The latest in the I Love a Scotsman series, SCOTTISH CHRISTMAS TWO, was just released on St Andrews Day! It’s a short sweet contemporary Scottish romance that follows Janey, the twenty something daughter of Beth from the first Scottish Christmas, as she overcomes adversities to fly from Boston to Edinburgh to spend Christmas Eve with Beth and Gordon and the rest of the MacKay clan in St Andrews. Do not need to read the first Scottish Christmas to read the second. However, soon I will be hosting a giveaway of audio versions of the first Scottish Christmas.
After the success of the first Scottish Christmas, I wanted to revisit the MacKay family but did not want to follow Beth and Gordon. They’re a couple. They’re in love. I did not have anything else to say about them, so I looked elsewhere. I had considered one of Beth’s coworkers, or someone else in the MacKay family, but Janey stood out. In the first novel, she was on the other end of a phone call with Beth, informing her mother in tears that her father was marrying his pregnant much younger yoga instructor and he was having a baby boy. That story appealed to me. I thought about the angst Janey must be experiencing, first her parents’ divorce, her father marries a much younger woman and is immediately a new dad (and I’m assuming more attentive to his new son than his older daughter), but her mother has married a man in a different country and moved across an ocean. She’d feel hurt, lonely, angry, abandoned. And that story appealed to me. Now what happens to Janey? When we find her at the start of the second Scottish Christmas, she ditched her long time boyfriend from the first Scottish Christmas, has a successful career but afraid of love. She saw what happened to her parents and does not want to follow their example. Until she is seated next to a handsome, charming Scot, that is!
Stay tuned in 2016, I have two rough draft Scottish novellas. One is set on a tour of the highlands a la Outlander and the other is set during the Edinburgh Festival of Arts. I had to research and interview stage lighting designers for the latter and create an itinerary for bus tour for the former. Fun!
Wishing everyone Happy Holidays and wonderful 2016.
Addison