There are at least two problems I anticipate, however. The first one is that you're going to wake up one morning and realize you have better things to do with your time than the Robin McKinley Net Site, which may happen this week or next decade; the second one is that I am diabolically short of free time myself (hence my not having got around to answering your letter before, although some of the time lag was my trying to remember to ask my agent if there are any weird legal-rights problems about my saying okay to what you're doing; this is how ignorant I am of all things Net), and while I might just conceivably get around to answering the occasional question you're never going to get a full-length interview out of me--for example.

Here's a relatively hot off the mark news item for you, though: I have a new novel coming out with Greenwillow next autumn ('97). I got the okay from my editor last Saturday--she rang me from where she was on holiday, for which she gets amazing numbers of extra points, because I was about to go off to a convention in Canada (this is how I happen to have wound up in Seattle; Vonda--whose e-mail address I'm writing from--is an old friend, and Seattle is virtually next door once you get to Calgary, where the convention was, from England), which she knew was coming up, and where she as well as I knew I would be asked when I had something new coming out. The book is tentatively titled ROSE COTTAGE, it's another fairy-tale retelling, and that's as much as I'm going to tell you about it.

And if you're on an archaeological dig in Patagonia this week--out of reach of e-mail, electricity, and flush toilets--well, hope you had a swell time, and you'll be getting that bio sheet in the ordinary post before too long. Of course, if you've discovered archaeology in Patagonia, that 'better things to do with your life' option as referred to above will have rendered it superfluous. Never mind--use it to start your campfire one evening.

Yours,
Robin McKinley