Felicity Pulman grew up in a small bush town in Africa. Books became her windows to the world: they told her about dragons and fairies and magic. They told her about other countries and other cultures. They told her about herself.

In Africa, when Felicity out of books to read, she wrote her own. After doing a BA (Communications) degree with a major in creative writing, Felicity found herself experimenting with all sorts of genres and, in particular, writing the sorts of stories that she loved to read -- crime and timeslip fantasy back into the past.

She then went on to do an MA in Children's Literature at Macquarie University, during which time two novels for children were published: Three's a Crowd (written under the pseudonym Anne Holmes) published by Pan Macmillan, and Ghost Boy, now published by Random House Australia. Wally the Water Dragon (Blake Education) and Surfing the Future (Wendy Pye NZ) came next.

Then came the Shalott trilogy (published by Random House Australia). In these three novels, five teenagers zap back in time to the court of King Arthur with the intention of rewriting the legend in order to save Camelot and also save the life of 'The Lady of Shalott'. Everything goes wrong and, instead, they find they're actually creating part of the legend while also rewriting their lives and their future. Read the poem 'The Lady of Shalott' by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

After the Shalott trilogy, Felicity cast about for another fascinating piece of Australian history to write about (as she had for Ghost Boy) but found that her heart was still in medieval England. And so The Janna Mysteries were born, combining her love of crime and medieval time in an exciting romance set in the 1140's: a time of civil war and great danger in England's history.

One thing Felicity really enjoy about writing is researching the places where her books are set. She spent a lot of time at the Quarantine Station in Sydney when writing Ghost Boy, which has a flashback to the grim and grisly conditions there during a smallpox outbreak in 1881.

To research the Shalott trilogy, she followed 'the Arthurian trail' in the UK, looking at many of the sites associated with King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table.