The prologue of my second book, Gang Warily. I have about 41 thousand words-halfway through



MAY 1746



After the Battle of Culloden the armies of King George, led by his son The Duke of Cumberland, swept through the Highlands, stamping out any perceived sign of rebellion. Captured Jacobites, the supporters of Prince Charles Stuart, were imprisoned in Inverness and on ships in Moray Firth and the Thames in London. They were held in inhumane conditions, without medical help, and died in hundreds, their bodies tossed in the Firth and the Thames. The Royalists recaptured Fort William and Fort Augustus, and used them to spread terror. Women and children watched as their homes and crops burned, and starved in the following months. The clan system that had existed for hundreds of years died.

The composer Handel wrote Hail the Conquering Hero and Judas Maccabeus to honor the Duke of Cumberland. A flower, Sweet William, was named after him. In Scotland, it’s called Stinking Willie. Men under Cumberland showed an unparalleled viciousness. One such man was Captain Caroline Frederic Scott, who had been in charge of the prison in Inverness before he became one of the men leading retribution along the Great Glen. He was determined to wipe out all remnants of rebellion.
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 Captain Caroline Frederic Scott stared at the man held between two redcoats, a sword and a musket at his feet. Rannoch Moor, barren and windswept, dotted with lochans, stretched around them under gray skies. Patches of snow still clung to the Grampian Mountains surrounding the moor.

The young man spoke in Gaelic, then in English. “My name is Davey MacGregor. I am bringing in my arms as you hae ordered.”


Scott, tall and blond, his face round and cherubic as a child’s, his blue eyes cold as the bitter wind, said, “I think you were planning to ambush my men. You are a MacGregor, not to be trusted, known to have fought for the usurper Stuart. You fought against His Majesty’s army at Culloden.”

Davey MacGregor shook his head. “I am obeying your orders to bring in my weapons.”

“You filthy Papist. Do you dare to question an officer of the rightful King?” Scott turned away and mounted his horse, then told his men, “He is a traitor. There are no trees to hang in from. Treat him as he deserves. Do not waste ammunition on him. And bring his horse. It looks a good mount.”

Davey MacGregor, 19 years old, younger brother of Calum MacGregor, cousin of Niall MacGregor, was bludgeoned to death by the musket stocks of His Royal Majesty’s loyal soldiers.

Zora Neale Hurston and the book club.

My book club just talked about Their Eyes Were Watching God.  I had not read Hurston's books before and wasn't really excited about reading it. But you know, in a book club you read things because it's your duty. I'm glad I did my duty.
This book is about black people in a black society, not about the downtrodden, but about everyday small town lives. And about finding love.The writing is so exquisite, so poetic, that I kept going back, rereading, then reading phrases out loud. After I read it I went back to the first pages and read them again. I had to, because the beginning was also the ending of Janie's story.
Here are the last sentences in the book.
Here was peace. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and pulled it over her shoulder. So much of life in  its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.

Dear Old Miscellaneous

There's more to life than just reading...right? Right?Well, there was the PNWA Conference. I had fingers crossed, didn't place, but another writer of Scottish history came in second, and I look forward to reading hers, set in the 19th Century. In the meantime, I have a list of agents and editors to send my ms to, and have taken a vacation from the 18th Century to help out on a nonfiction history of Coupeville (1850-1950). I'm excited about doing this. So far, most of my copy is stored in my brain, and I'm sorting it out.

About books:

During a trip to the used book store in Anacortes, I was looking for a Kate Atkinson book and found another British author I'd not heard of: Isla Dewar. I bought Keeping Up With Magda and was hooked. I've read five more of her books and am addicted. Her books are full of strange events, strong characters who make massive mistakes, and unexpected endings.

I also came back with a copy of The Western Writings of Stephen Crane, Drinking Dry Clouds by Gretel Erlich, The Writing Life by Annie Dillard, and Border Songs by Jim Lynch. I've read that before & loved it, so I must giove this copy to someone I really like.

long time no post

Actually, in addition to writing my own things, I have been reading a lot. At the WIWA conference, I was in a chat house with Jamie Ford, author of The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. I had read it a few weeks before and really liked it. It's set in Seattle , in both present day and WWII, and is a wonderfully descriptive look at the 1940's & the internment camps.
I just read Sharyn McCrumb's latest ballad novel, The Devil Amongst the Lawyers, which, thought it wasn't her best, was certainly worth reading. I like the feeling in these books, the sense of place and the otherworldly aspects.
The Empire of the Summer Moon is an excellent nonfiction book, about the Commanche war chief, Quanah Parker. I've decided I have to have a copy of it, so I can reread it. Not only is it as exciting as a novel, and very well written, part of it contains information about my own family. My father was born in Anadarko, Oklahoma, and Quanah Parker was his godfather. A great uncle married a Caddo woman, and is featured in the part about Quanah's coming into the reservation. Quanah's mother was a kidnapped white girl, who was taken away from the Commanches by whites after she gave birth to two boys and a girl. She went unwillingly and died not long after that.
Right now I'm reading one of Kate Atkinson's early books, Emotionally Weird. I found her first book, Behind the Scenes at the Museum when I had left the book I was reading in my hotel room and faced a long flight from London to Seattle without anything to read. Any bibliomaniac knows that's one of the circles of Hell. I went into a bookstore at Heathrow, went to the sale books and found Behind the Scenes, bought it and was gifted with one of the shortest flights of my life, thanks to Kate Atkinson.
My own writing is going well-at least I'll be sending chapters to an agent and an editor I met at the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference. I was a finalist in the Historical Novel Division but didn't place. Meeting competitors in the same genre was fun-from very nice to downright sharky!

Catching Up

I haven't stopped reading-just blogging. I'm reading manuscripts for an agent friend too. Anyway, let's see:
Alison Weir's new book, The Lady in the Tower is brilliant, but a slow read. You get a lot of background, then the events leading up to the imprisoning of Anne Bolyn. If you read the novel, Wolf Hall, about Thomas Cromwell, this is another look at the man-in nonfiction. He comes across as a master power broker, and the court of Henry VIII as a place crawling with factions planning and lying to riise in the king's favor. The phrase, "How the mighty have fallen!" rings through out the book. You might want to keep a chart of the characters. I'm fond of Alison Weir. Her fiction is so readable, and her biographies are excellent.
On a lighter note, Barbara Cleverly's Joe Sandilands mysteries are ones I always look forward to. The new one, Strange Images of Death, is worth waiting for. The books are set between the world wars. Sandilands is a Scotland Yard detective, wounded in WWI. IN this, he takes a young girl to Provence where her father is staying in a chateau with other artists. When he arrives, he is told that someone has destroyed the 600 year old tomb of the wife of a crusader. Hmmm. I've just started the book, and can't wait to get back to it, sooo......

Roots

Ron RashOn both sides of my family, my roots are in Appalachia. On my mother's side, things are a bit hazy, though there's a Zachariah Russell in Kentucky, and his daughter Blanche Delaware(!) who was my mother's grandmother. On my father's side, it's Tennessee, North Carolina And West Virginia, and before that, Virginia. There are names like Cabin Run and Scotch Creek, Kingsport, Blountville. There are words and phrases that belong to that heritage. When I read Sharyn McCrumb and Margaret Maron, they resonate. Now I've found another writer who takes me there: Ron Rash. His novels are The World Made Straight, Saints at the River and Serena. In addition he has books of poetry and short stories. His three books all cover some sort of environmental theme as part of the back story: a valley flooded by a power company, the search for a drowned girl's body leading to the destruction of a wild and scenic river, clearcutting of the southern mountains. Rash's poetry shows through in each of the novels, as does his love of the land he knows well. But it is the people who stayed in my mind long after I finished reading the books: an environmentalist who has claimed a river as his own; a farmer and his wife whose love for each other leads to murder; a woman whose greed destroys forests.
Some of the words used in the characters' conversations take me back to my childhood in Texas, words that traveled with my family from Appalachia.
"Don't sull up," my mother used to say, when I pouted. I read that in one of Rash's books. Even the rhythm of his words reminds me of aunts and uncles repeating stories and songs they had heard from their parents and grandparents.
Sometimes I think the best writers are also poets, and regional writers carry their past with them.