One of our first visits in Edinburgh this year was to my favorite museum ever: the National Museum of Scotland. It’s an incredible place. What makes it especially close to my heart are the magnificent exhibits of Scottish history, starting from the forming of the earth, lochs, mountains, and hills (the Borders!!!!) to the modern… Read more »
Scottish History
Story Bite 5: On Detail in Settings
As explored in a past story bite, setting is a crucial part of any story. It’s the world in which your characters live, and can be a character itself. Any world is made of a variety of features, from landscape and weather to buildings and roads. For this story bite, I want to look closely… Read more »
Castle Scenes: Part 2
This is the second post in a series of how I’ve discovered crucial details within the castles of Scotland to inspire a scene in my fiction. Today’s post is about doors. This door is from Tantallon Castle near North Berwick. I like the solid wood of it (oak, I assume, as my castle’s door is),… Read more »
Medieval Scottish Castles: Looking In
Medieval castles dominate Scotland’s landscape, and they’re practical structures for their times. Most start off as giant stone boxes with incredibly thick walls (sometimes square, sometimes rounded, depending on when they were built), copious trimmings to help with defense (say it with me: “crenelated battlements!”), and all sorts of openings with murderous purposes. Many also… Read more »
Starting With a Castle…
If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed my love for—oh, let’s just be honest—enormous obsession with Scotland’s castles. These are the stone behemoths that dominate Scotland’s landscape (particularly in the Borders), looming above cities, countrysides, and seas. Kings, earls, and lords—Scottish and English alike—built these fortresses from the 11th to 16th centuries to… Read more »
These lilacs have the most glorious scent, but are pretty modest in their way. The former colleague I lost over the weekend to cancer would have liked them for both those reasons.
#flowers #grief #lilacs
It’s been a tough week. A moment with a few flowers can make a difference.
#flowers #azalea #springflowers