Good news: I went to Scotland to research my book back in 2022! Bad news: I caught Covid! I had a very mild case and tested negative quickly, so I was able to still see a lot. It also helped that the tour guide, Anne Daly with Mary Meanders had recently overcome it a month before. Ah, the joy of travel during a pandemic…
Why I Researched Scotland for My Witch Historical Fiction Series
Set in 1740, my novel To Rescue a Witch is an adventure book that shifts between Scotland, London and Virginia colony. Last year I spent a week researching in Williamsburg, Virginia, focusing on my ten-year-old heroine, Annaliese. My adult protagonist who rescues her, William MacLeod, is from the Scottish highlands and there is an entire subplot with his family. I’ve never been to Scotland and I didn’t want to just guess at the descriptions. Also, a field trip is way more fun than watching YouTube videos.
Anne was really a great tour guide. I was able to talk with a weapons expert about targes and dirks, and ask a thousand and one questions at the castles and manors we visited. She also recommended books and podcasts to learn more about ‘witches’ and the Battle of Culloden.
While in Scotland I made sure to eat a traditional Scottish breakfast, which includes blood pudding and haggis. Or at least, that’s what the restaurant told me. It tasted surprisingly good with a bit of a bite.
A lot of the places I visited overlapped with locations used on the Outlander TV show, since it takes place in the same time period. I’ll admit it. My daughter and I turned total fangirl for much of the trip. The picture below is Blackness Castle (Fort William in the show) where Jamie Fraser gets flogged by Black Jack Randall. Here’s a blog post with all the photos: Ode to Outlander. I posted a ton of pictures on Instagram account @lisa__traugott. If you are interested in writing, reading novels or all things 18th century, please like, follow and share 🙂
Castle ruins overlooking the sea play an important part in the plot, so I visited serval and took pictures and videos from as many different angles as I could think. The little details (tripping on uneven stones, weeds growing along a window, a raven flying where a roof would have once been) will help to make the narration more interesting. My writer-brain went into overdrive thinking of all the possibilities.
Since a third of the book takes place on a ship, we went to a museum that had an old ship we could walk through. The ship was a 19th century one, but it still gave a sense of walking on a shifting surface, seeing the height of a mast and what a captain wrote in his log book. Also, my son, Henry, had a good time at the steering wheel.
Ask me how happy my husband was to see me adding piles and piles of books to our backpacks. He wasn’t happy. Books are heavy, but necessary for research. In fairness, he probably wouldn’t have minded if we had suitcases instead of backpacks, but we heard horror stories of lost luggage stuck in airports for weeks, so we decided to only do carryon bags.
“Writers write,” said the published author. I was at the Pflugerville library’s special Valentine’s Day event – a panel of romance novelists talking about their books and how they got published. At the time I had two partially written manuscripts stuck in the middle and an intense fear of the internet. The writer suggested that…
Novel Update #2 It’s been called lots of different things. “Sagging Middle Problem.” “Marathon of the Middle.” “The Middle of the Book Sucks Syndrome.” I’m there, people. For non-writers: When you are writing a book usually the opening is really strong, the climax is the stuff Netflix dreams are made of, but that big section…
Hey readers! It’s been a pretty eventfully month on my novel writing journey. Remember how I told you I submitted my manuscript to The History Quill‘s beta reader program? (A beta reader is someone who reads your book before it’s published and gives you feedback so you know if you are on the right track…
April has been a particularly bumpy month. My daughter came down with Covid (along with five other kids in her theater group) and I managed to tear my calf muscle a week ago, so I’m limping, taking glorified Advil from the doctor, and start physical therapy next week. Good times. Beyond that, there are some…
Hi everyone, May should be about Mother’s Day and the unofficial start of summer. Instead, I’ve blogged about the Uvalde school shooting and after the leaked draft opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade I wrote about Abortion and Birth Control in the 18th century. I hope our country can get its act together. Beyond awful…
Writing the first word of your book can feel like embarking on an exciting journey. Not everyone finishes. Personally, it took me two attempts at novels abandoned half-way through before I was able to actually complete a full manuscript. This blog posts offers some tips to finish writing your book. Publishing your book, is a…
Glad to hear that you recovered quickly! I got hit by COVID… twice! Glad that’s over too. Anyway, it’s so cool that you do real-life research for your books. Loved the pics. Thanks for sharing!
Glad to hear that you recovered quickly! I got hit by COVID… twice! Glad that’s over too. Anyway, it’s so cool that you do real-life research for your books. Loved the pics. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks and glad you recovered too!