A Small Death in the Great Glen (60 page)

   Rob and Peter's band, The Meltdown Boys, shock the glen with a style of music no one has heard before—1950s American rock 'n' roll. Make a playlist of music from this genre, including “Rock Around the Clock” (Bill Haley and Comets) and “Tutti Frutti” (Little Richard), the only two songs The Meltdown Boys know how to play. How has American rock 'n' roll changed since the 1950s? Why was it so shocking to the people of the Highlands?

   A. D. Scott uses her words to describe the visual beauty of the Scottish Highlands; why not try using a paintbrush? Have each group member select a descriptive passage as inspiration for a piece of art. After the creation session, group members can share their passages and paintings.

A C
ONVERSATION WITH
A
D
S
COTT

What first drew you to the mystery/suspense genre?

I love reading mysteries; I especially love novels that give a sense of time and place. My favorites are too many to mention but Donna Leon, Mala Nunn, Peter Robinson, Ian Rankin, Kate Atkinson, and Laura Lipman are wonderful. I love mysteries that immerse the reader in another culture so I am
a fan of Scandinavian and Icelandic crime writers and the Aurelio Zen stories set in Sicily.

Is there a different process to writing a suspense novel than writing other types of fiction?

Writing a suspense novel makes the reader (and the writer) try to puzzle out what is going on, so a writer can use this curiosity to explore themes that interest them. For example, small town newspapers are a true reflection of a community, every town has at least one and they haven't changed much in sixty years. What
have
changed are national newspapers and magazines—for better or worse is a matter of conjecture. So the writing process doesn't change, but the opportunity to reflect while plotting or solving the mystery are more.

A Small Death in the Great Glen
has a large cast of characters, each of whom has his or her own thoughts and feelings. Was it difficult to develop so many characters in one book?

Sitting in cafés, traveling by train or bus, watching people as they go about everyday life, I find myself constantly imaging their inner lives. I give them family and friends, but more than that, I imagine their dreams. Sometimes this habit gets me into trouble; when I am telling a story, I have to stop and think, did this really happen or was it something I made up? People, characters, everyday life is fascinating and complex, much more so than big events.

Which character in your book do you admire most, and why?

What a tough question! I think Jenny McPhee would be my choice; she is who she is, with no doubts, no questions. She is sure of her history, her family, and she can move around the country whenever the fancy takes her. I love strong women. Most of all I envy her singing voice.

Malla Nunn, author of
A Beautiful Place to Die,
commended you for your “intimate knowledge of the Scottish Highlands.” Besides
having grown up there, did you conduct any special research to add to the authenticity of your story's setting?

I have a detailed, large scale, contour map of the area printed in 1954. The colors are beautiful and the shades of green and brown and blue are a wonderful “aide memoire” to my childhood. Also, when I was at school we went everywhere by bicycle, often long distances, this is the best way to know and remember a place. In those days, even a nine-year-old could wander off on her own. A sense of smell is also important. Close your eyes, think of the time of year and remember what is smells like. This always works for me.

When did you first learn of “hoodie crow,” and why did you choose to reference it in your novel?

Hoodie cows were (are) scary creatures. The first time I remember encountering them was innocently watching newborn lambs cavorting in a field of snow. Then, seeing blood and a dead lamb, the farmer told us it had been attacked by hoodies. Horrible! The hooded crow, to give it its proper name, is associated with the faeries and there are numerous references to them in myths, legend, and folktales. “Twa Corbies” (Two Crows) is a famous Scottish poem or song where the crows sit on a dyke discussing dining on a slain knight lying beneath them. These are the tales and songs we grew up on.

Many characters in your novel are considered outcasts by the community, whether it be for their gender, occupation, or nationality. Can you discuss this theme and why it is so important to the book?

Another hard question—and a rather revealing one. Perhaps it is because I was one of those children who drove adults crazy, always asking questions, never content with the answer, always attracted to anything unusual, never to the safe and normal and, to me, boring town.

Which writers have had the most significant effect on your own writing? How did their work affect your own?

Robert Louis Stevenson (RSL), to us Scots, he is the novelist above all others. One of my ambitions is to visit his grave in Samoa and say “Thank You.” Coorying under the quilt on a stormy, rainy, or snowy night and reading
Kidnapped
or
Treasure Island,
scaring myself, losing myself, in warm Caribbean waters or the windswept stormy Minch, every sentence was magic to me. He also showed me a life beyond a small town in Scotland and opened up the idea of living a life of possibilities.

What's next for the staff of the
Highland Gazette
?

In the next book the
Highland Gazette
starts to change and all I can say is that it is more of the same, but very different. As the
Gazette
expands, McAllister hires some outlandish new contributors, and the scene is set more on the east coast than out west. The theme came to me from the hymn “All Things Bright and Beautiful.” There is one character in the new book that absolutely fascinates me and the more I explore this person the more intrigued I become. There are also new characters that touch on Scotland's part in strange and exotic events in the Far East in the nineteenth century.

A Small Death in the Great Glen
is your first published novel. Do you have any words of advice or encouragement for aspiring novelists?

Just give it a go, with no expectations other than the joy of writing, of creating. If you really want to write, write every day, a few words, a few lines, but commit to it wholeheartedly. Above all, read; read everything, anything, read voraciously, give up everything else to read, read, read.

The bruising on Joanne Ross was invisible. Like a peach with the flesh discolored around the stone, she seemed untouched. But she carried the shame her mother felt at giving birth at the age of forty-three. There was this and the shame her husband felt at marrying a woman who did not quite fit in. Joanne herself felt she was a quarter step ahead or behind the beat, all depending on the weather.

Her wide-open face, showed the bloodlines of a true Scot. In her late twenties, she was almost a beauty. But her cheekbones were on the edge of too strong, her mouth on the side of too wide, and her skin too freckled to be considered beautiful. The elegant way she held herself, her readiness to sing and dance, her husband disapproved of even that. “For heaven's sake, grow up,” had been one of his milder comments.

Joanne shook off thoughts of her marriage and went back to typing.

Monday, the Monday of her first big story, the Monday of the new
Gazette,
she had come in extra early, dropping her protesting children off in an empty playground half an hour before the school bell was due to toll, bribing them with a packet of crisps and the promise of an extra comic each for the Easter holiday on the Black Isle.

She worked steadily, her athletic shoulders wrestling with the heavy, awkward typewriter as easily as a cowboy with a steer, plowing through lists scribbled on scrap paper, typed notes, scrawls on the back of an envelope, and one that just said “repeat last years.” They were all notices of the holidays and events surrounding Easter.

She glanced at the clock, one surely stolen from a railway station
waiting room, and noted she had five minutes before anyone else would appear. She made tidy piles of the bits of copy paper, the finished work ready for Don's pencil. Then she would begin retyping it all over again. How she could continue with all this plus her new job as full-time reporter and her new status as a single mother, she hadn't yet worked out.