By Liz Shankland BBC News Online

Working with a living writer was an unusual experience for Andrew Davies.

The Cardiff-born screenplay supremo - who has adapted the steamy lesbian love novel Tipping the Velvet for BBC Two - has made his name transforming historical novels into costume drama for the small screen.

He admits that after dealing with classics like Pride and Prejudice, Moll Flanders, and Vanity Fair - whose authors could not answer back - it was with some trepidation that he approached Sarah Waters' acclaimed work.

"I'm used to my authors being dead," said Davies.

Davies has specialised in historical dramas

"In a way, that's how I feel most comfortable - but of course I wouldn't wish that on Sarah because she's still a young woman.

"I was a bit apprehensive about meeting her because I thought she might think, 'what's this bloke doing adapting my book?'.

Welsh-born team

"But, in fact, I loved the book just as it was, and I liked Sarah very much when we met."

Another factor which may have helped is that both writers were born in Wales - Davies in Cardiff and Waters in Neyland, Pembrokeshire.

Although Waters began writing seven years ago, her rise to fame has been relatively sudden.

As previews of her first novel, Tipping the Velvet, were receiving acclaim from the critics, she discovered that her third offering, Fingersmith, had been short listed for the coveted Booker Prize - due to be judged on 22 October.

Exposing the Victorians : Sarah Waters

Waters studied English literature at the Universities of Kent and Lancaster, and went on to write on gender and sexuality for publications including the Feminist Review and the Journal of the History of Sexuality.

She turned to writing fiction in 1995, shortly after completing her thesis on lesbian and gay historical fiction.

It was while she was completing her thesis that she began working on ideas for the book which would become Tipping the Velvet.

The novel - described as by Andrew Davies as "a lesbian Moll Flanders" - is set in 1890 and shows Victorian women as they have never seen before.

Sexual underworld

Central to the plot is Nan Astley, who discovers her sexuality when she falls for a music hall star whose act involves impersonating a man.

Davies said he was greatly impressed by Waters' appreciation of the Victorian sexual underworld and the pornographic literature of the time.

"She writes with an extraordinary, gutsy zest for life in all its often comic complexity - especially the sexual life," he explains.

"The effect of this is sometimes shocking, but always illuminating and life-enhancing."

Screen kisses between females are still taboo

Davies - currently preparing the screenplay for the sequel to Bridget Jones's Diary - said he and Waters worked well together.

"We hit it off straightway," he said. "It was really good having her there because I was able to ask her quite a lot of questions and get things straight in my mind about the book."

And the working relationship did not end when Tipping the Velvet was done and dusted.

Davies has already taken an option on Waters' second novel, Affinity, for which he has high hopes.

"I'm writing the script for it, and I'm hoping it's going to be a movie," he said.