In the previous post, I discussed Scots’ words. Now to a Scottish character. One of the reviewers of The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle pointed out that a chief character in the novel is “a tragic figure, almost a Lady Macbeth”. You might or might not remember Shakespeare’s tragedy, so here’s a bit of… Read more »
THE CHARMED CHILDREN OF ROOKSKILL CASTLE
Lady Macbeth
Scots Words
Last time: the magic of Scotland. This week – a little bit about Scots words. I didn’t use many Scots dialect words in The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle. Using dialect is tricky. Too much and people get turned off. Too little and the story doesn’t sound authentic. But the Scottish language is so rich… Read more »
Holiday Break
For the next two weeks, I’ll be taking a holiday break, and I hope you will, too. But before I go… If you haven’t pre-ordered The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle, there’s still time to get a signed copy and “charming” gift, if you go here. The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle is garnering raves,… Read more »
Magical Scotland: Magical Creatures
The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle is set in Scotland for a number of reasons. First, the magic “lives” in a chatelaine (you can read more about that in my previous post) that is a European jewelry. Second, it felt right to place the children in a castle, with its dark, spooky corners, large scale,… Read more »
The Chatelaine
In my previous post, I discussed the role that clocks play in The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle. In this post, we’ll talk about jewelry. The original title of the novel was Chatelaine. You may be reacting to that title the way that the Viking Children’s marketing department reacted: What in the world is a chatelaine?… Read more »
“The Secret of the Old Clock”
In the previous post, we reviewed the machines of war that influenced my novel. In this post, something about clocks. In The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle, Kat Bateson is a logical girl who idolizes her father. His hobby is clock-mending, and Kat spends her time with him learning about the inner workings of clocks,… Read more »
The Clandestine Machines of War
In the last post I talked about the United Kingdom during the Blitz. In this post, I’ll talk about other influences on the content of The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle. For example, a short-wave radio plays a major role: When Father brought a short-wave wireless home a couple of weeks before leaving, he’d shown it… Read more »
The Blitz: “Keep Calm And Carry On”
In the previous post on the backstory behind The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle, I introduced the opening of World War 2 in Great Britain. This week, we’ll review the early days of the war. In The Charmed Children, Kat and her brother and sister are shipped out of London, as were many children, in… Read more »
England’s Entry Into World War 2
This is the first in my series on the backstory and other fun stuff about The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle. In The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle, Kat Bateson faces change in the early days of World War 2: The pieces that made up Katherine Bateson’s world were scattered across the landscape and over… Read more »
The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle – Preview
My next novel, The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle (out from Viking 3/15/16), is a middle grade mystery that’s part fantasy, part historical fiction. It’s set in Scotland in 1940, although it also contains a parallel story in a much earlier timeline. I thought it would be fun to run a series of blog posts… Read more »