Paying homage

Any blog where I write about inspiration would be sadly lacking without mention of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series. In my previous post, I said that I was inspired to write Between after reading Twilight. I'd watched an interview with Stephenie Meyer where she'd said she had a dream about the meadow scene, and just started writing. She was a nobody (like me), so I figured I could give it a try.

So I wrote a scene, not the beginning but the lynchpin, critical scene. It wasn't good. I let it sit for a couple of months while I kept reading.

So I picked up Outlander at a friend's suggestion and to this day, it is my favorite book. Originally, I'd planned to make the hero of my book from England because I like accents. It didn't occur to me at the time that English accents are hard to convey on paper. It wasn't until after I had finished (yes, finished!) the whole Outlander series that I went back to writing. By then, I wanted my hero to be a Scottish Highlander. I couldn't get enough of Jamie Fraser so I had to make my own Highlander: Aiden MacRae.

I was surfing the net, looking for information about cairns and such when I followed a random path of links to Eilean Donan Castle's website. It was exactly what I was looking for by way of backstory for Aiden, and he was born. Just like that. And he has brought me great joy ever since. By the time I got around to rewriting the critical scene of Between, I didn't use anything I'd written the first go around!

So I'd like to say thanks, Diana! Maybe someday, I will be able to send you a signed copy of Between. I told you once that Jamie's name will be in my acknowledgments section, and I still intend to do that. And even though their paths would never cross (Aiden died before Jamie was born), I think they would have gotten along swimmingly.