Juliet Marillier was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, a town with strong Scottish roots. She graduated from Otago University with degrees in arts and music, and has had a varied career which includes teaching and performing music as well as working in government agencies. Juliet now lives in a hundred-year-old cottage near the river in Perth, Western Australia, where she writes full-time. She is a number of the druid order OBOD. Juliet shares her home with two dogs and a cat. She is the author of many fantasy novels, including the recently published Heart's Blood.

GR: You grew up in Dunedin, NZ – a long way from Ireland and Scotland. Where did the interest in Celtic-Gaelic history stem from?
 
Despite its location, Dunedin is extremely Scottish! It was settled by Scots immigrants, who brought their culture with them – Dunedin is the old name for Edinburgh, and the city is full of Edinburgh street names, pipe bands, Scottish dancing and so on, or was when I was growing up. I have Scots and Irish ancestry, and I’ve felt an affinity for the mythology and folklore of the Celts and Gaels since I was a small child reading books of fairy tales. I acquired my love of history through reading and study, and I’ve retained those interests all my life. I feel as if I’m carrying on an ancestral line of storytelling.
 
How has your academic background (having studied music and languages at university) helped in your writing career?
 
Studying music gave me a feeling for rhythm and flow in writing. I often read passages aloud to find out whether I’ve got those elements right. Music also provides a guide to structure, what is satisfying, what is balanced. Studying foreign languages gives one a better understanding of the principles of English grammar, enriches the vocabulary and opens windows into other cultures – all extremely useful for a novelist. On a more general note, the self-discipline required for tertiary study is good practice for the self-discipline required by all serious writers!
 
When did you write your first story? Was your first story historical fantasy, or did this interest develop later?
 
If you mean very first, I wrote it when I was about seven, and it was science fiction: a tale of robots running amok, full of blood, death and chaos. And my second story was about scientists discovering a live plesiosaur in Fiordland, NZ. At Arthur Street Primary School in Dunedin there were lots of promising writers. We used to write our stories in exercise books cut in half, and circulate them to our classmates to read and comment on – an early introduction to peer critiquing.
 
I studied music and languages at university, not writing. After graduating I worked in various music-related jobs, brought up my children, and spent a lot of years gradually becoming older and wiser. I didn’t come back to serious fiction writing until I was in my forties. There was never a conscious decision to write in a particular genre. I simply wrote the story I wanted to write (Daughter of the Forest) and when it was published I discovered that people called it a historical fantasy. At that point I didn’t even know there was a science fiction and fantasy section in the bookshop. However, my lifelong love of mythology and history, plus my fondness for a good love story, did steer my writing career in a certain direction!
 
Though Heart’s Blood is set in a very foreign historical environment, the themes of romance and family drama are very contemporary and easy to identify with. Do you think it’s important to include relatable ideas in historical fiction?
 
Any story that deals with human journeys and human relationships has relevance to today’s reader. I don’t believe a story needs to be set in a familiar environment to resonate with what we feel most deeply. The main themes of Heart’s Blood are learning to love and accept yourself, despite your failings and weaknesses; and learning to see beyond surface appearances to the true worth of another person. It’s also about the nature of courage. The historical settings of my books definitely don’t stop their messages from getting across. I receive many emails and letters from readers who say my novels have helped them through a crisis, or that they take a copy of one or other of the books with them when they have to do something confronting such as go to hospital. Readers identify very closely with the characters.
 
I do think it’s important to keep the language accessible, so instead of ‘Unhand the wench, varlet, or feel the touch of my blade!’ a character of mine might say (probably with icy calm) ‘Let the girl go or I’ll run you through.’ I’ve sometimes been criticised for using turns of phrase in dialogue that are a little too modern for their period. People need to remember that these characters wouldn’t even be speaking English. I try to convey both meaning and style in a way that’s fairly immediate to today’s reader. Having said that, I can’t bear gross anachronisms, so my characters are not going to come out with ‘You go, girl!’ or ‘Stone the crows!’
 
Heart’s Blood is loosely based on the fairytale Beauty and the Beast. Do you often draw on traditional tales from the past?
 
Of my twelve novels, three are overtly based on fairy tales. Apart from Heart’s Blood, there is Daughter of the Forest (The Six Swans) and Wildwood Dancing (The Twelve Dancing Princesses, with a touch of Frog Prince.) None of these is a straight fairytale retelling; each uses the framework of a traditional tale to build a new and more complex story. In my other novels I do quite often make use of tropes or themes from folklore or mythology. My novels are not traditional fantasy. They are all set in the real world and based to a greater or lesser extent on real history. The supernatural elements come from what the people of that time and culture might have believed in. For instance, the central character of my Norse novel, Wolfskin, is a berserk warrior, and I look at his loyalty to the god of war, and the conflict between a sworn oath of blood brotherhood and personal conscience. That novel is much closer to a straight historical. I reckon my books span the genres of fantasy, historical novel and romance.
 
‘Ireland, post-Norman invasion’ seems a very specific era. What made this period the best setting for the story?
 
The story was planned around the idea of peeling away layers of history to reach the truth, so it was always going to involve sorting and reading documents from several generations of a family. I needed a scribe to do the work, and I wanted her to be female. This period was the earliest I could reasonably stretch things to allow a young woman to be a trained secular scribe, and even then Caitrin has been acting as her father’s unofficial assistant rather than working in her own right. The unusual setting in which she finds herself at the start of the novel means she gets the chance to work independently – very unusual for the period, but then, nothing about Whistling Tor is ordinary!
 
The novel is set in the west of Ireland in that period when the Anglo-Normans were on the march across the country, but still hadn’t established a hold in Connaught. That was ideal historically for Anluan’s situation. He’s been isolated from his people and his responsibilities up till now, with good reason. But a crisis is looming, and unless he acts he will lose everything.
 
The main character, Caitrin, is a very strong-willed young woman. Is her character drawn from you or any women you know?
 
I’m not sure I would describe Caitrin as strong-willed – she certainly isn’t headstrong or inflexible.  She does have the courage of her own convictions, at least where helping other people is concerned. But she’s struggling to find her old self-belief; she is a damaged woman who does better at healing others than at healing herself. Is she drawn from me? In part, yes. I suppose there’s a bit of me in all my female protagonists, and in this one rather more than most. I  come from a family of strong women, and I draw inspiration from all of them.
 
Writers often use their writing to release their personal troubles. Are Caitrin’s demons purely fictional or did you bring personal experience to the story?
 
Readers would be wrong to draw any literal parallels between Caitrin’s story and mine. However, personal experience gave me quite a bit of insight into her emotional journey.
 
Caitrin is a woman ahead of her time; trained, educated, paying her own way. Can you think of a modern archetype of Caitrin?
 
Any woman from a repressive culture who has surmounted the restrictions of her situation through courage, talent and goodness of heart.
 
To what extent do you immerse yourself in historical research? Have you visited any of the places featured in your novels?
 
I’ve become more thorough in my research as I gained experience as a writer. The historical background for my first series was sketchy and, in some respects, inaccurate; in hindsight I wish I had paid more attention to it.
 
I read a lot of material in preparation for a new novel, not only history books, but books on all kinds of topics from warcraft to ships to geography. And I do travel to the locations of the novels. My research has taken me as far as the Faroe Islands (halfway between Norway and Iceland), Transylvania and Turkey. I’m quite excited by recent news that Cybele’s Secret is to be published in Turkish translation.
 
You are a member of the druid order OBOD. Can you explain a little about this?
 
OBOD stands for the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids. The order is based in the UK but has branches all around the world, including Australia and New Zealand. I became interested in Druidry when I heard Philip Carr-Gomm, chief of the order, speak at a workshop in Perth some years ago. I discovered to my delight that I’d found a wise and true spiritual path that encouraged a wide range of personal choice – no gurus in sight. That was a turning point in my life. As a druid, I see myself as part of the interdependent web of nature, and I feel a personal responsibility towards the health of that web. I believe spirit/god/goddess is not an external power, but exists within all things, ourselves included. A person can’t follow that philosophy without practising self-respect and respect for others, which are of course central themes in Heart’s Blood. Readers who want to know more about modern Druidry can find the OBOD website at www.druidry.org.
 
Were you always a spiritual person or has your research and involvement with history and lore led to your sense of spirituality?
 
I was brought up in the Christian faith, but that was always driven by others, rather than arising from any inner conviction. It took me many years to find a spiritual path that I believed in. Yes, I do believe my research was an important element in getting me there. I had been reading about earth-based faiths, Wicca and Druidry in particular, for quite some time, and I created druid characters for the books, not all of them entirely admirable! Along the way I rediscovered some powerful personal convictions that had been tucked away inside me for a very long time.  Both serious writing and spiritual growth had to wait until I had emotional space for them.
 
Heart’s Blood includes an element of the supernatural. Would you say, then, that this book veers more toward ‘fantasy’ than ‘historical fiction’? How would you describe it?
 
Genre tags are so difficult! Heart’s Blood is a blend of historical romance and ghost story. I’m certain it will appeal to readers who would not normally dip their toes into the fantasy pool. I hesitate to use the word fantasy because some readers have a set idea of what it means, not realising the genre has blossomed and grown to include a very broad spectrum of writing. There are no elves, dwarves, traditional quests, dragons or invented worlds in my book. There are ghosts and a touch of the occult. At heart it’s a story about flawed individuals finding their inner courage and learning self-acceptance.
 
Heart’s Blood is a very gothic tale. Were you influenced by other gothic literature?
 
I did set out with the intention of writing a gothic romance. I’ve read and enjoyed several wonderful gothic novels in the last couple of years: The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a classic of its kind. But the novel that influenced Heart’s Blood most was my all-time favourite, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. I have always loved stories with creepy old houses, mysterious, brooding heroes, and heroines who will insist on wandering around in their nighties. Which Caitrin does at least once in Heart’s Blood.
 
Is Heart’s Blood definitely a stand-alone book? No chance of a follow-up?
 
Heart’s Blood was always intended to be a stand-alone book. Readers have already asked me if I would consider writing a sequel, because they love the characters and setting. I have one answer for this type of question: wait and see. I don’t seem to be able to write any faster than one novel per year, and I have a couple of books already under contract.
 
My next novel, to be published in December 2010, is part of the 'Sevenwaters' series. For readers who haven’t yet visited 'Sevenwaters', there are five earlier books and you have nearly a year to read them! There’s more information on my website at www.julietmarillier.com