Juliet Marillier at a recent book signing in Portugal, where she has a wide fan base

Juliet Marillier's newest book, Heir to Sevenwaters, is dedicated to the memory of her mother, Dorothy, who died in 2007. She tells us on the acknowledgements page that her mother not only taught her the value of storytelling, but encouraged her to dream.

Dorothy, a music teacher, knew the power of the arts and, as the daughter of a printer, of the written word. A friend of hers was the children’s librarian in Dunedin, and that friend's daughter was little Juliet's best friend, so Juliet and her sister grew up keen library users as well as being exposed to books at home. Juliet’s favourites included Andrew Lang's "Coloured" Fairy Books. This enormously influential collection, published between 1889 and 1910, consists of twelve anthologies of fairy tales from many lands. A special favourite was The Yellow Fairy Book, which includes such well-known stories as "The Six Swans" as well as many marvellous lesser-known tales of trolls, dragons, mermaids, witches, talking animals and other wonders. Juliet loved them all, drinking them in with the open-hearted enthusiasm of childhood.

Juliet's mother had polio as a child and was obliged to wear an orthopaedic shoe life-long, and as Juliet herself was short sighted and not physically adventurous, mother and daughter spent a lot of time reading. Having read the library dry of fairy tales, Juliet discovered history and other non-fiction books. "But it was stories," she says, "that captured me". By the time she was in infants' school, Juliet was writing her own stories, which her mother would type up for her. One of the earliest, Juliet remembers, was about "rampaging killer robots"! As she grew up she became more physically active: with a friend’s family she would go tramping in the New Zealand countryside, learning to love and appreciate the forest and its wonders. The influence of this epiphany can clearly be seen in her writing.

Even now, Juliet claims to express herself better in writing than in speech, saying she finds it hard to be spontaneous when talking. Music was another way the young Juliet learnt to express herself. She completed a BA in French and English literature and an honours degree in music. The voice was her principal instrument: as a soprano, she had operatic ambitions. However, she was also more than competent on the violin and the oboe. By her mid twenties she was tutoring in the music department of Otago University, later taking up a teaching post at a private school for girls.

Together with her then husband, Juliet moved first to Melbourne and later to Perth, where she reared her family of two sons and two daughters. She taught at St Hilda's school before shifting to the public service, and it was while working there that she started her first book, Daughter of the Forest. And so the Sevenwaters series was born.

'At the time I started writing, I had just read Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes,' Juliet says. 'It came at a watershed period in my personal life. Estes’ discussion of women’s roles in traditional folklore helped me a lot in that time of change. It was instrumental in my developing greater self-esteem and an appreciation of the power of storytelling. I started Daughter of the Forest, which is built around the fairy tale The Six Swans, because I wanted to explore the impact and consequences of such a dramatic event – a human to swan transformation – on a real family..I gave the story an Irish setting rather than a Germanic one because of my love and respect for my own Celtic heritage. Fairy stories, after all, reveal universal truths that are not limited by ethnicity or historical context.'

Juliet decided to show her manuscript to some publishers, sending it first to Fremantle Arts Centre Press. They were impressed by it, but as it didn't really fit their list, they suggested she send it to Harper Collins or Pan Macmillan. Finding that Harper Collins did not accept unagented submissions, Juliet sent the first three chapters off to Pan Macmillan. By this time she had started book two of the Sevenwaters series, Son of the Shadows. Imagine her delight when publisher Cate Paterson wanted to see the whole of book one, and after reading it, together with the first three chapters of book two, offered her a two book contract. This was quickly adjusted to a three book deal when Pan Macmillan sold her work on to its American counterpart, Tor Books.

On publication, the Sevenwaters series was an immediate success, with the first three books receiving high praise and several awards. Juliet went on to write other books, including the Saga of the Light Isles, which comprises Wolfskin (2002) and Foxmask (2003) and a second series, The Bridei Chronicles, consisting so far of The Dark Mirror (2004) Blade of Fortriu (2005) and The Well of Shades (2006). She has also written two books for young adults, Wildwood Dancing (2006) and Cybele's Secret (2007). The Sevenwaters books, however, remain incredibly popular, with fans across the globe from China to Portugal as well as throughout the English-speaking world. They have gone through many editions in many countries, the most recent being a new Australian issue with stunning covers based on pictures by Pre-Raphaelite painter John William Waterhouse.

'Ever since Child of the Prophecy came out in 2001, fans have been begging for another Sevenwaters book,' says Juliet, 'and in 2006 my new American publisher, Roc, persuaded me to write Heir to Sevenwaters as part of a two book deal. The second book in this deal is Heart’s Blood, not a Sevenwaters book, but also set in Ireland. It is due for release in Australia late in 2009. My earlier books only used fantastical elements as they arose from the mythological base of the story, but Heart’s Blood is a real ghost story, with elements of a gothic romance.'

Heir to Sevenwaters tells the story of Clodagh, daughter of Sean, Lord of Sevenwaters, the son of Sorcha who wove the magical shirts for her swan-transformed brothers in Daughter of the Forest. Clodagh must go on a desperate journey into the dark forest that borders the Otherworld to rescue one baby boy and save the life of another. While less obviously mythologically based than its predecessors, Heir to Sevenwaters nonetheless draws significantly on Irish folklore for its drama and pathos. Asked if it was hard to return to the series after so long a gap, Juliet admits it was, in some ways. 'My writing style has changed. I'm also much fussier about my historical research. What's more, I thought these new young characters might be in danger of being overshadowed by the strong characters of the earlier books, so I have downplayed the roles of Sean and Aisling. Old fans will recognise them of course, and we do learn what has happened to some earlier characters, but as each book in the series stands alone, new readers will be able to jump right into the Sevenwaters world and won't be disadvantaged by not having read the earlier novels.' (I would add to this that once new readers see the beautiful new editions of Daughter of the Forest, Son of the Shadows and Child of the Prophecy, they will immediately want all three on their bookshelves, alongside Heir to Sevenwaters.)

Juliet — and her fans — continue to love stories as learning tools for readers and characters alike. In Heir to Sevenwaters, a story teller named Willow teaches Clodagh how to handle situations that come in later in her journey. 'Traditional story telling,' says Juliet, 'gives us keys to help us deal with problems in our own lives and to trigger our own psychological growth. I'm always touched when readers write to tell me that the life lessons learned by my characters have helped them through difficult times in their own lives. Men and women have different approaches to problem-solving, which is one reason why I've steered clear of the kick-arse, ballsy women who crop up so often in modern writing. I don't take an aggressively feminist stance, such as is sometimes evident in the works of, say, Marion Zimmer Bradley or Sherri S. Tepper, much as I enjoy their work. Rather, I try to make my characters, both male and female, human, which means looking at how nature and nurture have given them their strengths and their flaws. In the historical settings I use, characters are constrained by the social norms of their culture – so, no ‘warrior women’ thus far. That doesn’t mean my women are passive and boring. Women have their own strengths and their own ways of solving problems – they don’t need to act like men in order to be the protagonists of gripping stories.'

And what else can we expect from Juliet Marillier? She is so overflowing with inspiration that it's hard to say. She wants to write another Bridei book and another in the YA series started by Wildwood Dancing and continued in Cybele's Secret. A recent visit to the Baltic region has fired off still more ideas. But whatever Juliet Marillier writes next, we can be certain that it will be good – and that the fans are out there waiting for it.

Juliet Marillier has a website at http://julietmarillier.com and she blogs at http://writerunboxed.com