Nights of Rain and Stars is the 11th of Maeve Binchy's books to be read by her cousin Kate for Orion Audio. We asked Maeve what she thought about hearing her stories read aloud by another member of the family, and we came here to Maeve's home, near Dublin, to record what she had to say about the relationship, both private and professional, between her and Kate.

Transcript of the bonus audio interview with Maeve Binchy

Maeve Binchy speaking:

We have been great friends, as well as cousins, for a very long time, and our photo albums have pictures of us aged about three and four, feeding a tray of food to the elephant in Dublin zoo. Our fathers were first cousins, making us second cousins, and we were each the eldest of our families, first and loved children in happy secure homes. We lived in different parts of Dublin. Kate lived in a tall, city, terraced house, which I envied because she was so much a part of the centre of Dublin. We lived in the suburb, ten miles outside the city, which Kate envied because we were near the sea. We went to the same university, but afterwards, always, we had very different careers. We looked totally unalike, but have always been close, and oddly - in many ways - as we got older, the lines of lives became closer. We both went to work in London, we both married marvellous English men, and now we are forever associated because of doing tapes and CDs together. I love seeing both our names together on the sleeve. It's like a happy little family industry, somehow.

Whenever I finish a book, there's the great excitement of sending it to the publisher, and waiting anxiously until you get the response. The moment I get that response, I then send the manuscript to Kate. The years roll back, and it's just like being back at university, when I was telling her about an article I had written for the college magazine, or she was telling me about a part she'd got in the DramSoc show, and how decades later, we're doing it for real, out in the big world. It's such a delight to have my stories told on audio, by someone who is both family and a friend. I don't have to worry, "Will she understand what this character is meant to be like, or that one?" She comes from the same background as I do. She knows the people I write about, and they're not real people. I never put a real character into a story. We're both lawyers' daughters, Kate and I; we know the danger of that! But of course, they're based on the kind of people we have known, and seen, and watched, and spied on. We share this habit of being over-interested in watching strangers. Kate is much more moral than I am. She draws the line at following people and eavesdropping their conversations - I don't. Kate wouldn't listen avidly to a crossed line on the telephone - I just can't hang up.

Sometimes, if my husband Gordon and I are driving a long distance, we put Kate on the car stereo. It's wonderful; it's like having her in the car with us, telling us a story. When it's over, I want to talk to her about our friends and family, and about the characters in the book, the line between what is fiction and what is real life gets increasingly blurred. It's a very exciting feeling when I hear one of my stories on tape, somehow quite different to seeing it in a book form. After all, the book is just the way it used to look like anyway on my laptop computer, with a cover at each end. The tape or CD is totally different. Once you put it on to play, then it has a life of its own. I always think my storied have much improved, actually, between writing them and hearing them on my player. It's partly because the script sharpens it up, and partly because Kate's voice brings warmth and life to every character we meet.

When we were young in Ireland, everyone loved telling stories. Some people were great at it, so we grew up in a tradition that storytellers were good people. We even did it ourselves - long, rambling stories about what happened at school, and who we met, and what they said. Every outing was an adventure with something to be reported. When Kate went to study Spanish in Madrid, she came home with a whole cast of Spanish characters to entertain us. When I went to France to learn French, I came back with a flood of stories about the people I'd met in the forest of Compigne. I suppose that we were very lucky, in that Ireland never really had a Victorian era, a time when children should be seen and not heard. Our tradition never subscribed to the view that you shouldn't speak unless you had something to say. What a strange, silent world it would be if we all thought that! In Ireland, people slightly mistrust strong, silent listeners. They wonder why they aren't revealing something of themselves; telling us their life stories.

Kate and I are never short of a story to tell each other. We have so many things to share: family happenings, weddings, christenings and funerals - would keep us going for a long time; as do friends: actors Kate has know over the years from her university days to the present time, journalists and writers who have been part of my circle of friends for ever. And we both love to tell of any encounters where by chance we met someone with a good story to tell, because it's all about stories, in a way. We would be dull, morose, introverted people if we didn't have a tale to tell. So today's popularity of tapes and CDs with stories on them is something to be hugely celebrated. Last year, when I was in hospital, I took some of Kate's recordings with me, and it was wonderful to lie there at night, with her reassuring voice telling my own stories into my ear. I found them greatly comforting. Long may my dear cousin Kate, and many other wonderful actors like her, continue to tell our stories, and bring them to life for you, and for us all.