Dr Gillian Polack is an Australian writer, editor, historian and teacher, with doctorates in both history and creative writing. Several of her books have been short-listed for awards. She is a member of Book View Café and also blogs for the History Girls and for Medievalists.net. In her copious spare time she practises sarcasm, cooking, reading and narrative analysis. From her very first novel readers told her that her fiction reflected her life, when it really didn’t. To make up for this, she generally includes at least one real episode in each of her novels. Her least-favourite real life episode in her fiction is when 78 people were playing Trivia in a burning building… and she was in charge.