A fourth-generation Californian of Scottish descent, Amanda Scott is the author of more than fifty romantic novels, many of which appeared on the USA Today bestseller list. Her Scottish heritage and love of history (she received undergraduate and graduate degrees in history at Mills College and California State University, San Jose, respectively) inspired her to write historical fiction. Credited by Library Journal with starting the Scottish romance subgenre, Scott has also won acclaim for her sparkling Regency romances. She is the recipient of the Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award (for Lord Abberley’s Nemesis, 1986) and the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award. She lives in central California with her husband.
For more information on Amanda Scott’s novels, please visit the official website.
AUTHOR INTERVIEW !!!
A Bookish Libraria is proud to include the following interview with Amanda Scott today. What an accomplished author and inspiring woman she is. Thank you for joining us, Amanda!
1) Tell us
something about yourself, please. How do
most people describe you?
I'm a native Californian, fourth
generation. I was born in Salinas, so I'm a northern Californian. I attended
elementary through high school in the same town that my parents did. I also
spent time on my paternal grandfather's ranch in Ukiah and at our cabin in the
High Sierras near Tahoe. I was a solitary child, because my father fought in
World War II (Silver Star) and then went to law school, so there is a four to
eight-year gap between me and my three siblings. My imagination, even as a
child, was fertile, so I peopled our house in Salinas and our apartment in San
Francisco, where my dad went to law school, with three imaginary friends –
Aloysius, MacGillicuddy, and one who shall remain nameless, because my cousin
and I (at ages three and two, respectively) named him after a rooster that my
uncle had shouted at when said rooster got under the fence into my grandmother's
'victory garden.'
I have a master's degree in History,
specialized in British History with an emphasis on Scotland, England, and
Wales. I'm married, have a son and two delightfully mischievous grandchildren,
and I write full time. Twelve
of my older books are now available as ebooks: Dangerous Illusions, Dangerous
Games, Dangerous Angels, Dangerous Lady, Highland Fling, Highland
Secrets, Highland Treasure, Highland Spirits, Border
Bride, Border Fire, Border Storm, and The
Bawdy Bride. The three books in my current Lairds of the Loch trilogy are my 58th, 59th,
and 60th books published. The first one, The Laird's Choice, is
out now. The other two are finished and in production. The Knight's Temptress
will come out in August, The Warrior's Bride in early 2014. A
more extensive bio is on my website: www.amandascottauthor.com
I don't know how most people describe
me. It's not something I think much about. Reviewers have been kind enough to
call me brilliant, a master of the genre, knowledgeable, and many other very
nice things. They have also said that I make readers feel as if they are right
there, wherever my characters are, which I certainly work hard to do.
Library Journal credited me
with inventing the Scottish historical romance, although it did take a long
time to find a publisher for Border
Bride. Editors kept saying
they loved it but, because of the humor in the book, I should turn it into a
Regency. I couldn't do that, because I had based the story on Scottish laws
pertaining to women that didn't exist in England. When an editor at Dell
finally bought it, the book flew off the shelves and did seem to start a new
craze for Scottish tales (Diana Gabaldon's Outlander
came out from Dell the following year). Nevertheless, I loved Jan Westcott's
and Dorothy Dunnett's books long before I wrote anything publishable, so I'm
not sure that that one will stick.
For whatever it's worth, I asked my husband and son to suggest words they
would use to describe me. These are my husband's: "intelligent, thorough,
dedicated, detail oriented, demanding (of herself), tenacious; and my son's: "Does
'my bad-ass mom', work?"; so I suggested printable words and got "imaginative,
fierce, loyal, and a softy."
2)
Where
is your favorite place to write? Any
special gimmicks, writing tools or keepsakes that you keep near you when you write…I
hear authors can be superstitious!
In general, I write in my office at the computer or longhand at my son's
old student desk in our spare room. In the summertime, my favorite place to
write is on the porch of our old family lake cabin in the Sierras near Tahoe.
The cabin lacks most amenities, including a road, sewer, electricity, and the
Internet. We use a boat to get there, it's peaceful, and my companions are
jays, squirrels, and the occasional drop-in neighbor. My grandparents bought
the cabin when I was three, and I love it there.
I have a solar panel on the roof so I can use my laptop there, and at
home I simply connect the laptop to a large monitor, a mouse, keyboard, and
other peripherals. My office has two desks, the leather-top one that my husband
bought me when I began writing and a computer desk.
Three walls contain bookshelves. The one in front of my computer is all
bulletin board and has contained a wall size map of the city of London in
Regency times and now has pictures of settings I'm using, a cartoon of my
grandfather when he was in court, trying a case, and various other mementos. I
spend most of my time reading, or staring at the computer screen, so my biggest
enemy in my office is clutter that accumulates while I'm working.
I don't have any gimmicks that I can think of. My favorite writing tool
is any pen that writes smoothly and without much pressure applied to it. I am
not superstitious, but I am claustrophobic, so I walk every day outside on a
wetland trail with birds (including egrets, pheasant, quail, and great blue
herons), beasts including the occasional deer, wild turkeys, the odd bobcat or
river otter), and waterfowl.
3)
Which
contemporary authors do you most admire?
I read constantly, voraciously, probably four or five books a week if you
count research. I read everything, from political, legal, and medical thrillers
to romance, mysteries, science fiction, and more literary books for our book
group, also plays and poetry, as well as Scottish history.
Some of my favorite authors are Lee Child, Brad Thor, Janet Evanovich,
Tess Gerritson, Stephen J Cannell, Alex Kava, James Grippando, Vince Flynn,
John Sandford, Lisa Scottoline, Stuart Woods, Kate Wilhelm, Thomas Perry, Steve
Berry, Dana Stabenow, Robert Crais, Harlan Coben, Robert B. Parker, Daniel
Silva, Elizabeth Peters, Greg Iles, Kay Hooper, Deborah Crombie, John Nance…I
could go on, but these are the first ones that come to mind, so you probably
get the idea.
4) Which are your favorite classical authors?
Just off the top of my head, Sir Walter
Scott, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, the Brontes, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas,
Hawthorne, James Fennimore Cooper, Mark Twain, Zane Grey, and I tend to think
of Georgette Heyer, Agatha Christie, Patricia Wentworth, and Jan Westcott as
classical authors, although all of them wrote in the twentieth century.
5)
Jump
into any book—which character would you be?
I'm always at a loss when people ask me
this question. If you mean one of my own books, I can't imagine. I'm in them,
of course – at least, my mind is – when I write them, but I would not want to
live in any century but the present one. Spending my summers in a rustic cabin,
as I do, is enough historical living for me. I like libraries, iced mochas, and
driving fast cars. Living in a drafty, smoky castle might be interesting for a
sennight or so, and I love good haggis, but after that … nae, moran taing! (no, thanks.)
If you meant my being any character in any
book, I'm still at a loss, because I simply don't think of myself as anyone
else. One identifies with most characters in books as one is reading, but I don't
want to live a thriller, just to read them for pleasure. Nor do I want to live
anywhere else, although I love reading travel books and books set in exotic
places.
6)
Are
you working on a new book?
Always. I just finished The
Warrior's Bride, which is book 3 in my Lairds of the Loch (Loch Lomond) trilogy, so I'm working on the
outline for a new trilogy and a new contract. Having just done two trilogies
set in the Highlands (Scottish Knights
and Lairds of the Loch), I'm ready to
return to the Borders for a while and perhaps continue using Scott and Douglas
history for the background. I tend to move forward chronologically with the
history, so I'll set the three books around 1426-1430 in James I's reign (Jamie
Stewart).
Clan Scott and Clan Douglas figure
prominently in my own heritage, so they are naturals for me. I also have
connections to a number of other clans, including Jamison, Logan, and Ferguson.
Once again, I plan to use real people for my two main characters, but we'll see
what my editors think about that. My plan is to use the grandson of the Sir
Walter Scott in Border Wedding.
The rub is that the Scotts seem to have
used very few names for the men of our clan beyond Robert, Walter, and William.
Every other generation from the beginning seems to have had a Walter Scott,
right down to my grandfather, who was Russell Walter Scott and had been named
after his grandfather, Walter Ferguson Scott. The Walter I have my eye on now
was known in his youth as WalterKirkurd but eventually became Sir
Walter Scott of Buccleuch and Rankilburn. Also, like his grandfather, he
married a woman named Margaret. She's easier to do than he is, because her last
name was Cockburn (COE burn) and I can call her Molly (the earlier one was
known as Muckle-Mouth Meg, and not only did I write about her but Sir Walter
Scott the poet wrote a ballad about her).
So,
if anyone knows a nickname for Walter other than Wat or (heaven forbid) Wally,
I don't, and since editors and many readers dislike it when an author uses the
same names for the heroine and hero in more than one book (unless they are the
same characters as in the earlier book), I need to find a workaround. Any help
resolving this dilemma will be greatly appreciated! Feel free to send
suggestions to amandascott@att.net
