The following is an edited version of an online chat with Sara Douglass chats on community.news.com.au Monday, 29th November 1999 8pm AEDT.

For a full transcript visit the community.news.com.au website - and watch out for when your favourite author will be chatting!

Host Mark The last time we chatted was when the World Science Fiction Fair was on...what have you been up to since then?

Sara Douglass Working! Building my new web site ...And also planning out my next novel.

Jason from Sydney asks...Are you writing a new book?

Sara Douglass Next week I start the second book in The Crucible trilogy called ′The Wounded Hawk′.

Host Mark Does that mean you start researching or sitting in front of the computer actually writing?

Sara Douglass It means sitting in front of the computer and writing. I′ve spent a while planning and so now comes the hard bit where I have to put what′s in my head onto the small screen. It is going to be a busy Xmas! The book is due on March 1 next year so I don′t have much time. Gulp.

Ian from Adelaide asks...When did you start writing, and when did you start writing as a profession? Did it come naturally or with practice?

Sara Douglass When did I start writing? About 9 years old and I started writing as a professional about 9 years old. Of course, it took me something like 30 more years to have my first books accepted I don′t think there′s any difference between ′professional′ and ′amateur′ except in your own head.

Christopher Heron from Melbourne asks...Do you feel funny writing about good and evil as the millennium approaches it′s end...do you think it will influence your writing?

Sara Douglass Oh gosh, not the millennium. If you actually date the millennium from the birth of Christ then we had it 4 years ago! The short answer to this is that, no, the millennium has had no effect on my writing or on my perception of good and evil. I have always been fascinated by the perception of good and evil, even as a child who is to say what is good and what is evil? In my next trilogy called the Crucible (a plug!) I twist the entire notion of good and evil about so that what is evil good, and vice versa.

Host Mark Does it interest you how modern people′s of the millennium might be the same as medieval peoples..sorry to hark on about the millennium.

Sara Douglass Hmmm ... I think that modern people really only see the millennium as a reason for a party or a marketing ploy. Medieval people understood the millennium as a time for the return of Christ and a good time in Hell for all.

Jason from Sydney asks...Will you be putting stuff up on your website as you write your new book?

Sara Douglass Yes, I will. Eventually I hope to make the trilogy of the Crucible very web interactive and for all who don′t yet know my new site is at www.saradouglass.com - come and visit!

Host Mark Did Hannah have any say in the website?

Sara Douglass Hannah has turned up her nose at the entire deal. She is being very snooty - which is a bit of a shame because this Thursday a film crew from Today Tonight are arriving to film her! I hope that she makes an appearance! (Hannah is my ghost).

Host Mark How long have you been aware of Hannah and could you explain briefly who she is to our audience?

Sara Douglass Ok - this is a long one (grin). When I bought this house about 4 years ago I was aware from the previous owners that it was haunted. Oh yeah, I thought! But I soon found out that indeed this house IS VERY haunted! Hannah Wolstencroft is the woman who built this house with her husband in 1892. She adored the house so much she never left. Strangely her married name was Bloomfield, and once I arrived in this house I began to write about the infinite field of flowers in my books. Hannah has her strong dislikes and likes. She drove a former owner to suicide because she loathed him so much. He left the house one morning at 6 and walked up to her grave (the cemetery is only 4 blocks away) and hanged himself on a tree near her grave. There are some people who won′t come in the house at all! Fortunately Hannah and I get on very well (now). When I first arrived, however she didn′t like me at all, and it was only after months of talking to her that we formed a companionable relationship.

Host Mark Do you think she likes your work? Are you ever tempted to write about her?

Sara Douglass Well I have written about her in a way on my web pages. She has been very interested in the computer, and I′ve had to explain to her what it is all about. As for whether or not she likes my work I know she likes me, and she loves my interest in the house. I imagine she is very proud that the house is now coming to public attention (or fame, or whatever).

Jane from Sydney asks...Does it scare you to have a ghost? I would be petrified.

Sara Douglass No - she doesn′t scare me at all - not now! There were a few moments in the beginning when I had every light in the house on! She has managed to terrify some people, though, and when I first moved in my cat Martin (gorgeous chap) wouldn′t come out from under my bed for 3 months. Eventually I asked Hannah to stop scaring him and within a quarter of an hour he was out and wandering about as relaxed as you like.

Christopher asks...You say on your website that you are very excited about The Crucible...is that because you are blurring history and fiction or because you are at the beginning of a new book?

Sara Douglass Well it is for a number of reasons. First it is a brand new series for me, and a hugely relaxing break after 6 books in the world of Tencendor. It is also set in a period of history that I adore and with such interesting characters! I mean, who doesn′t dream about writing a scene where you get to crisp Joan of Arc? (sorry to all Catholics).

Host Mark (laughs) Do you still work in academia as a historian at all?

Sara Douglass I work in life as an historian, but not in academia as such, no. I found that life very restrictive where one has to justify every statement one says and add at least 56 footnotes to every page. Writing historical fantasy - or fantasy as a genre is tremendously liberating. I am having such a ball!

Host Mark I notice that you have a bulletin board with the new website...and that you have already posted to it. Will you be posting a lot?

Sara Douglass Depends on my schedule. There will be time when I am too busy to take much of an active role and other times when I won′t be able to resist commenting!

Ian from Adelaide asks...How do you see the future of humble books in an increasingly hyped up, interactive commercial-active world?

Sara Douglass Yes, I do. I think there is still a huge interest in books that can be read on the tram and in the bath and in bed (although one reader berated me severely because some of the books were too big for him to read holding the books with one hand and rubbing his wife′s breast with the other!). But back to the question, yes, I can′t see books becoming ′extinct′ at all. There will be a place for books and for traditional books.

Host Mark I′m sorry but I think you should publish that readers comment on your books as a recommendation...so riveting I couldn′t put it down for anything!

Sara Douglass (laughter!)

Host Mark Do you think your role as an author will change? Like for instance the way you use the web and interact with your readers?

Sara Douglass Yes, I do - but I am not sure in what way. My relationship with readers has already changed in that in my first books there was no particular web site, and now with the new site I aim to make site, books and readers more interactive, but I am not sure exactly how we will go about that yet.

Host Mark Maybe you′ll morph into a role of a "dungeon master" to borrow from Role Playing in the ′80s ...leading readers on interactive experiences. Do other mediums excite you much....like film?

Sara Douglass Um, no, I don′t think so. Unless it was film/book/web combined, which could be exciting.

Jane from Sydney asks...Would you like to live in the Medieval world? Why does history excite you so much?

Sara Douglass Would I like to live in the medieval world? NO! I like my creature comforts too much. I have always been excited about history - even as a child. I lived in a house PACKED with books - I had a childhood where I had to escape a lot from the pressures of the household about me, and those books and the world. They led me into made me adore ′other′ worlds.

Currently I am excited about the trilogy I am going to write after The Crucible!

Host Mark And what is that trilogy about?

Sara Douglass Well, don′t hold me to this, but it will be set in a Threshold kind of a world and will - probably - be concerned with the Ark of the Covenant. But, as I said, don′t hold me to that!

Host Mark How long does it take you to research and plan...it seems you are incredibly organised.

Sara Douglass Well, first of all I ′dream′ a book which is when I think of a topic for a book/s and then spend some year or 2 dreaming about it. All this time, of course, I am working on something else! Then comes the day when I can actually work on the new book and I spend some time planning (I can plan a book in under 3 hours - scene by scene) and that short time is because I have ′dreamed′ it so long and then all I have to do is write it, which is the very worst part! Am I organised? No, I don′t think so, but I am disciplined.

Jane from Sydney asks...Do you dream about yourself in the world you are dreaming about or is it more like a movie?

Sara Douglass No, I don′t think I ever put myself into a world and it isn′t like a movie either - it is as though the characters and landscape ′swirl′ about me. I take the book-dream with me everywhere. I adore that process.

Host Mark It′s a most amazing writing process. I remember last time we chatted you gave the bath advice for curing a block. When you start a book dream do you consciously do something like go to bed knowing you are going to start it...or does it just happen?

Sara Douglass It just kind of happens - I think of something exciting (a world, or a topic) and just think constantly about it. Sometimes I literally dream, but not often.

Richard from Adelaide asks...If you are not in the dream then how can you write so well?

Sara Douglass I don′t know. I can′t understand it. It is as though I am that dream or book′s creator - its mother. The world exists through me even though I take no part in it. I remember when I first sent of ′BattleAxe′ to an agent (my current agent, Lyn Tranter) she had a reader prepare a report on it. The report was excellent, but I resented that report like hell and it took me days to understand why it was because the world and the characters now lived through someone else the characters didn′t have to depend on me for their life! I managed to get over it!

Ian from Adelaide asks...Fascinating. You are detached from the worlds you create. Is that one of the tricks of the trade? To remain detached from the world and let it create itself?

Sara Douglass I hadn′t ever thought about it like that, but perhaps you′re right. Whatever, I know that keeling myself detached from the world in which I currently write (or dream) frees up the characters to live out their own lives and for the world to take on a life of its own. If I were in that world, and the characters consciously had to relate to me then nothing would work. The characters would have no life of their own as it is now, perhaps the characters not only have their own lives, the reader does also, because you are free to participate in that world without the burden of having me there as well.

Christopher from Melbourne asks...Do you write everything down from your dreamtime? Or does it just live up there so to speak?

Sara Douglass No, of that time almost nothing gets written down it all lives in my mind. If you can imagine that for every physical book of mine, there is something like ten more books of adventures etc that never got into print!

About Sara Douglass