vain sort of person, I'd love to know what article, exactly, so I can go read it. Thanks for the heads-up. And thanks, George (if you just happen to read this), for the shoutout. However, although the publisher of Stay calls it a "ferocious masterpiece of literary noir" (a nice ring to it, that), I'm not sure I agree; I don't think of either Stay or The Blue Place as noir. I'm not heaping scorn on noir, I just don't think I've written it.

I've always thought of noir fiction (and film) as being about characters who are trapped by circumstance. Generally these are ordinary people leading relatively ordinary lives who are offered some kind of choice--pick up the big bag of cash (which always, always belongs to the mob, or the Tijuana Cartel or something) lying in the street, agree to kill the stranger's husband--that they know is wrong, but they do it anyway, and, of course, it turns out to be a big mistake. They spend the rest of the film or book trying to compensate for that mistake and end up sweating and panicking and digging themselves deeper into the hole. From the instant of that initial choice, they and the reader/viewer understand that their downfall is inevitable. The characters struggle against this inevitable end not because of hope, not out of a need to hold onto something good in their lives, but because they are so mired in their own circumstance they don’t know what else to do. On those rare occasions where they appear to avoid punishment for their deeds (Highsmith's Ripley, Hammett's Spade), they and we know that it doesn’t matter: their own essential nature dooms them to repeat their mistakes. It's suffocating, claustrophobic. As I've said elsewhere, noir is the horror fiction of the crime genre.

In terms of crime fiction, in the last couple of years I've really enjoyed Tropic of Night (Good v. Evil! Magic! Zombies!) by Michael Guber, and The Seville Communion and The Queen of the South (Drugs! Sex! Class struggle!), by Arturo Perez-Reverte.

From: jeff (jlanse@gmail.com)

I heard your 1999-12-18 interview with J. Hughes, and I just wanted to mention there was at least one StarTrek NextGen episode that tried to explore gender role/identity issues. It was the one with the race called "Genai" who eradicated male/female differences in their society, with the result that they had this ostracized sub culture of people who secretly still had hetero feelings. They of course didn't explore this theme in much depth, but I recall Worf making an anti-gay comment to the effect that he found people without well-defined hetero gender roles to be too creepy for his taste. The plot developed along lines mostly about Riker trying to rescue his new love interest from this oppressive gender-neutral society (he fails, but the genai love-interest makes a good protest before being sent off for reprogramming). Though they portray this theme like hetero is good and non-hetero is bad, it was not so simple as that. I wonder if you would consider this example as pro or anti gay/lesbian? It seemed to me that it was reversing the theme relative to our society's main-stream attitude in order to make a point through contrast on a deeper level, not to say hetero or non-hetero is good or bad, but to say that demanding conformity to preconceived notions of gender roles is bad.

Reversing roles in order to examine them has always struck me as a lazy choice, artistically. I've seen writers do it with race and sex, and gender and sexuality, in fiction and on the screen, and the real people get lost in a cataract of stereotype and reverse stereotype. Readers and viewers don't care about types, they care about individuals. Having said all that, I remember that STNG ep only vaguely. So please consider my comments in that light.

What I do remember of STNG was that they were rather timid when it came to Issues but that they were quite brave when it came to examining individual loss and joy. (I'm thinking particularly of that episode where Picard spent a whole lifetime as someone else on another planet.) The writers and showrunners didn't shy away from really following an idea through, which is why the Gender ep was such a cop-out. It felt sophomoric. Quite lame. Ah, well, it's important to not dismiss a whole show, a phenomenon, really, just because of one or two weaknessnes here and there.

From: EvergreenLM@aol.com

I read. A lot. I discovered THE BLUE PLACE and then promptly ordered and read STAY. I love the Aud character as you have certainly brought her to life.

Both are great books and your writing reminds me so much of one of my other all time favorite authors and books, Annie Dillard's PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK.

When will ALWAYS be coming down the Aud road?

I would also like to comment that it is refreshing to read a storyline that the main character just happens to be a Lesbian, and not a Lesbian with a story.

Thank you so much for sharing your talents. I look forward to your next book.

I've heard the Annie Dillard comparison several times. Everytime I'm flattered.

As for Always, I'm sorry to say I don't know when it will be done or when it will be published. All I know if that it's pretty different from the other two Aud books (which were pretty different from each other), and it will be big. Enormous, actually. Much more than twice the size of Stay. I'm finding it interesting to write. I can only hope that readers such as you will hang in there with me while I get it right.

From: manu0911@gmail.com

Hi everytime i talk to my girl friend she start asking annoying questions like first she will be like o.k what u doing i will say i am reading my lecture notes .. then she will be like which subject .. say Mathematics .. then she will hear me typing something and she will go what u typing .. ? and the thing will go on so on and so forth she will keep on asking and asking and asking questions .. all the times.. and sometimes very silly ones like what u typing and how many words did u typed and all ..?? i dont know wether she is insecure or what or she dont trust or girls are like that ..?

Well, I've no idea what list I got on, but in the last couple of weeks I've had a dozen questions like this. And I tell you frankly, I don't understand what you're asking. Are you trying to get my opinion on whether I agree all girls are weird? Or that we're all irritating? All insecure? I say "all" because, yes, I am very Wise and Powerful, practically Omniscient, but I admit (oh, please don't tell anyone) I can't actually pierce the curtain of time and space and watch you and your gf through the Ask Nicola form on your screen and then offer you a plangent analysis of you, your gf, and your relationship and where it's heading. All I know for certain is that I now feel a vast pity for newspaper agony columnists.