Juliet Marillier is the popular author of the Sevenwaters series which combine historical fiction, folkloric fantasy, romance and focus strongly on human relationships. Here, Juliet discusses the new instalment, Seer of Sevenwaters as well as future plans for the series.

The challenge was with the previous book, Heir to Sevenwaters, because I was going back to the Sevenwaters settings and characters after eight years and eight unrelated novels. But once I got started I found it easier than expected. The setting and characters were very familiar, and I thoroughly enjoyed adding new characters and creating exciting new stories. With Seer of Sevenwaters the challenge lay in the voice. One of the two main narrators is trainee druid Sibeal, whom we know from previous books as a reserved, self-contained person, not at all chatty. And the other narrator, Felix, has completely lost his memory at the start.

Seer of Sevenwaters can be read as a stand-alone novel – the plot is complete in one book. The reader’s enjoyment will certainly be enhanced if he or she has read the other books first. There are quite a few characters introduced, or re-introduced, in the first few chapters. Sibeal, the main narrator, was quite young in the two earlier books where she appeared, but series readers have told me they loved following her journey from a sensitive child of 8 in Child of the Prophecy to an unusual young woman in this book.

I am a keen reader of folklore and mythology and have been since childhood, so in a sense the research is already done. I find those elements weave their way into the story quite naturally. I did especially enjoy creating the magical aspects of Seer, and I love the island setting, so different from the Sevenwaters forest.  For most of my books I do extensive historical research as well. Although they have fantastic elements, I like to ground the stories in real history. But for the Sevenwaters series, which started with my very first novel, Daughter of the Forest, the historical period is a little vague. Here I have to confess that I made a historical error with character names in the first book, not realising at the time that it would become important. That has meant I’ve had to steer away from anything that would fix the exact time period for the reader. There’s more about this on my web page here:

Sibeal has come to the remote island of Inis Eala to visit her sisters before making her final promise as a druid. On her first day there a Norse ship is wrecked off the coast, with only three survivors. The orderly calm of island life is disturbed by the arrival of this unlikely trio, and Sibeal finds herself drawn into a perilous adventure which causes her to question what she has always believed will be her future of service to the gods.  For Felix, who comes ashore with his memory gone, the challenge is to recall what happened. There’s only one thing he is sure of: a vital mission awaits him, and if he doesn’t act soon it will be too late. Later he faces the need to step up as a man of action where by nature he is more of a scholar and dreamer.

There’s a particular element of folklore that is the inspiration for the story – readers will recognise it as the tale unfolds. I can’t talk more about that without spoiling the story completely. I was also interested in the idea of truth and lies, and the nature of memory. It was fascinating to write from Felix’s point of view while he is gradually regaining his lost memory. The story raises a question: what if you could have the future you had always dreamed of provided you based it on a lie?

This is the first Sevenwaters book to have two narrators, and the first to give a male character the point of view. Initially I planned to have Sibeal as the sole narrator, which would have been consistent with the earlier books. The male protagonist is Felix, and I soon realised I needed his point of view as well. Felix has lost his memory and is quite weakened by a lengthy ordeal in the sea. He doesn’t speak for the first few chapters, and his native tongue is not that of the island residents. If I had not allowed him the POV he would have been a complete enigma in these chapters. Adding his voice, which is in present tense (this felt right for a man with no memory), gave the storytelling additional depth and complexity. Sibeal still gets most of the POV, Felix perhaps a third of it. His sections were easy to write. They flowed naturally for me, perhaps because I was quite ill when I was writing the first half of the book (having treatment for breast cancer.) My editor commented, when she first saw the ms, that it contained rather a lot of people turning pale, fainting or feeling unwell! I fixed that before publication.

I wrote the first book, Daughter of the Forest, because I loved the fairy tale The Six Swans and wanted to see what would happen to a real family if they faced a crisis of that kind. The family grew from that book, and I knew I wanted to explore the impact of the dramatic events on future generations. The second and third books deal with the children and grandchildren of the original protagonists. There was by then a fairly big cast of interesting characters, enough for many stories, though at that point I branched out to write completely different books like the Bridei Chronicles and my two novels for young adults, Wildwood Dancing and Cybele’s Secret. I went back to Sevenwaters by popular request. The first three books form a distinct trilogy with its own over-arching story. The later novels, Heir to Sevenwaters and Seer of Sevenwaters, have stand-alone stories but feature the same settings and many of the same characters. They’re all rich in folklore and mythology, but are at heart family dramas with romantic elements.

No specific parts were harder than any others. The real challenge for me was keeping on writing during those months of surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Continuing to write was necessary not only to fulfil contractual obligations, but for my personal satisfaction, because writing is such an important part of my identity. It was very hard work at times, and I did progress with the book quite slowly. I made up for that later, when I felt well again.

 When you initially wrote Daughter of the Forest, did you know it would become a series of books?

When I submitted Daughter of the Forest to a publisher I had already written part of Son of the Shadows, so it was a two-book submission, and included an outline for a third book, Child of the Prophecy. I wrote about half of the first book before realising that this saga was going to require more than one novel.

There will be at least one more book, concluding the story of Mac Dara and his dark influence on the Sevenwaters family. I am undecided at this point about taking the Sevenwaters series any further.

In between writing the Sevenwaters books I have been writing a new series for young adults, the Shadowfell series set in a magical version of ancient Scotland. I’m very excited about those books. The first instalment will be out sometime in 2012.