I wanted to be Georgette Heyer when I grew up – but failed Higher Latin because I was reading her books instead of Caesar’s The Gallic Wars. I had written a Scottish-set Regency as part of my Master’s degree at university in California and was thrilled when an agent, to whom I was introduced shortly after returning to Scotland, sold the book to an American publisher. The publisher did not ask for another and the agent said: ‘Write a saga, write about what you know.’
I thought about what I knew, and made a list: teaching, music, dance, motherhood, travel and love.
I thought of how important education is important to me. I have been both student and teacher on both sides of the Atlantic, I want a good education for everyone. I remembered Friday afternoons when we wrote compositions, which I loved, and the days when the teacher read to us, a few pages of a classic novel that I then checked out of the local library.
Once, I remember when we were waiting for exam results. The teacher separated the girls and the boys and told each group what the future might hold. Later the boys told us about marvellous possibilities, airline pilots, astronauts, engineers, lawyers, surgeons . . . the exciting list went on. Breathless with anticipation, the girls heard: ‘Well, you can always be nurses or teachers.’ Poor patients if I were the nurse! I became a teacher and I loved it.
I thought of my life, spending a great deal of time in Edinburgh with the U.S. Airforce, and in California with the U.S. marines. I thought of the evening when my soldier father returned from the war and I remembered being terrified when this tall strong stranger threw me up into the air. Before his twenty-first birthday, our older son took after his grandfather to became an army officer and went immediately on active service for some years. The anxieties my characters feel about their loved ones going into battle is something I know all too well.
The landscape of my childhood is huge source of inspiration for me. I grew up in the village of Dumfriesshire, a coal-mining area, there were still acres of fine farmlands and woods where thousands of primroses rioted every spring, and there were streams running into the mighty River Nith that were deep enough for us to swim in and shallow enough so that parents did not worry.
I then turned my attention to Angus, where I live. I reside in a house that is in the midst of beautiful farmland, looking across fields to the sea. Not our fields but belonging to farmers who made us welcome from the start, even though we had very large dogs and gave our sons Jacob sheep and hens as pets. Our hens laid eggs everywhere and the ones I couldn’t find always hatched and became chickens that scratched up our neighbour’s seeds. The Jacobs could jump everything but the paddock wall and often we had phone calls from patient neighbours who never berated us when they found one or two really lovely sheep eating their flowers.
Our sons are now grown and their children love to visit us – we no longer have sheep or hens and the children are content to note the miracles of the changing seasons, ‘from Granny’s window.’
Teaching, music, dance, motherhood, travel and love – they’re pretty good things to write about, I reckon.