Another Series?

Question:

I don’t know if you will ever get to read this, but I love your Alice series. I bet you get that a lot but I guess it’s never enough to hear/read someone say they admire your work.

I live in Portugal and I love the Alice series. Firstly they were one of the series I first really ‘enjoyed’ reading, opposed to read something just for the sake of it and make my parents happy.

As a child/young teenager they were one of the only books that felt as if I was reading about a real ‘kid’. I am sad to say I completely forgot about the series until last Friday when I was scheming trough my bookshelf for a small book to read while I was outside. I found my Alice collection and I fell in love all over again. Even if, now, much older I feel like rolling my eyes at a lot of young-Alice issues. Still, it was cute.

I then remembered to search for the series online and I was shocked that it had ‘grown’ so much. To say the least I just ordered a ton of Alice books from Amazon (since I couldn’t find them here and when I can I prefer to read the books in their ‘original’ language) and didn’t feel guilty. Not even a bit.

I can’t wait for them to arrive so that I can devour them.

The point of this long rambling email is that I admire you and it’s amazing that you stuck with ‘Alice’ for so long. A lot of your readers grew up reading her. It’s as if we are watching a friend grow, make mistakes, realise that she’s not perfect and keep living and doing her best. They’re very inspiring and you show the readers someone who screwed up several times (as any teenager) yet kept trying to make things right. She’s a character with a lot of facets and I love reading about her.

Anyway, my questions:
– Will you ever attempt to write another series (like Alice) based on another character that will cover a large portion of their life and their growth ?
– Did you ever consider doing a spin-off of the ‘Alice’ series? I personally would love to read more about Pamela or Patrick.
– What are your opinions on fanfiction? Does it offend you and do you think they get the characters wrong (and should invest in writing some original work) or do you feel ‘honoured’ that people like your characters enough to ‘play’ with them and write down some twists situations they’d like to see them go trough.

(Yes, I think the last one pretty much says that I’m a fanfiction addict. *blushes* To be honest I was disappointed that Alice wasn’t that famous in that world.)

I hope this didn’t bore you or annoy you. I hope you keep doing what you’re best at (writing) and keep inspiring us all.

Phyllis replied:

It’s always wonderful to hear that an old fan rediscovered the Alice books.  Yes, you have a lot of books to catch up on, and yes, I read all the emails to this website myself.  I’m really not interested in writing another series which follows one character for most of her life.  I will have invested 25 years following Alice (writing one book per year–two books for the years I wrote the 3 prequels) and there are just too many other kinds of books I want to do.  As for fans writing their own versions of Alice for their own enjoyment, why not?  I think it’s wonderful that you care so much.