Featured Author: Maggie Craig

I’m delighted to welcome fellow Scottish author, Maggie Craig, to the Reading and Writing blog to tell us about the inspiration behind her new historical novel, Gathering Storm. It’s well over a year since Maggie last visited and it’s always a pleasure to hear about her latest work. Historian, short story writer and novelist, Maggie’s research is legendary, bringing great authenticity to her novels. In addition to some romance, the depth of intrigue gives Gathering Storm a thriller quality and this author does not shy away from depicting the grittier side of life, love and danger in 18th century Scotland.

Thank you for taking time to join me today, Maggie. It's always a pleasure to hear about your work.

Gathering Storm

Jacobite Intrigue and Romance in 18th Century Edinburgh

Edinburgh, Yuletide 1743, and Redcoat officer Robert Catto would rather be anywhere else on earth than Scotland. Seconded back from the wars in Europe to captain the city's Town Guard, he fears his covert mission to assess the strength of the Jacobite threat will force him to confront the past he tries so hard to forget.

Christian Rankeillor, her surgeon-apothecary father and his apprentice Jamie Buchan of Balnamoon are committed supporters of the Stuart Cause. They're hiding a Jacobite agent with a price on his head in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, a hanging offence.

Meeting as enemies, Robert and Kirsty are thrown together as allies by the mysterious death of a young prostitute and their desire to help fugitive brother and sister Geordie and Alice Smart. They're on the run from Cosmo Liddell, bored and brutal aristocrat and coal owner.

As they pick their way through a labyrinth of intrigue, Robert and Kirsty are increasingly drawn to each other. She knows their mutual attraction can go nowhere. He knows his duty demands that he must betray her.

Bringing to life another time when Scotland stood at a crossroads in her history, Gathering Storm is the first in a suite of Jacobite novels by Scottish writer and historian Maggie Craig, author of the ground-breaking and acclaimed Damn' Rebel Bitches: The Women of the '45.

Inspiration Behind the Story

Gathering Storm started with a photograph in a magazine, a quietly handsome man looking out at me. He had such sad eyes and I wondered why. I propped his picture up next to my computer and glanced at it every so often over the next few days. Then I sat down and started free-writing. I was immediately in 18th century Edinburgh, chasing after some medical students and their professor who were carrying out an illegal dissection. My hero’s name was Robert, he was wearing a red uniform coat and he was the Captain of the Edinburgh Town Guard. He was interrogating Christian Rankeillor, daughter of the professor, and sparks were flying. Robert and Kirsty took it from there!

From the outset, the story has been a political thriller as well as a romance. It’s 1743, two years before the Jacobite Rising of 1745, and Edinburgh is a tense city. Research for the book took me from finding out about Jacobite plotters to the archives of the Royal College of Surgeons and on to an Open University course on the history of European medicine. I’m now writing the sequel, Breaking Storm, and can’t wait to find out how Robert and Kirsty are going to deal with the dilemmas now facing them.

I’m sure your readers can’t wait either, Maggie!

Gathering Storm is available in print and ebook from Amazon UK and US and the Book Depository.

Maggie Craig is a Scottish writer and historian, author of the ground-breaking and acclaimed Damn’ Rebel Bitches: The Women of the ’45, When the Clyde Ran Red, a popular history of Red Clydeside, and several page-turning historical novels. Her Glasgow & Clydebank novels are set during the first half of the 20th century and are inspired by the joys, struggles and sense of humour of her own family, although they are also works of research and imagination. One Sweet Moment is a poignant and passionate tale of Old Edinburgh. Her latest novel, Gathering Storm, is the first in a planned suite of Jacobite novels.

Maggie is a member of the Society of Authors in Scotland and has served two terms as a committee member. She is a regular and popular speaker around Scotland’s libraries and at book festivals including the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Aye Write! & the Wigtown Book Festival.

She comes from a family where writing is considered an entirely normal thing to do and which numbers among its forebears the weaver-poet of Paisley, Robert Tannahill, who most famously wrote The Wild Mountain Thyme/Will ye go lassie, go? (“So does hauf o’ Paisley, hen.” Response of wee man in Paisley museum to the foregoing statement.)

A proud Glaswegian, she and her Welsh husband Will now live in an old blacksmith’s cottage in a tiny village in the north of Scotland. They have two grown-up children, one lovely daughter-in-law and two cats. When not writing, Maggie enjoys photography, her favourite subjects being old buildings, wildlife, dramatic skies and wild flowers.

You can find out more about Maggie Craig on her website and follow her on twitter @CraigMaggie