This week's questions

The Contact Page of my website carries this very clear message:

IMPORTANT
If your question refers to the publication dates of Stravaganza novels in specific countries, please direct it to the publisher, as I don't have this information.

You can find more information on this and on other topics on my FAQs page. Please read it carefully before you write to me. The answer to your question may already be there.

It's in red and in a box. And yet, the most recent batch of emails from readers includes an enquiry from Sweden about when books four and five will be published there, another from Italy about how to find the further books there and one from France about when City of Ships will be translated.

It's perhaps not unreasonable for fans to think I would know this stuff. But actually, I don't! hence the box in red above. There is also one from a reader who wants me to notify her when auditions take place for a film of Stravaganza. Even if there were to be such a film, I could not possibly write to all the young women who have expressed an interest in playing Arianna!

What it seems to show is that there is a big gulf between what a writer's life is actually like and how readers think it is. I do get informed about sales to foreign publishers but have no schedule of publication. I put news up on the website as and when I get it - and I hope you are enjoying its new design and easier navigation.

Readers also often ask "Why did you change the covers?" of  the Stravaganza sequence, but i didn't; the publishers did! Really, writers don't have as much power as you imagine!

And now I must go and answer all those fanmails.