Here's a delightful essay by T. J. Wooldridge about the phases of research she went through for her middle grade novel The Kelpie. Makes me want to go to Scotland!
* * *
When Magick happens Outside the Pages...
by T. J. Wooldridge
It started at
my friends' art studio. I'd taken a weekend away from home and
dedicated it to my current Work In Progress,
The Kelpie. I was about a third of the way through the book and I
found myself getting lost in the castle I'd created for my characters to live
in. The bout of writer's block was caused by a lack of information, so I went
to remedy it by researching castles in Scotland and Scottish castles people
might still live in.
Of course, being me, I also wanted to know if the area of
Scotland I was imagining might even have castles and such. I knew just about
enough about Scottish geography to know I didn't know close to what I needed to
know. (Hopefully that makes sense?)
But I had a picture in my head, as clear as anything, and I
knew driving directions and how long I'd figured it took my characters to get
to various places. So, on one set of
tabs, I was pulling up castles and inhabited castles in Scotland and using
copious amounts my very generous
friends' printer paper and ink. In another set of tabs, I was playing on Google
Maps.
Come to find out, the place in my head really existed. There happens to be an area on the eastern coast of
the Scottish Borders (the area bordering England) that's an hour's drive east
of Edinburgh, has a whole lot of land, is near tourist and fishing villages,
and... wait for it... actually has ruins
of an ancient castle. The location of my characters' castle fit perfectly
where there currently exists a farm. That you have to hike through and by to
get to aforementioned actual castle
ruins.
Only an hour's drive away from that area was this other
lovely place,
the Traquair House, or,
the Oldest Inhabited House in Scotland. Which looks like a castle. It's
AWESOME!
I went home from that weekend with my friends with folders
of research and drawings and maps and other fun research. As well as a wish to
go to Scotland and explore for myself.
Some year or so later, my husband was called to work
overseas for his job for a whole year. We decided to plan his vacations of
places we could meet that we wouldn't normally have a chance to visit
otherwise. Of course, I had to insist we go to Scotland. (It
didn't require a lot of insistence; Scotland is where they make Scotch, and my
husband is as much a fan of hiking and ruins as I am.)
Organizing the vacation was left to me, so we would spend
half of it in the area my novel would take place. Including a luxurious stay at
Traquair House.
The Traquair House--besides providing me with an authentic
Victorian princess-like bed to sleep on and an antique desk where I handwrote
several postcards in fountain pen--also had actual secret passages and a
fabulous history Hiding Important People during various wars. It also had a
full-sized hedge maze and many hiking paths and abutted a nature preserve: all
details I'd figured into my book before I knew this place even existed! On top of that, I got to
interview the 21st Lady of Traquair about living in a historic home. I was already in editing stage at this point
with my publisher, so I was quite relieved to find out how little I'd have to change. I'd gotten almost all my assumptions and
guesses about things correct!
And then came visiting the actual area where I'd place my
MacArthur family castle. We
stayed at
another beautiful bed and breakfast and picked our hosts' brains about what
might, in fact, happen if tourist children and local children started going
missing, and there were bodies. (I assured them many times that this was for a
novel! Hazards of interview-based research...) There was little I had to change
based on these interviews, too.
Then, finally, finally, we got to hike along the nature
preserve and we sought out the castle ruins. (Locals frequently tell tourists
not to go out there because it is a somewhat dangerous hike with more than a
few cliff-edges right over the water.)
Besides being teary-eyed and entranced the whole hike and thinking,
"Oh my God! I'm IN MY OWN BOOK!", I was looking for any more details
I could add to make things more authentic.
There were only a few, but they counted and I added them in: there's a
man-made staircase of wood and packed earth for a particularly difficult and
wet descent, mist is constantly rolling in and out even in June, there is a
Hitchcock-ian amount of birds who all nest on the cliffs during June... and I
severely underestimated the amount of sheep poop involved.
All of those were easy fixes. But I'm still in awe at how
much the actual location, the facts, and everything else that I'm quite sure I
never knew prior happened to be real. It
really was like magick to write... and it was magickal--and a little scary--to
experience what lived in my head to explode into real life I could see, touch,
feel, taste (yay, haggis!)... and smell (not-so-yay on the sheep poop.)
In speaking with other writers, this isn't all that unusual
an experience, either! Other writers get shocked when things they "make
up" turn out to be real... so, perhaps there is a little bit of something
magick that's clicked on in a writer's mind.
Have you experienced any magick in your work that's leaked from
the pages and your brain into real life?
* * *
THE KELPIE
by T. J. Woolridge
I can't honestly say I was joking when I suggested to my best friend, Joe – Prince Joseph, eldest son of England's Crown Prince – that we could probably find something the police had missed in regards to the missing children. After all, eleven and twelve year olds like us did that all the time on the telly and in the books we read…
When Heather and Joe decide to be Sleuthy MacSleuths on the property abutting the castle Heather's family lives in, neither expected to discover the real reason children were going missing:
A Kelpie. A child-eating faerie horse had moved into the loch "next door."
The two barely escape with their lives, but they aren't safe. Caught in a storm of faerie power, Heather, Joe, and Heather's whole family are pulled into a maze of talking cats, ghostly secrets, and powerful magick.
With another child taken, time is running out to make things right.
* * *
Learn more about T. J. Woolridge on her website.
Buy The Kelpie on Amazon, at B&N, and at other online and brick & mortar retailers.
While the magic concept was important, even more important
was creating a group of characters with different but complementary
personalities. There are different tropes for doing this, such as the Four
Element Ensemble, the Four
Temperament Ensemble, or even using blood
types. (Warning: all these links
lead to the fun but time-sucking TV Tropes
website.) I chose a simpler method, which I’ll refer to as
“Brain-Body-Heart-Soul.” This was also
inspired by a description of the Beatles. (Fans may disagree on who played what
role within the group. I see John as the brain, Paul as the body, George as the
soul, and Ringo as the heart.) Each of the four Season Avatars plays one of
these roles within the group. 
