Woot!! This is too cool. I have written more than half of the book at this point. I am well into the second act (if this was a play). I had so much fun writing these two chapters because they had very little to do with the main story of the book, and they were strictly written for intel and filler but at the same time I was allowed to create really intricate characters who may never be seen again and who may never be discussed again, but they are people too. They had real things happen to them, they experienced life and the bad as well as the good. They held their own, and they are more than just a name with a couple of dates scratched into a tombstone. Actually, these people haven't actually died, but sometimes a gravestone is the only narration that a life has. We have a name. We know they lived because they were born in one year and they died in another year. If they are babies and they die within the same year, they may not even have a name. I wanted a few people in the book to be seen as more than just blips of ink describing them as they walked on either side of High Street.
So, the best part about writing is that I get the opportunity to go inside my own head and create names, lives, events, situations, circumstances, and so forth. If I want to the character can be arrested for something he or she never did. I can have a complete injustice occur. I can hang a man (or woman) on the testimony or a single statement made in the heat of the moment. I can undo every good deed ever attributed to a person with just one single lie told about them. I can also right a wrong. I can bring the entire weight of the law upon the guilty, and if things get really crazy, I can bring the French to assist the Jacobites on that fateful spring afternoon in the Highlands. After reading what I've read and knowing what I know, I am so torn as to which side of that battle I would have been on if I'm honest. I am 100% for Scottish independence today, but I really think it's about 200 years late for the most part. In my opinion, and I admit I don't know enough to be accepted as an expert by any means, I think Scotland could have sustained itself in the 18th century to become its own kingdom separate from that of England or Ireland.
The book is not about Scottish independence, however. It is about the lives of the folks that were in and around the western Highland and the lowlands around Edinburgh. I don't know if I'll trek through the Borders or not, but they are mentioned a couple of times, as the Stringfellow family (my own family) was closely related to and aligned (unfortunately) with that of the Armstrongs, who were border reveries and in more blunt terms, murderers and thieves. I can't take responsibility for any of the things they may have done in the past, but I can give at least one familial relation a good reputation in the book. I'll talk about Penny Stringfellow, a little 11-year-old girl who is a direct relative of Sir Robert Stringfellow who left the area about 70 years beforehand to forge for himself and his family a new life in Virginia. Penny will be in the next chapter, chapter 19. She'll meet with Aria and sing a little hymn for her while discussing the benefits of repentance. Penny explains that she's not ashamed to be a Stringfellow even though they are kin with and friends of the Armstrong marauders. She knows her own family is precious unto God and that new life starts fresh if you give it that chance to do so.
Writing can be therapeutic if you let it be. Who says you can't cast out your very soul onto the pages to be produced under the guise of being entertainment? It can happen. In 1657, three years before leaving the lowlands of Scotland and boarding a vessel for the new world, the son of Sir Robert Stringfellow, my 11th great grandfather James Stringfellow, married a Miss Margaret Campbell of Dumbarton; they had a baby girl in Edinburgh the following year, and she and her parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and most of her cousins set sail when Charles II was crowned in 1660 so as not to have to make concessions for their past. One or two of the cousins remained, and mostly they left Scotland for Yorkshire England and they became farmers and administrators of various councils. One man, John Stringfellow, in 1848, discovered heavier-than-air flight long before the Wright Brothers did. Go look it up. Oh, OK, I'll leave a link here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stringfellow
Fantasy is fun, and so is reality. History can be both eye-opening and devastating. It can be challenging or rewarding. It can send us to any number of places and through many emotions as we put the puzzle pieces together trying to figure out where we came from, so we can figure out where we're going. I am happy to be who and where I am, but I think I'd be just as happy if I were born of the few Stringfellows who had remained in their native land of Scotland. I wouldn't have wanted to be associated with the Armstrongs, not if I know what I know now, but I would have wanted to be a part of building churches and congregations, bringing people to the saving Grace of Christ. Maybe that's why I write, so I can have a foothold on creating an interest that some may have to find their way eternally safe.
John Stringfellow, a distant uncle or cousin, not directly in line with my father, but if you saw my Daddy's face, you could see the family resemblance.
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