From: anonymous

I'm a librarian and I take every opportunity to recommend your books to others. I appreciate your characters, and talk about how much depth they have whenever a customer gets nervous about reading a "science fiction" novel or a "mystery" novel. Your books really aren't about genre.

I'm looking forward to the new Aud novel, and I got to wondering--do you ever think about writing a book that delves into her past? It would be interesting to see the events that made her who she was at the beginning of The Blue Place--I know you've included some scenes from Aud's past life, but I'm sure there's a whole story there, if that's something that interests you.

If not, I'll just make it up for myself.

Thanks for all you write, I look forward to more.

I'm always happy to meet a librarian. Welcome. I'm glad not only that you recommend my novels but that you recognise the essential trickiness of genre. It's difficult to make a whole, well-rounded novel in any well-trodden genre, whether we're talking crime fiction, literary fiction, lesbian fiction, science fiction, westerns, romance or whatever, because readers bring expectations that lead to misshapen, lumpy books that bulge here and there with, say, massive infodump on aliens or FTL (in science fiction), or get bent into weird shapes by the whodunnit or noir structure (in crime fiction). It's never easy to solve the inherent contradiction between genre expectation and the beauty and surprise of, well, for want of a better word, art.

You're right, there is a lot more Aud story to be told, and I'm finding quite a bit of it right now (see an earlier Ask Nicola). In ALWAYS there will be more past-delving, and more growing. I'm finding it pretty challenging to come up with a structure and pacing and plot to deliver what I want to say without contravening Louis B. Mayer's very sensible rule, "If you want to send a message, use Western Union." Fiction should be story, it should be a blast, it shouldn't be a pulpit. But the notion of sharing with people what I've discovered about Aud, what made her who she is, excites me; I want people to know. But, umph, writing a prequel: I hadn't thought of that. It's kind of a cool idea. Maybe I should consider writing some short stories. Or doing a comic book--no, I'm not being sarcastic. I feel as though I haven't yet truly unlocked all that Aud could be. Thinking about different ways to present her helps me see more deeply into what makes her tick.

From: Rebecca (swartzrj@hotmail.com)

This has been on my mind for awhile now and I've even gone so far as to discuss it with a couple of other people, to see if what I'm thinking is accurate. No one has been any help and so I must ask you, since you're the author, after all.

In STAY, the scene where Aud and Goulay are doing their thing with Luz and the purse, etc...and I quote: "And that's when everything went wrong, when Goulay smiled instead of looking scared, and bent to pick up her purse."

Considering the narrative stance, does not the first part of that sentence "And that's when everything went wrong..." indicate prescience? I tend to think that it does; considering the narrative stance, that doesn't seem quite...right. I may be wrong, but it's been on my mind for a goodly while, and I wanted to ask you about it.

Hope this finds you and Kelley well. Have a good one.

I suppose yes, if you tilt your head and look at it squint, it might. I knew even as I was writing it that I was on shaky ground. But that's not the way it's meant. I intended it to convey that sinking feeling when, for example (and no pun intended), you're creeping out on the ice and you feel it crack under your feet: you know what's going to happen as it's happening; you know everything is going wrong. Some unsconscious clue, so small that consciously you probably couldn't articulate it, suddenly makes everything horrifyingly clear and, because it's a life-threating situation, your system is flooded with a variety of neurotransmitters that enable the brain to process with incredible speed and clarity and give you the summation: Oh shit.

It seems to me that most people who have experienced this kind of supersensory in extremis reaction say to themselves, "Whoa, that was, like, totally freaky," and then dismiss it and go about their business because they can't cope with that difference, that weirdness. Aud doesn't. It's one of the reasons she's so physically capable. She doesn't disbelieve her own senses just because it's not quite normal.

From: anonymous

Yes, yes, geeks have knowledge [see a previous Ask Nicola]. Like the geek squad that comes to your house and can fix any computer problem you might have. They can be cool. Nerds are smart but I feel like they're so into their thing that they never emerge from their little world and thus appear to have no social skills (or essentially have none to speak of since you never see them use any). And then there are the dorks. They don't have to be brainy nor have knowledge, true, but I feel like there are a lot of dorks out there who are brainy but they are socially awkward because they just are. The worst is when they think they're adept but they're really, really not.

I must admit I use all 3 interchangeably. And I think we can all have moments of dorkiness and therefore nobody's perfect.

Unrelated to anything: if someone asked you what your favorite quote is, what would you think of such a question? Not important but I guess I'm just curious. Ok, to be perfectly honest, I'm applying to grad school and one application asks you to write a 250 word essay on what your favorite quote is and why. At first I thought it was a lame question. Then I wondered if I was just being negative. Am I being a total cynic? I realize there's no perfect way for them to try to get to know you as an applicant. I just fear sounding too self-important. I have a favorite quote (that I heard on Buffy, incidentally...spoken by Spike!) but I'm not sure that it's practical enough for b-school.

And no, you don't have to answer that at all and no I was not trying to get you to do my homework for me :) I just wanted to know what an intelligent person would think of such a question.

Ok, I realize all 4 paragraphs are unrelated to writing or books.

A dork is brainy? Oh, no. Dorks are doofoids, pointy headed cretins with bad clothes, no social skills and very possibly no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

So now I want to know what Spike quote we're talking about--one of my favourites of his is that St. Crispin's day riff: "We band of buggered..."

I think the What's-your-favourite-quote question is similar to the kind of Qs therapists ask: Can you tell me more about your feelings on that issue? (Barf.) Yes: lame. But it's an interview question, a way to open you up so they can get a glimpse of your inner workings, a peek behind the curtain. The trick to answering this stuff, it seems to me, isn't to get all soulful and sentimental ("Jesus said, Let the meek inherit the earth, and I think he's right because...") but to quote anything you can then write a kick-ass essay paragraph on.

I'd probably quote Louis B. Mayer (see above) because then I could dig my teeth into a riff on how story doesn't thrive under the burden of preaching. Other good quotes would be, hmm, let's see: "Do or don't do, there is no try." (Yoda, of course.) To me that's one of the main strands of a good self-defence course: don't fuck around people, do or don't do. Are you worth defending or are you not? There's also (and I'll probably misquote most of these, but it's the holidays, I've been sampling yummy things like amontillado and Armagnac and lovely English beer and, frankly, I just can't be bothered to check things) a thing from the film Shakespeare in Love, where the play promoter is always telling people (particularly the writer [g]) "All will be well," and whoever he's talking to says, "How?" and he says, "I don't know, it's a mystery." (To which I usually add, "Nope, it's a literary work of great popular appeal..." Oh, I can't be bothered to explain.) I'd probably witter on about faith in yourself and your art, that kind of thing. I might "It's not natural, and trouble will come of it" (Lord of the Rings), and "Fear is the mindkiller" and "Beginnings are such delicate times" (Dune), "There can be only one" (Highlander) and, possibly my current favourite, "Exit, pursued by a bear" (Shakespeare's only stage direction--I mean, just think about it, he wrote a gazillion plays and *this* is the only direction he gave anyone, what's that about?).

I also get struck, from time to time, by phrases such as "how beautiful with banners" (there are at least two SF stories, by Blish and Bishop, with that phrase as a title--but I'm damned if I can remember what big old English poem it's from) and "quinqereme of Ninevah" (which is a line from Cargoes, a poem by Sir John Masefield, whose work I'm realising has had an enormous influence on mine--the eagle-eyed will spot his lines, or something very like, in at least two of my novels) and there are some luscious, luscious word combos in Mary Barnard's translations of Sappho, for example, (and I'm relying on memory here, so it's probably all wrong) "..high echoing bed chamber of the last amazon of all, death," or "the night rains sleep upon their eyes," or, well, almost any of it. Then there's telling someone that their essay or story or painting or argument "reeks of the lamp," which is a way of saying, "Yo, your excessive scholarship is showing and unbalancing everything." Which is, I suppose, another way of saying what Meyer said. One of the things that gets my goat is when writers are praised for their artistic brilliance just because the seams are showing and the reader can *see* all the work that went into the piece. Truly brilliant writing, in my opinion, appears effortless. It never is, of course, but it should damn well look it.

Umph, and we haven't even got to quoting comics (five points for anyone who recognises: "Hello, zeeba neighbor" and "The stone people will pop us like gr-a-a-a-pes!!!").

From: Robin (binnyrus@yahoo.com)

I've just finished reading Stay, The Blue Place and Slow River. In that order in about 10 days. Mesmerized by each. I read for the joy of it and am by no means a "critic" - or I guess in as much as I either like something or I don't.

I like that each of the female characters in these books are "strong" in their own way. I can't tell you how much I appreciate this after reading (by now) thousands of books in which that is not the case . . . and then feeds into what girls stereotypically grow in to.

Anyway, I look forward to reading more and am passing them along to all my friends.

Well, what perfect timing [grin]. I, too, happen to believe that books make excellent gifts, and as it's That Time of Year it would be lovely (and inexpensive and, wow, also convenient) if readers considered buying some of my stuff as (insert holiday of your choice) Chrismukkah or Yule or Kwanzaa or Solstice or Thing presents. Online retailers can definitely ship you your stuff in time. Bricks-and-mortar bookshops could also probably get you your stuff in time. Speaking of which, I just read today that a wonderful bookshop in Atlanta, Charis Books & More, is in trouble and needs your business. They're a fine institution, the place where Kelley and I first bought many of the books now lining our walls, the place where I first said, tremulously, to a stranger: I'm a writer. If you get the opportunity, buy something from them.

What does "strong female character" mean to you? I'm not trying to be argumentative (probably just sloppy from that absolutely delicious Christmas cheer) but I got to thinking, does it mean strongly written character or a certain kind of character, i.e. tough and no-nonsense? I think a character is strongly written if s/he is whole and uncliched, if you can't always tell what s/he'll do next but when s/he does it, it makes sense to you. I enjoy reading along with (or watching) characters who make sense to me, who aren't total wusses, who don't whinge and whine and carp and complain (oh, love that alliteration after a beer...think I'll go read Beowulf again when I've finished with this). But that's just my preference.

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