From: Eve Derrien
Bonjour!
I hope that your books (all of them) will be one day published in French. I'm waiting for Always, of course, but I'd like to read your others novels. (Why aren't Ammonite and Slow River already available in France, when their prices should have designed them to the editors' attention?)
Please help your French public ... It's a long time to wait for good books.
Respectueusement, ED
Bonjour, Eve. I honestly haven't the faintest idea why Slow River and Ammonite have never been published in France (or any other French-speaking country). Those two are my most widely translated novels (ten or eleven languages between them). I know that the agent who handles my foreign rights submitted them to a variety of publishers, but for whatever reason, back in the nineties, none of them deemed the books suitable for their market.
As for Always: I've just completed a deal to bring the foreign rights for all three Aud novels under one roof. Now that this is sorted, I'm hoping they can be published more widely, as a package, in other countries. What that means specifically for Always in France I can't begin to guess. Yet. (The ink is still drying on the letter of agreement.)
For now all I can say is: I'm mid-stream in many changes to my career. I hope to have some news on all that in a month or two. Then we can get all this mess sorted out and books into the hands of those who actually want to read them!
Meanwhile, I know that a couple of my short stories have been translated into French. For example "Song of Bullfrogs, Cry of Geese," in Century XXI (edited by Sylvie Denis & Francis Valery) Encrage, 1995. I hope that will help.
