On beginnings...

New and Old stories

I’m having a lot of fun with this new story I’m writing, Torin and the Princess, meeting new characters, new dilemmas, new dramas, and new loves. I am also brushing off and translating, my very first book, Bright (I published it in 2013!) And all this activity got me thinking about the days when Kaitlyn and the Highlander was new.

I’ve told this story before, but am feeling nostalgic. This is how the story of Magnus and Kaitlyn began…

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I was in Fernandina Beach in 2017 sharing my book Bright with High School students as part of the Amelia Island Book Festival and I was on the beach, searching for shark teeth, sifting the sand through my fingers,

when it came to me:

I wanted to bring a Scottish Highlander forward in time and write a contemporary love story with a dash of sci-fi and I wanted this to happen in Amelia Island and for it to seem really really real.

I chose for the Hero to be Scottish because I had for a long time been obsessed with Scottish history especially Mary Queen of Scots. In the early 90s I had traveled to Scotland for a couple of weeks by myself exploring her life. I returned to Scotland on my honeymoon and took my husband (the grandson of a Campbell) back around all those sites.

I dreamed of one day writing a screenplay about Mary Queen of Scots, odd then, I know, that she has not appeared in any of the Kaitlyn and the Highlander stories, only her mother, Marie de Guise has spent some time in those pages. One of my personal favorite moments to write was when Kaitlyn and Marie de Guise sat near the fountain at Linlithgow Palace and commiserated with each other about missing their daughters. Linlithgow was a place I have visited, I was there at one time, too. This photo is from 1994.

(I should mention, I did write a book that features Mary Queen of Scots — my YA contemporary story called Sid and Teddy. Sid is obsessed with Mary and wants to write a screenplay about her, chapters about Mary’s life are interspersed through the book.)

I decided to read Outlander (Book 1) to get a 'feel' for the genre and loved the odd couple aspect of it and the true enduring love despite Jamie and Claire being very very different people, but I wanted my warrior to be the one out of time, to be vulnerable and needing Kaitlyn’s protection and care. When I first started writing the story, Magnus was going to be from the 1500s but whooo nelly it was difficult to imagine a sixteenth century man as open, as 'enlightened'. So I moved his birth year around a bit — he couldn’t be ‘of age’ during the Massacre of Glencoe, and I wanted him to time travel long before the Battle of Culloden, so I settled him at the dawn of the 18th C — a time of flux, knowledge, and exploration, a great time to be a man thrown into a New World.

I put my pen to the page and the next thing I knew Magnus was setting his leather-clad foot on the sand of Amelia Island and soon after that, I met all of you.

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Thank you for reading his story and following him here.

Curious about some of the stories I mentioned here? Hadn’t heard about my Young Adult books, perhaps, or didn’t know about the new story, Torin and the Princess? Here’s some of the links.

Now that I’m looking at Sid and Teddy’s cover I’m thinking about how much the idea of it (Scottish history, Contemporary Romance, beach culture) led to the idea of Kaitlyn and the Highlander eventually… who would have guessed?

Hope you enjoyed this little glimpse at the beginning spark.
xox,
Diana