#GuestPost – “Rescued by a Highlander” by Susan Payne

Rescued by a Highlander came to me as most of my stories do…interrupting my life and demanding to be written.  Right then – right now – it didn’t matter that is was two in the morning and I had been asleep like most normal people, but then I’m not a normal person.  I’m a writer.  An author now that I’ve gotten published.  Someone who is driven to write down stories that demand to be written down.

I’m what is known as a ‘pantser’ as in we write by the seat of our pants.  Some of us use handwritten notes, some of us type, some of us dictate into a microphone – but we all have a need to ‘tell’ stories we think others would like to read.  We spend a lot of time in research for our characters, their environment, their thoughts and how they got to where the story began. I always find myself in another century sometimes with royalty but more than not, simple people trying to muddle through life and find a little love along the way.

I love the getting to the story as much as the story itself.  I find it fascinating how difficult some people had things.  Lack of opportunity being only a small part of it. I sometimes get lost in the maze that is the internet but eventually emerge so much wiser than when I went down that rabbit hole.  Things I may not ‘need’ again, some I might not use in a story. Still, I have the information and I feel better for knowing it – and a need to pass it on.

I suppose those writers that form their own worlds whether for their shape-shifting characters or futuristic planet travel or paranormal feel the same.  I love reading them but I don’t think I could devise a completely different type of world and people. I admire others ability to do so and have the reader enter into an entirely new way of looking at things.  I would think a pantser would have difficulty making a new world without some pre-planning.  But perhaps not.  There really isn’t too much difference in what we do. Only in how we think we got there at the end.  For romance writers that means a happy-ever-after-ending. 

With Rescued by a Highlander the female lead, Jillian, finds a hidden stash of items and is driven by curiosity to find where and when they were produced.  Then down the rabbit hole she went with research of the day. (1750s) which meant letters using quill and parchment paper.  As she researched the possibilities, so did I.  She learned what I did only I had the internet and google.  I passed on what I knew as she found her own method in her own time period.  

My daughter asked me if I thought I was channeling people from the past.  If I were actually intruding upon their lives rather than they intruding into mine.  I can’t be sure.  I think they are my invention.  I know I have never read anything like it but do we really know?  I sometimes think I’m on an eight-track simply going over and over again.  I get a lot of deja vous moments so I lean to that way of thinking.  I’ve been here before. I’ve seen that before….

If so, I am enjoying the journey. I’m glad I finally put the stories down on paper and then allowed others to read them.  If you find you have an urge to write – by all means do so.  A diary sort of thing, even of what you may consider a mundane life, may be eye-opening and relevant to someone reading it decades from now.  Give it a try – what do you have to lose except a little sleep if the people in your head wake you in the middle of the night.

Tag: She would do anything to save her father and her heritage…even wed a highlander.

Blurb:

Tall, beautiful and slender, she dressed like a boy and fought like a warrior and won Laird Macgregor’s interest in a single moment.  Jillian was fighting to protect her father and save her heritage – could she trust a Highlander to help her?

Excerpt:

On the ride back to the fortress, Gawain had not turned around, knowing what the young woman looked like up in the saddle. Her legs splayed to both sides of the animal covered with the tight knit hose most men wore while riding through woods, the chainmail covering her more interesting attributes. The short length of dark blond hair emphasized her chin and jaw line which spelt beauty to his eyes. Her mouth, though most often held in a mutinous frown, appeared kissable. 

In fact, Gawain wanted to kiss it into a soft poutiness, make those green eyes spark with desire not hatred. Even though he may have to sleep with one eye open to prevent the little vixen from piercing him with his own dagger in the night, he would think the experience of bedding her well worth the danger. He knew a smile settled on his features as he imagined her squirming under him once they were in his bed. Such thoughts had made for an uncomfortable ride home.