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Tag Archives: Scotland

A little about setting

27 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by Paula Beavan in Uncategorized

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Author, cathryn hein, diana gabaldon, Felicity Pulman, Hunter Valley, Jilly Cooper, Juliet Marillier, Kate Forsyth, Margo Lanagan, Norah Roberts, places, Scotland, Settings, Stephen King, writers

Hello again reader, sorry it’s been so long. All I can say is life seems to have taken some interesting twists and turns and I’m just now beginning to catch up.

My days have been jam packed and writing is only one part of the routine. But I am pleased to be able to say it still has top billing. I’ve actually been blessed with more time to call my own, but somehow, it’s also been sucked down a vortex of having to share my house again.

One of the things I’ve been contemplating is my story setting. With any novel, there needs to be research done. Even when you know your subject, there are points and information that will need checking.

2014-09-21 09.46.45

Sinclair Girnigoe Castle, Caithness, Scotland UK

Sinclair Girnigoe Castle, Caithness, Scotland UK The setting for my YA timeslip.

I began writing a YA time slip story about ten years ago, I got about half way through and got lost. I found I couldn’t write it when I had never been to Scotland. In an effort to not simply stop writing, I decided to write an Australian Historical. Maybe a short story. Just to keep my writing happening.

I found a suitable competition for a story of about 3,000 words and thought it sounded perfect. 100,000 words later I had my first ever finished first draft. It was wobbly, had no structure and way too many adverbs and adjectives, but I finished.

Fast forward seven years and several million words, well maybe a bit less, but you get the idea, and I’ve dragged out the old manuscript and have started again.

cropped-dsc00255hunter-river-luskintyre.jpg

Hunter River, setting for my historical fiction

 

The setting for this is the early settlement of the Hunter Valley and it’s been so much fun to research where we live. There is so much I didn’t know about the river and the people. Every time I come across a familiar name in historic accounts or articles I want to add yet another character to my too long list.

The setting in my stories are pretty much a character in their own right. From the wild northern coast of Scotland, to the brown ribbon of the Hunter River, I love to weave in a sense of place for my characters to move about in. I also love to read stories that ground me in the setting. I want to feel as if I am standing in the characters shoes and looking out through their eyes; smelling, feeling, experiencing everything they do.

Some of my favourite authors are really good at this and I find reading their stories inspiring. My top 5 favourite Australian writers are Kate Forsyth, Juliet Marillier, Cathryn Hein, Margo Lanagan and Felicity Pulman. But I can’t fail to mention Diana Gabaldon, Jilly Cooper, Stephen King and Nora Roberts.  I love lots of different writers for different reasons, and we’d be here all day if I listed them all. Now reader, how about you? Who are your favourite authors and why? I’d love to hear from you, so don’t be shy.

Life in a pictish broch

19 Friday Dec 2014

Posted by Paula Beavan in Uncategorized

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Artisans, Brochs, builders, Caithness, dry stone, Farmers, Hunters, Picts, Prehistoric, Prehistory, Scotland, Warriors

Reader, I love the brochs, and though I find them fascinating and enigmatic, they were the homes of real people. As you can imagine a lot of reading has been happening around here. I’ve been learning about the daily life of the people who lived in these structures.

Diagrams like this are found at almost every broch we visited.

Diagrams like this are found at almost every broch we visited.

We know the brochs had one or more floors that were built in timber on the shelf like scarcements and accessed via the steps built between the double skinned walls.

Some were built on the coast and had other stone buildings constructed close around the base with palisades and ditches built to further protect the inhabitants.

Animals could have been brought into the ground floor for safety and or warmth in times of war or bad weather. The upper floors would have been for living and storage. These iron age castles were well able to withstand whatever the neighbouring clans or tribes might throw at them, not to mention the harsh winds and wild storms blowing in from the North Sea. Well it’s the North Sea in my stories.

With little wood to be found in the immediate area, the waft of peat smoke billowing through the cone shaped timber and thatched roof would have been commonplace. Smoke from peat fires isn’t something we come across here in Australia, so I felt incredibly blessed when a friend offered to light their peat fire for me when we visited Caithness. I even bought some Peatscense to burn and help me remember now I’m home again. Peat is a commodity that takes plenty of muscle to harvest (dig), but peat bogs are readily available in the flow country of Caithness and Sutherland in the far north of Scotland.

Which brings us to what the Picts would have eaten. They were farmers, graziers, fishermen and hunters, so I think they would have eaten very well indeed. There have been huge middens investigated, near Newburgh in Aberdeenshire, and it seems they Picts were quite partial to shell fish if the mounds of shells are anything to go on.

Perhaps a hunting scene

Perhaps a hunting scene

They were weavers and artists in stone and beautiful silver jewellery and much has been found to show their skills and abilities. Both the jewellery and carved stones give us the understanding, to a degree of the lives they lived.

Silver work of the Picts

Silver work of the Picts

Pictish brooch

Let’s not forget the Picts were fierce warriors who had the Romans running for the hills and made them build Hadrian’s Wall to keep them safely contained in the wilds of Scotland.

Carving of warriors

Carving of warriors

I have enjoyed learning about the indigenous people of Scotland, though no one is exactly positive that the Picts were the first peoples of Scotland. I have my own theories on this, and if you want to know what they are, you’ll have to read the books. When I’ve written them.

Thanks for popping in, I hope you’ve enjoyed sharing my research and travels as I’ve been preparing and writing my story set among these wonderful and mysterious people.

Who were the Picts?

05 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by Paula Beavan in Uncategorized

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Artisans, Book of the Kells, dark ages, early history, Highland, monasteries, Picti, Picts, Scotland, Vikings

Reader, my writing and research leads me on a merry, if sometimes confusing, trail.

Picts

Much of my reading lately has been centred on the Picts and where and how they lived. Not bad considering the Picts must be the most enigmatic people that I’ve ever heard of.

The Romans called them the “Picti” as in painted ones. Does this mean they loved to paint themselves or portraits? This is the question, and no one can really be sure.

stone image

An anonymous Norwegian said they were little people. “The Picts were little more than pygmies in stature. They worked marvels in the morning and evening building towns, but at midday they entirely lost their strength and lurked through fear in little underground houses.” Really?

The big bad Vikings were afraid of them, and “dared not land because of beings like elves or trolls bearing shining spears”.

Reader I think the Picts were just people, doing their thing, carving rocks and making jewellery. Lets face it, they must have lived a reasonably stable existence to have such well developed artistic skills.

If they were constantly waring they’d hardly have had time to make moulds and cast the beautiful silver pins, chains and brooches we still have today. Not to mention the monumental carved stones that are scattered all over Scotland.

artefacts-main-brooch

Well they wouldn’t, would they?

Apparently they had no written language, but again, there are accounts from Bede that messengers were sent from the Pictish King to an abbot in Northumbrian monasteries asking for advice on Church matters in 710AD. The reply was sent with instructions to be “immediately sent out under public order to all provinces of the Picts to be copied, learned, and adopted”. If it wasn’t sent to the Pictish monasteries, to be forwarded on, then who would it have been sent to.

KellsFol034rChiRhoMonogramkells00

Then there is the Book of the Kells, the illustrated gospels created in a monastery in eastern Pictland. The style is very similar to the Pictish stone carving and other art work, so perhaps they did write, and either no copies remain, or we don’t recognise them as identifiably Pictish. Who knows? Certainly not me, but I do find it endlessly fascinating. So much so, reader, that I’m in dire need of more shelving to contain all the books I’ve been ordering online.

Had you heard of the Picts before I started on about them? I feel like I’ve known of them forever, but then I’ve been researching the far north of Scotland for almost 10 years, so they’ve been on my radar for probably, about, that long.

What is a “broch” anyway?

23 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by Paula Beavan in Uncategorized

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ancient buildings, Brochs, Castles, dark ages, historic accuracy, holidays, Prehistory, research, Scotland, writing

Reader, I’ve been researching prehistory and early history in Scotland in an attempt to make sure my story is as historically accurate as possible when one is writing a story set in the Dark Ages. Dark as in there is little known, so therefore the era is shrouded in mystery and made up stuff.

 

The journey that began almost ten years ago when I wanted to write a story set in a castle because I loved the TV series “Monarch of the Glen”. This interest set me on a path that has been exciting and frustrating in equal parts.

Ardverikie Estate was used as the setting for Glenbogle in Monarch of the Glen

Ardverikie Estate was used as the setting for Glenbogle in Monarch of the Glen

As you know, I recently attended a writing retreat/course in the Cotswolds with Kate Forsyth and as we shared our current WIP with the group I was distinctly uncomfortable when I had to admit that my story was set in a parallel world because I wanted to mash three historic periods together. My bad! And it wasn’t overlooked by our esteemed tutor. Kate pulled me up short and reminded me that most people don’t learn their history via non-fiction, but rather through fiction, and so we, as authors were obligated to “get it right”. Sigh.

I knew she was right, and if I’m honest with myself, I’d known it all along, hence my inability to get the story finished.

So now, I am on mission to write not one, but three linked stories that will cover the three separate time periods that I was attempting to combine. And you know what reader? It’s ok, because I’ve researched all three periods anyway. So now I am in the process of pulling all the relevant bits out of the first draft and rewriting the first book in the way it should have been done in the first place. Because we all know that there are no short cuts or free lunches.

Which leads me to tell you about brochs.

Brochs. What is a broch I hear you say? Well it’s a very early Scottish version of a castle.
Wikipedia says this:
“A broch is an Iron Age drystone hollow-walled structure of a type found only in Scotland. Brochs include some of the most sophisticated examples of drystone architecture ever created.”

A broch was a status symbol, a defensive structure and a home. And in my story it is all three.

While we were in Scotland, Dave and I went broch hunting and had heaps of fun scrambling all over every one we located. I’ve climbed over the ruins of one in Carn Liath Broch near Golspie; walked for miles through fields to find one at Dunbeath; drove all over Skye to find one of the many there; drove through the twilight to find the two at Glenelg. Visiting Dun Telve and Dun Troddan just on dark was beautiful, atmospheric  and more than a little bit special.

Carn Liath, Golspie. Outside the remains of a my first broch.

Carn Liath, Golspie. Outside the remains of a my first broch.

Dun Beag Broch, Isle of Skye.

Dun Beag Broch, Isle of Skye.

Dun Telve Broch, Glenelg Dave standing inside for scale

Dun Telve Broch, Glenelg
Dave standing inside for scale

Dun Troddan Broch, Glenelg

Dun Troddan Broch, Glenelg

We visited more, but I can’t find the photos 😦 I find these wonderful examples of prehistoric architecture fascinating and have lots more to share, but I’ll have to save something for next time. So, stay tuned.

Does prehistory fascinate you? Do you ever wonder what it would have been like to live in a place like these? Have you visited any of these or like these? Or even would like to one day? Please share, as I’d love to know. I might even have to pick your brain for details, it’s all research after all.

 

The time has come . . .

11 Saturday Oct 2014

Posted by Paula Beavan in Uncategorized

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Australian Writers Centre, Castles, History Mystery and Magic, Kate Forsyth, Overseas traveller, Scotland, The Cotswolds, The Lygon Arms, writing

Reader, I keep promising myself to get back to blogging regularly, and yet here we are again and it’s been ages. I’m not going to check how long as it will just send me off on a tangent that, in turn, won’t get a blog written.

So to bring you up to speed, I’ve been a bit busy.

Packing

Packing

August saw the big count down to the long, long, long awaited trip to the UK. Since 2005 I’ve been trying to write “Castle Quest” and could never really get it finished as it was set in Scotland. So what you say? Well, I’d never been to Scotland, so how could I write about it realistically? In short, I couldn’t. I had several attempts at saving, and each time was unsuccessful for a variety of reasons, but this year was different.

You may remember reader that I attended a weekend writing course with Kate Forsyth last year in Sydney? Well here’s the link to Kate and the Australian Writer’s Centre. At the course, called History, Mystery and Magic, we had a wonderful time, but Kate told us of a course she was going to be running in the following September in the Cotswolds, England. How lovely, I thought.

The Lygon Arms, Broadway, The Cotswolds

The Lygon Arms, Broadway, The Cotswolds

Well somehow, Kate convinced my darling husband that I should go, so I booked in and paid a deposit and then I panicked! I had a lot of money to save and I’d committed to going to the other side of the globe on my own! ON MY OWN.

Lygon Arms

Lygon Arms

Thankfully, Dave decided to meet me for the second half of my trip and so we went to Scotland together. It was the honeymoon we’d never had, well sort of. For me it was a research trip with my own personal chauffeur and sounding board.

2014-09-10 11.15.46

2014-09-14 21.20.21-2

The highlight of my trip was . . . well the whole thing actually, but as far as my writing was concerned it was visiting the setting of my story, Castle Sinclair Girnigoe, near Wick in Caithness Scotland.

Castle Sinclair Girnigoe

Paula Beavan Author

Paula Beavan Author

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