The Red Well by Whitehills in Aberdeenshire is protected by an unusual building. On the autumn equinox, at sunrise, a beam of light shines through the doorway of this beehive-shaped shelter and illuminates the well within. This happens on the spring equinox too. The well, and the building, are said to date from Roman times.
A Witch’s Hoosie
When I was a small child, I lived with my grandparents in Whitehills for a while. One day, playing with my cousins, I was locked in that building to see if the witch would get me. The place was referred to as the ‘witch’s hoosie’ back then, by children at least. There were scary stories of an old lady witch ghost. I was quite interested to see if she would show up. She didn’t, and I was eventually freed, my lack of fear having disappointed my companions somewhat.
The door is kept locked now.
Since then, I’ve always viewed the well as rather a magical place, and keenly look out for the quick glimpse of it in the landscape that you get when driving along the main Banff to Portsoy road.
Thistles by the well
It’s in a particularly beautiful spot, the Red Well. The town of Banff can just be seen in the distance below.
It was seven years in the making, this book. Both the novel and I went through a lot as the story developed: severe editing, hospitalisations, deleting, pain, rewriting, crying and being monstrous.
It’s on Kindle Unlimited too so can be read for free (there’s a 30 day free trial).
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Well, WordPress prompt, when I was fifteen, I took over my ballet teacher’s school for a few months before going to college.
Despite being far too young for such a responsibility, I loved it, and it paid for all the dancewear and equipment I needed for my studies.
In my second year of dance school, I got a job in a shop in Covent Garden. It was a very nice shop. I had more money. No more choosing between food and decent pointe shoes.
But here is where things go a bit darker than the WordPress prompt probably intended. I knew really, that working both Saturday and Sunday, after a hard week of dance training, was a bit foolhardy. My sensible friend, Suzette, who would have counselled against this, had returned to Mauritius. More about Suzette and dance training here
So, I became exhausted. There was dance injury after dance injury. I developed a chest infection that lasted five months.
The shop sacked me for being ill. This left me even more vulnerable than I had already been, at seventeen, alone in London.
There was a violent predator.
There was an incident from which I was lucky to escape with my life.
Fast forward to the present, skipping several other jobs…
And my writing is influenced by my past. This is most evident in my contemporary work. There is a dark event in TENDU, the first book of A Dancer’s Journey, that I knew how to write because of my own experience. Not that it’s exactly the same, of course. In fact, it’s quite different. Fiction has to be more dramatic than reality, and more interesting. Far more interesting…
And have an infinitely more exciting setting…
These books have dark moments, but they are actually quite fun, overall, I think. And naughty. Like life, if you’re lucky!
There’s also this strange little post about what the characters of A Dancer’s Journey get up to when I’m away from the keyboard.
Historical Fiction
Set in 1st century Scotland, and featuring the cliffs and caves of Cullykhan Bay, SISTERS AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD includes the battle of Mons Graupius between the Romans and the Caledonian tribes. The book features a neurodivergent main character and some rather complicated romance…
Taking place mainly in a fictional castle, THE MERMAID AND THE BEAR blends an often overlooked period of history, the Scottish witchcraft accusations, in particular the 1597 Aberdeen witchcraft panic, with a love story.
FIREFLIES AND CHOCOLATE was inspired by the kidnapped children and young people of Aberdeen. The story follows the adventures of Elizabeth Manteith from the castle and her determined efforts to get back home. There’s love. There’s derring-dos on the high seas… And there’s chocolate!
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Near the village of Pennan in Aberdeenshire, Cullykhan is a place that has long been appreciated by people, so it has a rich history. To the left of the sandy and sheltered beach lies an impressive promontory.
It’s been home to an Iron Age fort, now vitrified, and a medieval castle. Excavations have uncovered Neolithic and Roman finds (read more about these on the Canmore site).
From the promontory, you can see the Deil’s Lum (meaning devil’s chimney). This cave shoots sea spray with a roar during stormy weather.
It’s a place – promontory, bay and caves – that I write about quite a lot.
In THE MERMAID AND THE BEAR, Isobell, Jasper and Ian have to cross the inside of the Deil’s Lum before following a tunnel to the castle. The tunnel is fictional, and so is my description of the interior of the cave, or rather it’s stolen from just around the corner.
As is my way, in the name of research, I have explored every tunnel and cave that is remotely accessible by land at Cullykhan.
This one leads to a dark and seagull-filled space… and it’s this space that I made the characters traverse, after slipping and sliding across it myself, of course.
Isobell, at least, did not enjoy the experience:
The truth was that caves and tunnels were more fun when told of beside a fireside, in dry clothes with a full belly. The reality of them – the cold, the wet, the dripping and the echoing, and the smell of decay – was only startling. The roof looked as if a huge ogre had wielded a knife inside the cliffs, cutting and carving to his heart’s content, but the idea contained no mirth, nor even any interest. And what lay ahead in this new life of ours?
Excerpt from THE MERMAID AND THE BEAR
Climbing to the Cave
Staring at the entrance of the Deil’s Lum from across the divide wasn’t enough for me so, one day, I slid down the hill and climbed up into it. This is foolhardy behaviour, and not recommended, but I made a short video so you can see the cave without risking your own life and limb.
Writing Cullykhan
Cullykhan features heavily in the Iron Age story of SISTERS AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD. I loved writing about this beautiful place, capturing the essence of it in words. I took its great magnificence, and its beauty, and swirled them around, adding terrible, strange and unexpected events into the mix.
Set in 1st century Scotland, and featuring the cliffs and caves of Cullykhan Bay, SISTERS AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD includes the battle of Mons Graupius between the Romans and the Caledonian tribes. The book features a neurodivergent main character and some rather complicated romance…
Taking place mainly in a fictional castle, THE MERMAID AND THE BEAR blends an often overlooked period of history, the Scottish witchcraft accusations, in particular the 1597 Aberdeen witchcraft panic, with a love story.
FIREFLIES AND CHOCOLATE was inspired by the kidnapped children and young people of Aberdeen. The story follows the adventures of Elizabeth Manteith from the castle and her determined efforts to get back home. There’s love. There’s derring-dos on the high seas… And there’s chocolate!
Go here to sign up for my occasional emails that always include some exclusive photos and news of my writing and life. If you would rather just hear about new books and offers, you can follow my Amazon author page.
That’s what my son said of my little video attempt below. “Wow, that’s some depressing time travel.”
Romantic Time Travel
I do like those sad stories, though. Not that they’re sad, beginning to end, these books. There’s romance in them all, happy romance, sometimes a little bit naughty too. And one of them has chocolate… No actual time travel, though. None at all.
You can be depressed by them all here in the UK, or for worldwide depression, go here.
Writing with no time travel
I’ve been writing, writing, writing, living in the intense and sexy atmosphere of A Dancer’s Journey. I love it. I don’t want to leave it. It’s fun and romantic, if a little devastating and dramatic in places. But leave it, I will, later this year, when all three books finally get released.
There’s also this strange little post about what the characters get up to when I’m away from the keyboard.
Pink Things
I’ve been enjoying the pink phase of the garden…
Pink bench and cherry blossom
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That’s the Sea Gate at Eilean Donan Castle, in the Highlands of Scotland, above. It’s two things at once. In the present day, it’s beautiful. But it’s said that people used to be thrown out of it, in acts of punishment or coercion. So, it’s terrible too. Sad, even.
And it’s the same with writing stories. Yes, they can be sad, and dark, and terrible. But they’re not only that. Or they don’t have to be. As with many things, in writing or life, it’s all about how it’s done.
Another view from Eilean Donan Castle
Writing Sad Stories
It was a recent review of FIREFLIES AND CHOCOLATE that got me thinking about this. Here’s the pertinent part of what the reviewer said:
I was somewhat hesitant to read this novel as I thought it would be too sad, but was glad to have chosen to read it as Sinclair did not disappoint with the telling of an exceptionally satisfying tale.
I felt the exact same hesitancy about writing the book. It was while researching local history for THE MERMAID AND THE BEAR that I stumbled across the information that 600 children and young people had been kidnapped from Aberdeen during the 1740s. They’d then been transported to the American colonies where they were sold into indentured servitude. It was terrible. It was sad. And, almost totally, overlooked. It wasn’t history that got talked about much. In fact, most people knew nothing about it. So, it was precisely the sort of story, sad or otherwise, that I liked to tell.
A photo taken somewhere between Glen Shiel and Eilean Donan Castle
Making Historical Characters Relatable
I wanted to bring those people from the past to life, to make them human and relatable. But, wouldn’t it be too depressing to open the door to those particular historical events?
The castle door…
The answer is: no. I don’t think so, anyway. I found the book great fun to write. In fact, I think it’s the least dark of my novels. The main character, Elizabeth, is so determined, and so easily enraged. She kicks sadness to the side. Mostly. She does have some despairing moments. I wrote about one of those times in response to a question on the Wee Writing Lassie Blog (see the whole interview here):
A young girl was found dead in First Mate Alexander Young’s bunk during the voyage from Aberdeen to America. History has not recorded her name so I called her Maggie, and her death has a deep impact on Elizabeth in several ways. It causes her terrible grief, informs her opinions of what ‘fine gentlemen’ can actually be, and provides a specific awareness of how much danger she and other women and girls are in at times.
The publisher had this to say about Elizabeth, or Beth as she becomes, in their press release:
Fiery and forthright, Elizabeth isn’t someone to be argued with. She knows her own mind, and isn’t afraid to speak it. Through her experiences, the reader sees her grow from a girl, into a woman with a powerful voice… a woman of her time, but very much of ours too.
FIREFLIES AND CHOCOLATE was inspired by the kidnapped children and young people of Aberdeen. The story follows the adventures of Elizabeth Manteith from the castle and her determined efforts to get back home. There’s love. There’s derring-dos on the high seas… And there’s chocolate!
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Crying while writing. Crying while editing. And even crying while thinking about writing, as the scenes, both happy and sad, play out in my mind. It’s no wonder I’m sometimes dehydrated!
So, am I the only one?
Tell me I’m not.
I can’t be.
Emotive writing is, just that. Springing from emotion. Causing of emotions. If the writer isn’t fully immersed, how can the reader ever be?
Rhododendron flowers on the pink bench
Marketing
But then, I read other things, sensible things really. Like, when we market our books, they should be regarded as ‘products’ and we should not be emotionally attached to them. This is meant to work well. It makes better ‘business’ sense. And we should write to a ‘market’ and design covers to a genre stereotype. The first one I can maybe manage, at least while marketing, but certainly not while writing. The rest, no. It all flows fast and organically out of me and I have no choice but to go where my heart takes me.
Ox Eye Daisy
So. I sob on. The latest line, from SISTERS, to set me off was: In the midst of great loss, the newness of a baby helps.
Floods.
Breathlessness.
I’m welling up just looking at the line now, overcome by all that it references.
Editing
This emotional aspect of writing is one of the many reasons good, thorough, even brutal, editing is so important. We, or at least I, need someone less attached, someone who did not write the words and scenes, to look at the work objectively and say: this could be better, this is not clear, were you under the influence of one of your stronger prescription drugs when you wrote this? Because in our, or my, invested blubbering state, we might not see it. We might not know.
The book is on its way back for edit three soon (GWL did spoil me with their three editing process, and I won’t do less now), so all is well there.
It is possible that illness is making me worse, crying-wise. I feel a bit pathetic and vulnerable. But that will pass. I will get stronger again. And you’ll get nice sensible and scenic posts about castles and standing stones 🙂
But for now, I recover – from both medical conditions and writing – in the garden. Among the flowers. With a candle.
On a happier note, one that doesn’t make me cry anyway: I’m doing a signed book giveaway over on Instagram. See it here. It runs all week (June 19th- 26th 2022) with one of each book up for grabs and it’s a worldwide competition.
It’s getting brighter. I feel it already. Or maybe I only think I can. For how much lighter can it really be, so few days after the Solstice?
It’s quiet too, in this between time, during this lull of activity in the world.
I notice things that I wouldn’t normally notice. Below is the part of SISTERS AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD that has been most highlighted by kindle readers.
We are all that big. And we all change the world every day as we go about making choices, taking action, sitting still and most of all: by adding more love into the places around us.
That’s what I want in 2023. More love in the world. More happiness. More peace.
A little lull has been reached at the end of a hectic week. The colours of the loch are gentle, muted now at the darkest point of the year. I’ve seen a few blog posts about Christmas reading, such as this one here from Jacqueline Seewald. People are sharing the books they’re reading, and those that they’ve written, and I thought I’d join in.
So, share away! What books are you reading over the next couple of weeks? And/or, which books of yours should we consider delving into just now?
I’m reading Where There’s Doubt (romantic suspense/psychological thriller) by Terry Tyler and The Essex Serpent (historical fiction) by Sarah Perry. They’re both very good. My own books are down at the end of this post.
Feel free to add to the previous sharing posts too. They will be brought to the front of the blog perennially, so won’t vanish into the abyss. Share Your Books and Writing, and also Share First Lines.
Christmas Reading
My historical novels all involve little-known dark historical events, romance and a little magic…
SISTERS AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD opens on a snowy winter solstice in 1st century Scotland. The main character is neurodivergent, and has been non-verbal until that first scene of the book.
If you like castles, Scotland, history, witches, stone circles and Christmas done medieval-style, you might like THE MERMAID AND THE BEAR. There’s also a love story.
FIREFLIES AND CHOCOLATE was inspired by the kidnapped children of 18th century Aberdeen, and features Christmas in Colonial Pennsylvania.
They’re all available in paperback, kindle and on kindle unlimited.
Go here to sign up for occasional emails that always include exclusive photos and news of my writing and life. They’re a more intimate space than the blog.
There’s brooding skies over the loch now. You can see the wee island that the landowner is building for wildlife. But the snow has turned to sleet, so things are about to get less pretty. Will these little daily blogs continue? I don’t know. Perhaps. Other scenic things may happen.
It’s Mermaid Time!
Everyone knows about the Salem witch trials that took place in seventeenth century America, but less well known are the instances of witch hunting that occurred across Scotland.
Ailish Sinclair painstakingly researched this fascinating and terrible subject for more than a year, before blending it with a love story in her debut novel, THE MERMAID AND THE BEAR. Featuring three real women who were accused as part of the Aberdeen witchcraft panic of 1597, the book is set against the beautiful backdrop of the Aberdeenshire countryside and tells the story of Isobell, and her desperation to escape London and an arranged marriage, to find a better life.
Upon landing in Scotland, Isobell’s dreams of faery castles, ancient woodlands and misty lochs seem to be coming true, as she finds herself kitchen maid to a handsome Laird, who offers not only safety but also the hope for a brighter future, filled with love and kindness. All is not how it seems, however, and enemies, both from the past and the present, conspire to test Isobell to the limits of endurance, and beyond.
We have reached the snowy loch milestone of winter, with snow sitting atop a layer of ice over the water. Today is windy, and there may be more snow, but it’s a balmy 1 degree. Will the loch be even snowier tomorrow? I suspect so.
I still just want to sit and write. And today I shall.
Book of the Day: Fireflies and Chocolate
Ailish Sinclair has turned her attention from the terrible subject of witch hunting in sixteenth century Aberdeen, to the equally disturbing events that surrounded child kidnapping and the slave trade in the mid 1700s.
Using the experiences of real characters, she tells the story of Elizabeth Manteith, captured on the docks of Aberdeen and transported on a slave ship to the Colonies, where a fearful and uncertain future awaits.
Friendships forged on the journey are soon shattered, leaving Elizabeth alone and desolate. However, she retains her passionate desire to find the young man who befriended her on board the ship… and to get back home to her beloved Scotland.
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