Old News

December 20th 2004: I have changed my contact details on my contact page. Please now forward all snail mail to me care of HarperCollins (address on the contact page). The PO Box address won't be working from early next year.

Competitions - I am going to be really busy over the next 6 months so probably won't be running any competitions. Many apologies for this!

November 30th 2004: Have been lost in the planning and research of book four of The Troy Game, which is now almost certainly going to be called Saving Grace. I've added a bit more to the Troy Game page about this.

October 2nd 2004: I have more time on my hands than is good for me - due to popular demand I've put up a virtual tour of the catpark (link no longer working) - which in itself has been extended over the past few weeks.

September 12th 2004: the cats have their new park, and now the fish have sparkling, crystal clean water thanks to some powerful pumps and filters. I'm thrilled with the result! (link no longer working)

September 2nd 2004: I have five winners of the comp and I'll be emailing you soon re your address (all except the fifth, because I ran into his mum in the supermarket and gave her a copy of the book to pass on).

Sinner is out this month in America in hardback ... and I've just received an advance cover mockup for The Wounded Hawk - wow! It has a GORGEOUS cover! (link no longer working)

Also, for those interested in the idea behind the Troy Game that the landscape of London reveals something extraordinary, then you could do far, far worse than checking out Chris Street's "Earthstars: the Visionary Landscape: London, the City of Revelation". It is published by Hermitage, 2004, and is available either via Amazon.co.uk or via the Earthstars website. Chris has given me a whole heap more reasons to get back to London as fast as I can!

August 16th 2004: Just a quick note regarding a competition - I know I meant to start one ages ago ... and I haven't ... and guilt consumes me ... but thinking these things up is just so hard ...

May I distract you by pointing out that the Nameless Day is off and running in the USA, and that this edition is very different to the Australian and UK editions published earlier. There is more material added, particularly regarding Margaret and Alice, and even Black Tom gets a few new scenes to show off his new sensitive side (trust me on this one). I think it is much better (it isn't often an author gets a chance to redo a book), so if you're in a mood for a more likeable Tom, then you can always purchase it from amazon.com (shameless plug over). It has a lovely orange cover. Really.

I suppose I could always start a competition with a copy of the redone Nameless Day as prize. Give me a day or two ...

August 9th 2004: Many thanks to all who have helped out with the testing of the London page - some problems I wasn't aware of surfaced. It's always great when people with lots of different systems and browsers and screen resolutions test out. And now, nothing at all to do with London or fantasy, but cats. (link no longer working) Recently Bendigo Council introduced a curfew for cats - a good idea but it has been implemented so badly and promoted so poorly that hundreds of cats have been abandoned or killed. I had actually decided to build this park before the curfew came in - but now with cats being caught in rabbit traps on front lawns in a frenzy of cat-phobia I'm extremely grateful and puss Luther and puss Claude are safe!

August 6 th 2004: Sorry for this long gap ... I've been buried deep in a project which I now need some help with. I'm producing a cd tour of Regency London (it will have over 800 map images to stroll through, and thousands of popup pages containing information regarding sundry places within London and the greater London area). I've put up a single one of those 800 separate map sections, together with some links, and I need to know how it views in various browsers and resolutions. If you'd like to test this out for me, please go to the London Tester page (NOTE AUgust 16th - this page has now been removed).

June 6 th 2004: I'm reorganising the site, removing much of the medieval material, this for a while (until I fix it) some links might ... not actually link anyway. I'm doing this reorganisation to free up some space on the server for something new and exciting (and absolutely nothing to do with fantasy, sorry, but something else far nearer and dearer to my heart).

May 28th 2004: I've just acquired a stunning engraving of Charles II's triumphal re-entry into London in 1660 and have thus added it to the Darkwitch Rising page.

May 16th 2004: I've been doing some filing of some of the images I have and found yet more I could add to the Darkwitch Rising page.

May 15th 2004: Thank God, the third book of The Troy Game is finally off and away. I've put up a fairly detailed bunch of pages for this book, which is now called Darkwitch Rising (Imps' Deceit just had to go!). Go to the Troy Game page and then click on Darkwitch Rising.

April 1st 2004: I have just received the page proofs of "Sinner" which is book 4 in the USA "Wayfarer Redemption". This means that publication can't be too far away (think 4-6 months). If you want to know the exact date then ring TOR on 800/455-0340 as I honestly don't know what their schedule is.

February 27th 2004: I have a huge pile of correspondence to asnwer, so please be patient as it will take me several weeks to work my way through them. I've been badly let down by my kitten Claude, to whom I only offered warmth and succour on the strict understanding that he undertake secretarial duties ... and now the sod has gone on strike because I refuse to feed him tuna. So if you have written, I will reply, but it won't be tomorrow. :)

February 19th 2004: So sorry- no competition up and running yet and I have a HUGE pile of letters to answer ... hopefully in 2 weeks time when I send next book to publishers I can actually have a life back!! :)

November 4th 2003: yet more news for today and this one literally hot off the phone lines ... the German publisher Piper Verlag has also just purchased the rights for Beyond the Hanging Wall (I should have waited until they had finished their purchase comittee meeting before I put up the news on Threshold!).

November 4th 2003: French rights to The Axis Trilogy have been sold, as have the German rights to Threshold (where it will be broken into 2 books and sold as 2 books - German translations always expand by at least 15% in the doing, so books often are split into two). God's Concubine should be released in Australia and New Zealand within the month and in the first third of next year in the USA and Canada. The Nameless Day, first book of The Crucible, should be published by Tor in the USA and Canada mid-2004, with book 2, The Wounded Hawk, scheduled for publication in early 2005. The Nameless Day has been extensively re-written for the American market. I didn't want to do it, I grumbled for weeks about it, and then had enormous fun in the actual doing! It has expanded drammatically, with about 8 extra scenes and many others rewritten completely. Margaret's role has expanded, as has also that of Thomas' doomed lover, Alice.

September 15th 2003: My tulips have gone mad. All have developed at least 2 heads on a single stalk, some three, and there's one that looks like it has 4 heads. I don't often put pictures on this page, but this is so bizarre ... and all without steroids!

September 3rd 2003: Good news on The Crucible front. Originally scheduled for publication in the USA by Tor from 2008-2010, the publication schedule has been brought forward by almost 5 years so that the first of the books, The Nameless Day, will appear in the USA sometime in mid-2004. Now, I can't work out whether this is because Tor thinks the books are selling so well they might as well get as many out as they can, or they're selling so badly they just want to get them all out and get rid of me once and for all ...

August 4th 2003: A couple of announcements of, um, sort of impending announcements. First of all, as I've mentioned somewhere else, in early-to-mid-September I'll be putting up a major competition for an unedited ms of God's Concubine, book 2 of The Troy Game.

Secondly, I've decided I can do it. Finally. Finish off the Tencendor books. Looks like The Troy Game will be followed by a trilogy which is currently titled (in my head) The Misbegotten (and I think you can expect this to change once the publishers start to scream about it). StarDrifter will get his day in the sun, and I can probably also bring back Axis for it as well. (Minus Azhure and Faraday!) Essentially, this will be a tale of StarDrifter and his sons. All three of them.

July 21st 2003: I've just put up some pages for God's Concubine. Go to the front page of The Troy Game and click on God's Concubine for more details.

July 21st 2003: Beyond the Hanging Wall has been released in hardback in America and Canada (or is so close to being released there's no difference), and you can look forward to Threshold, the favourite of my books, being released in September. God's Concubine (Book II of The Troy Game) is being edited now, and will be released in Australia and New Zealand in December of this year, and in the Americas in about February of next year. There will be some major differences between the publications. The Australian edition will be markedly longer ... and the American edition has been retitled Gods' Concubine (think about it) so as to be less offensive to Americans (Tor's decision).

June 23rd 2003: This coming Sunday (June 29th) Australian ABC tv will air a long-ish interview with me (& my great love, my maps!!) on the programme 'Words" which airs at 4.40 pm on ABC tv. At least I think it is this coming Sunday. You might have to keep watching for several months ...

Will get another competition up and running soon-ish - but I am having so much trouble with email at the moment it isn't worth it as most entries would be lost in the ether.

Will now be away for much of the time until June - if your mail doesn't immediately get answered then be sure I will do it once I'm more firmly ensconced in Ashcotte. Thanks to the marines who wrote from Kuwait just before Mr Bush launched them into battle. I hope you all manage to get home safely, as also I hope the war ends as soon as possible.

March 25th 2003: Hello! Have been caught up in the editing and proofing of 4 books (who said selling to all these individual countries was fun!) and am also about to take a few months off in a series of safe houses where even my editors won't be able to find me and I won't have any connection to the internet (you have no idea how much that will be appreciated) thus won't be altering this site much until, perhaps, about late June. I'll be putting up a new competition then. Until then, if you can work out who Attila the Hun's third cousin removed on his mother's side was, then you'll not only keep yourself out of mischief, but you'll take your minds off the war.

Beyond the Hanging Wall and Threshold will shortly be published in the USA and Canada.

BattleAxe, Enchanter and Starman will shortly be re-issued in Australia in new format/design/covers. (After seventeen reprints, I think they're entering their classic stage ...)

God's Concubine is going through its final revision stages, due to be published in Australia and New Zealand later this year, and in the USA, Canada and Britain early next year.

For those interested, the current issue (Feb/March) of the USA journal Garden Design has a lovely feature on my front gate! It's on p. 31. If you do see it, and read that bit of info beside it, trust me when I say that the price quoted there is not what I paid! *grin* I seem to have acquired a pretty good discount.

February 23rd 2003: I thought you might like to read some of the online interviews I've done in America for the release of Hades' Daughter. I haven't checked out all these links, but hopefully you will be able to find the inteview somewhere on site! I also believe that AOL are conducting fornightly chat sessions regarding my books. Unfortunately you need to be a member of AOL to participate. If you are a member, I'm assuming that you'll know how to find the chat sessions!

Note: not all of these interviews are currently posted, but they should be sometime soon over the next month or so ... or decade or so ... really ...

December 19th 2002: Fabulous news! Both The Crippled Angel and Hades' Daughter have been shortlisted for best fantasy novel for the 2002 Aurealis Awards. Winners announced on 28th March 2003. In 2001 my novel The Wounded Hawk won the best fantasy novel category.

December 18th 2002: many greetings and best wishes to all for the holiday season. I hope you enjoy yourselves rather than do what is 'expected' or what the media tells you should be done/felt/seen.

Major news is that Hades' Daughter is now available in Australia and NZ and is about 8 weeks away from publication in the USA and Canada.

After much thought and agonising I've also now closed the Sara Douglass Bulletin Board. As with my once-publicly available email address, it was felled by its own success. It was getting more and more difficult for me to maintain and supervise, and, in the end, it was a choice between having a life and writing books or running the BB. There are so many chat rooms and BB available on the WWW for readers of whatever fiction that I'm sure everyone will be able to find a stage somewhere in order to have their say. Many, many heartfelt thanks to my moderators without whom the BB would not have stayed open as long as it had.

November 7th 2002: not much news - I've been busy busy busy writing the second book in the Troy Game ... but Hades' Daughter should be in the Australian bookshops within 3 weeks! An advance copy has just arrived on my doorstep and it loooks gorgeous. I will put up a new competition soon ... but time just gets away from me ... *sigh*

June 27th 2002: Newly revamped site up and running (I hope!). A couple of weeks doing nothing but altering code, gifs and jps has left me squinting ... See the welcome page on the navbar for more info. To celebrate, there's a new competition up and running (a riddle competition, which are generally the most popular)!

March 27th 2002: "The Wounded Hawk" has just won the Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel 2001! *Much joy and jubilation* Another trophy to add to the Aurealis Award I won for best novel in 1996 (jointly won by Enchanter and Starman). Read the judges' report.

February 3rd 2002: Catchup news ... I've spent the past 3 months desperately writing Hades' Daughter, which is the first book of The Troy Game. This is due for publicaiton in Decenber 2002 in Australia, and in January 2003 in the rest of the English speaking world. Read the unedited, unrevised prologue of Hades' Daughter. The Crippled Angel, book 3 of The Crucible, is due out in Australia in May 2002, and you can read two chapters concerned with the disastrous great tournament at Windsor early in Hal's reign. The Crippled Angel is due out in the UK shortly after its Australian publication ... but all American plans to publish The Crucible have been put on hold while Tor brings out The Troy Game and completes publication of the six-book series The Wayfarer Redemption.

February 5th 2001: A sample chapter from The Wounded Hawk is now available. This is to be released in May.

October 25th 2000: I will be doing a booksigning tour in Canberra and Sydney in mid-November. Here are the places and dates, but it would be a good idea if you checked with the bookshop concerned closer to the date to confirm that I'll be there:

CANBERRA:
- Wednesday 15th November, 12.30 pm: Dymocks Bookstore, Shop 111a Hyperdome, Tuggaranong, ACT,Ph 6293 9055
SYDNEY:
- Thursday 16th November 12.30 pm: Infinitas Bookshop, Shop 5 Horwood place, Parramatta, Ph 9633 5682
- Thursday 16th November 6.30 pm Galaxy Bookshop 131 York Street Sydney, Ph 9267 7222
- Friday 17th November 12.30 pm: Collins, Macquarie Shopping Centre, Ph 9887 1526
- Saturday 18th November 1.30 pm Dymocks City, George Street, Sydney. Ph 9230 9041

August 15th 2000: Haven't put much up here recently, although heaps has been happening. It's best if you check out the Bulletin Board (link named 'Chat' on the navigation bar at the foot of this page) for what is new and lively - I am far more active there than here. More formal announcements will continue to appear on this page.

Nameless Day Appearances: (as of 18th May - I may yet add to this, so check back every so often.)

Wednesday 24th May: Radio Sport FM, presenter Trevor Himstedt (I'm not sure if this is live to air or prerecorded)

Thursday 25th May: Official Launch of The Nameless Day, Univ. Of Adelaide (invitation only, I'm afraid!) SA

Friday 26th May: live Radio interview, ABC Radio 5AN, Phillip Satchell (from about 10 - 11 am) This is yet to be confirmed. SA

Friday 26th May: 12 noon - 1 pm, Booksigning Dymocks Bookshop, 13 Rundle Mall, Adelaide. SA

Saturday 27th May, 12 noon - 1 pm, Booksigning Dymocks Marion, Shop 2029 Westfield Shopping Town SA.

Tuesday 30th May, segment on AM Adelaide, Channel 7, Jan Beasely and Steve Whitham (I think this is the date it will be aired)

Thursday 15th June, 4 pm - 4.45 pm, Booksigning, Borders Bookshop, 500 Chapel Street, South Yarra VIC

Thursday 15th June 6.30 - 7.30 pm, Talk and Booksigning, Readers' Feast, Cnr Bourke and Swanston Streets. VIC

Monday 19th June: Online Chat, Netweek Magazine (link to be put up). EVERYWHERE

May 9th 2000: READER'S FEAST INSTORE EVENT (Melbourne): June 15th at 6.30 pm - talk, questions, booksignings. Midtown Plaza, Cnr Bourke and Swanston Streets, Telephone 03 9662 4699.

April 19th: Online chat will be on Good Friday 21st April at 4 pm AEST , that's 2 pm WST; 7 am London time; 10 pm LA time (the Thursday, I think!); 1 am New York time. The link for this

April 16th: Regarding the online chats. I will be online at Swancon on Good Friday 21st April at 4 pm AEST , that's 2 pm WST; 7 am London time; 10 pm LA time (the Thursday, I think!); 1 am New York time. Now, I was also scheduled for an international chat time (4 am AEST Sunday; 7 pm London Sat; 10 am LA time Saturday, 1 pm New York time Saturday) but because promotion for this has not been going well overseas, it doesn't seem likely that I'll do it - UNLESS at least five people leave me pleading messages on the BB (link just below) before Tuesday.

April 7th: Over Easter I will be taking part in two chat room sessions as part of Swancon - one time will be convenient for Australian fans, one time for international fans. I'll post details as soon as I know them.

I've been deep in The Wounded Hawk for the past weeks, thus no regular updates on this page ... but then not much interesting has happened. Over Easter I'll be doing some online chat room sessions - will put up more details as they come to hand.

February 17th: I have re-designed the front page of this site. No doubt I'll be back to have another go at it in forthcoming weeks as I'm still not entirely happy ...

January 15th 2000: The Nameless Day is in its final stages of editing, and looking good. I should be getting a mockup of the cover within the next week, so as long as it loooks ok I'll put it up. Meanwhile, The Wounded Hawk is progressing nicely and the fish in my rock pool have taken advantage of the good summer conditions to have rampant sex and produce lots of babies which they subsequently eat. It is, I guess, an effective way of providing their own food for little cost and lots of pleasure.

I have just received my first web trends report for this new site, and it contains a number of surprises: there have been some 70,000 hits, which is fantastic, and two thirds of those have been from Australia - which is unsurprising. But the other third have come from the USA, where I am not yet published! Most of these have come from Virginia (what's happening in Virginia?). The most active town in Australia for accessing my site is Bruce. Where's Bruce? The only one I can find in the postcode directory is in the ACT. Hmmm. You'd think that Sydney or Melbourne would be sending the most visitors, but, no ... Bruce is apparently a Douglass haven.

Actually, getting back to Virginia, can anyone tell me where the FBI headquarters are located? (Use the Bulletin Board link above.)

Hannah has been particularly active this past week - her best trick was to shift a pile of teacups and saucers way out of my reach.

January 2 2000: I have updated the Beyond the Hanging Wall page with the new cover by Shaun Tan. This book (including the first chapter of The Nameless Day) will be released in March this year.

For all those who have asked, yes, I built/build and maintain these web pages myself. I use the extraordinary Dreamweaver and Fireworks programmes to create them - expensive, but worth every cent.

December 21st 1999: Glad tidings to all for the holiday season! Just one or two tidbits of news - you can now write direct to me if you wish at PO Box 2461, Bendigo Mail Centre, Bendigo, 3554, AUSTRALIA. I adore hard-copy letters and will be glad to reply. I hope my doctor is reading this because I have picked a post office some three miles from home ... I now get very fit walking back and forth to pick up my mail!

I should also have thanked Cate Paterson who is the senior editor at Pan Macmillan Australia for her part in the Tor deal - if it hadn't been for Cate (who enthused to Tom Doherty about my books and then managed to introduce us), who knows what would (not) have happened. So, thanks Cate!

November 1st 1999. After many years, I finally have some good news to report on the United States of America front. In October James Frenkel and Associates of Madison, Wisconsin, released this press statement: