Australian author Sara Douglass has filled bookshelves with her fantasy trilogies. She's currently working on a new four-book series, The Troy Game, with the first book slated for a December 2002 release.

FictionAddiction.NET's Robert Ryan Langer talked with Douglass about her publishing breakthrough from Australia to the U.S., her books and her writing career.

According to your Web site, you enjoy reading military adventure thrillers. What aspects of that genre captivate you?

Gosh, that really dates my Web site! I haven't read any military adventure in, oh, some five to six years at least.

I can't put down crime now. I guess my tastes just change as I age. Mostly, however, I read non-fiction, particularly anything to do with social or transport history of the Victorian and Edwardian ages.

What other works of fiction have touched you?

Well, crime. *grin* I particularly like crime because of the innovative narrative techniques that I can borrow for my fantasy writing. None of this appears in the Wayfarer Redemption series, but does in my later books (not available in the US for at least another 5-6 years).

Since you don't read much of the fantasy genre, what inspired you to write a fantasy series?

I'm a professional medieval historian (work out one day how many fantasy writers have a professional background in medievalism; there's an entire herd of us). It lends itself perfectly to writing fantasy which are usually set in pre-modern worlds.

Ideally, I'd like to write crime, but I'm not sure if I have the background (despite the fact that one grandfather and a great-uncle were terrible arsonists, a great grandfather was deeply involved in the Jack the Ripper case, and yet another grandfather was accused, in a terrible scandal, of subverting a notorious murder trial in New York in 1906 ...).