Somewhere My Lass, was an
intriguing tale to weave and quite an adventure. It's also one I had no
intention of undertaking until the vivid dream that led to the
startling intro: the hero, Neil MacKenzie, returns home from work to
find his elderly housekeeper lying murdered at the bottom of the winding
staircase and a young woman in full Scottish dress slumped at the top.
She, however, isn’t dead.
That’s all I had to go on at the start
of this venture, but was so intrigued I had to learn their story and
pondered all the clues given. An old Victorian house, check, I’m very
familiar with those; man wearing modern suit, so the story opens in
present day, got it, but the young woman came from the past. Scotland’s
past. This will take some doing, I concluded. Being a member of Celtic
Hearts Romance Writers, a fabulous online group, was/is a great
resource. I’d taken a Scottish history class and reread that trove of
material while doing my usual obsessive research. I love gleaning more
about the past and used an actual feud in 1602 between the MacKenzies
and MacDonalds as a jumping off place.
Both
Neil and the heroine, Mora Campbell, were so clear in my mind and a lot
of fun to work with—definitely rank among my
cast of favorites. The romance between them is one of the best I’ve
written. The chemistry just took off.
Regarding the setting for Somewhere My Lass, until
this book all my stories took place in America, past and present. This
departure to Scotland was a challenge, but I drew deeply on my
English Scots-Irish roots, which I’ve been doing all along. Apart from
the prominent Native American characters in some of my work, the others
are of English/Scots-Irish backgrounds, with a smidgen of French. My
ancestors, too, have a smidgen of French in the meld, a Norman knight
who fought with William the Conqueror, and some French Huguenots.
One
unique aspect of the story, is that rather than beginning with the hero
or heroine going back in time, I brought her forward (as was the case
in the dream) before sending them back together. I also included kewl
sci-fi features, new for me. I’ve learned a great deal from my journey
into Bonnie Old Scotland. I fell in love with the characters, new ones
nudge at my mind. The
colorful secondary character, Neil’s quirky friend Angus Fergus, has a lot of
fans, and his own story now, Somewhere in the Highlands.
In writing Somewhere My Lass, I was influenced by my beloved Author C S Lewis and his Chronicles of Narnia that
I grew up reading. I’m still looking for Narnia. Isn’t everyone? My
love of old castles and the Scottish Highlands also lent
inspiration.Many of the early Scots-Irish settlers in the Shenandoah Valley,
my ancestors among them, chose to live here because of the resemblance
the valley and mountains bore to Scotland and Ireland. As near to home
as they were likely to find in the New World.
The concept behind my Somewhere in Time series, of which Somewhere My Lass is
Book Two (though written to stand alone) is that the story opens in
present day, so far my home state of Virginia, and then transports the
reader Somewhere else. Either back to an earlier time in the same house, as in Somewhere My Love and Somewhere The Bells Ring, or another place altogether, as in Somewhere My Lass. The
wonderful old homes I grew up in and visited over the years are an
integral part of the inspiration behind this series. In Somewhere My Lass, I used a compilation of Victorian homes for the mysterious house in historic Staunton, Virginia where
the story begins.
How do they go back and forth in time, you may ask.
Why through ‘the door to nowhere,’ of course, a portal to the past. I
was acquainted with just such a door as a child. However that was
typically Victorian, not the ancient door pictured, a royalty free
image, I hasten to add. No, this Medieval door is where one enters on
the other side of the portal.
***Somewhere My Lass is on sale in kindle for the lofty price of .99.
