From: nadia (nadia.tazi@wanadoo.fr)

Je n’ai pas vraiment de question, mais je voulais vous témoignée mon attachement a vos deux histoire sur Aud, belle de nuit et un si long chagrin (francaise), depuis que je lis des histoires lesbiens je ne me suis jamais retrouvée dans un tel état de pleures, je n’arrive pas a les lire sans avoir les larmes qui coules et je suis tellement heureuse d’avoir fait la connaissances de Aud que je mis suis vraiment attaché,j’aime ce qu’elle est !mes franchement la mort de Julia ma fais mal pour elle cela a été trop rapide elle n’ont pas eu assez de temps pour vivre leur amour, je me suis dit que vous ne pouviez pas nous laisser comme ça sans nous montrer cooment elle allait remonter la pente,j’espére avoir la suite de son histoire, après un si long chagrin traduit en français, car j’en suis impatiente de sortir de ma tristesse.

j’aime votre écriture de la façon bien particulière a raconté l’histoire de Aud, continuez SVP d’écrire et de nous en faire profité, tank you a vous, une lectrice de bretagne fouesnant qui vous apprécies, même sans vous connaitre car vous avez réussi a me faire pleurer.

I don’t know when Always, the third Aud novel (or Ammonite or Slow River) will be translated into French. I’m delighted, however, that The Blue Place (belle de nuit) and Stay (un si long chagrin) made it into your hands and that they affected you so deeply. Translation is a risk. I have no control over the quality. But if they made you cry so hard then it must have worked to some degree.

No, Aud and Julia didn’t have much time together. It had to be that way for the story of Aud. I wanted Aud to love with abandon, the way we do the first time. For most of us, love happens for the first time in our teens. Hmmn. Okay, that’s a sweeping statement based on assumption. Let me restate: for me, it happened in my teens. In books and films and plays like Romeo and Juliet it happens in the teens. And it never lasts. Anyway, Aud was an adult, 31 years old when she met Julia. To convey the shattering power of first love on an adult, I chose to snatch it away from her irrevocably and in the first powerful throes. There’s nothing as irrevocable as death, nothing as all-consuming, utterly subsuming, as the first six months of love.

I felt like a monster, though. I didn’t want to do it. I tried all sort of ways to wiggle of it. My editor wanted me to end the novel just as Julia gets shot, so the reader doesn’t know whether she’s died or not. “You can’t kill her,” she said. “Readers will hate you.” But not making a clear choice would have been cheating. So I so killed her. And, lo, many readers hated me and hated the book. (I got dozens of emails from people who reported hurling the book across the room.)

To all those readers now: I apologise. I know it’s awful, and shocking, but there really wasn’t another way. And I promise: all will turn out well for Aud in the end.