Welcome back BLYTHE GIFFORD!
B
LYTHE GIFFORD is the author of five medieval romances, known for their “superb” mixture of history and romance. She specializes in characters born on the wrong side of the royal blanket. With HIS BORDER BRIDE, she crosses the border and sets a story in Scotland for the first time, where the rules of chivalry don’t always apply.
Here’s a brief description:
Royal Rogue: He is the bastard son of an English prince and a Scotswoman. A rebel without a country, he has darkness in his soul.
Innocent Lady: Daughter of a Scottish border lord, she can recite the laws of chivalry, and knows this man has broken every one. But she’s gripped by desire for him—could he be the one to unleash the dangerous urges she’s hidden until now?
Welcome Blythe! HIS BORDER BRIDE is your fifth book set in the fourteenth century, but the first you’ve set in Scotland. What caused you to cross the border?
A combination of creative and marketing reasons. Confession time: Scotland has never captured my imagination the way it does for so many, yet I know it is an auto-buy for many readers. Reason enough for an author to think seriously about a Scots story, but I refused to choose a setting strictly for mercenary reasons. But my hero in my last book, IN The MASTER’S BED, was from the Borders of northern England. As I learned his history, I became increasingly intrigued by this “third country,” where the Scots on one side of the line and the “Inglis” on the other had more in common with each other than either did with the rest of their countrymen. This was a Scotland that called to me, so I followed the muse across the border.
What sparked this specific story? Was it a character? An historical event? A scene you just couldn’t get out of your head?
I wanted to write a real “bad boy” hero. Since all my books have featured a character born on the wrong side of the [English] royal blanket, I wanted him to be the son of a really hated member of the royal family. I discovered that John of Eltham, a younger brother of Edward III, spent several months commanding the English troops in a Scottish invasion. He was rumored to have burned a church filled with people who had sought sanctuary there. I thought his son would be well and truly hated on the Scots side of the border, so that was my hero’s origin.
Did you have to do any major research for this book? Was it an easy transition?
Yes to the research. Not at all to the easy! It was much more difficult than I anticipated. Not the dates and places, but to learn the Scots mindset. I compare it to learning to writ
e left-handed. I’m a life-long Anglophile, so I was very comfortable with that world view. I didn’t know what I didn’t know until I got into the story and had to learn the “back story,” if you will, of a whole country! During this period, and for several hundred years to follow, Scotland was more closely allied with France than with England. That made a difference in their court, their culture, their law – and that’s not to mention the Celtic echoes. I’m very grateful to the “Write Scottish Romance” yahoo group of writers who walked me through so much of it.
So how do you feel about Scotland now? Did you learn to love it?
Actually, yes, I did. The Scots, particularly on the Border, are a stubborn, independent, hard-headed, ornery, freedom loving lot. My kind of folks! In fact, my next book will be set on the Scottish border, too.
What do you like least about this period?
I’m very familiar with the 14th century by now, so again it was the location, not the era that challenged me. In my last few books, I’d incorporated various trappings of educated royalty: art, music, dance, university studies. Life was rough on the Scots Borders. Art and “culture” were scarce. But that actually lead me to some character development, as my heroine longed for the kind of culture and comfort that she would find, she thought, by marrying a French knight. (Not the hero!)
Did you stumble across anything really interesting that you didn’t already know?
I had no idea how pervasive falconry was until I started studying it. Falconry, or hawking, is the sport of hunting with trained birds of prey. Its origins are ancient and despite having written four medieval romances, I had not realized that between the 12th and the 17th centuries, virtually every noble and even some non-noblemen would have hunted as a matter of course.
The sport and the birds became a strong theme in the book, symbolic both of her emotional state and of the developing relationship. And while I began by feeling quite clever for using it as a simile for the love story, I quickly discovered I was not the first to think of it. Much of the art of the period uses the falcon in just this contest. Several centuries later, Shakespeare, in “The Taming of the Shrew” uses the falconer/falcon analogy for Petruchio and Kate’s battle of wills. My story is not a “taming of the shrew” premise, but it made me feel better to know I had chosen a metaphor that indeed applied to love, as well as sport.
Anything that constrained you or that you had to plot carefully around?
The life cycle of the falcon! Because it was such a thematic arc for the story, I had to know when falcons mated, how long it took for the eggs to hatch, when the chicks first flew and how they were trained to hunt with humans---that cycle set the framework for the story. (The illustration of hawking here dates from the same era as my story.)
Any gaffs or mea culpas you want to fess up to before readers get their hands on the book? I know I always seem to find one after the book has gone to press. *sigh*
Somehow, my idea of Scotland included sprinkling nay and nae randomly throughout the text. (Well, not randomly. I thought I knew what I was doing.) But when the copy editor questioned my usage and my editor pointed out the confusion, I had an eleventh hour fire drill to go through the manuscript and correct or change my various and inconsistent usage. (Please don’t email to tell me I missed one!)
Thanks for being with us.
Thanks for having me back. I’d love to hear comments on the appeal of Scotland and what it represents to writers and readers. Any thoughts?
HIS BORDER BRIDE is a May release from the Harlequin Historical line. Blythe loves to have visitors at www.blythegifford.com or www.facebook.com/BlytheGifford.
Cover Art used by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises Limited. All rights reserved. ®and T are trademarks of Harlequin Enterprises Limited and/or its affiliated companies, used under license. Copyright 2010
LYTHE GIFFORD is the author of five medieval romances, known for their “superb” mixture of history and romance. She specializes in characters born on the wrong side of the royal blanket. With HIS BORDER BRIDE, she crosses the border and sets a story in Scotland for the first time, where the rules of chivalry don’t always apply.Here’s a brief description:
Royal Rogue: He is the bastard son of an English prince and a Scotswoman. A rebel without a country, he has darkness in his soul.
Innocent Lady: Daughter of a Scottish border lord, she can recite the laws of chivalry, and knows this man has broken every one. But she’s gripped by desire for him—could he be the one to unleash the dangerous urges she’s hidden until now?
Welcome Blythe! HIS BORDER BRIDE is your fifth book set in the fourteenth century, but the first you’ve set in Scotland. What caused you to cross the border?
A combination of creative and marketing reasons. Confession time: Scotland has never captured my imagination the way it does for so many, yet I know it is an auto-buy for many readers. Reason enough for an author to think seriously about a Scots story, but I refused to choose a setting strictly for mercenary reasons. But my hero in my last book, IN The MASTER’S BED, was from the Borders of northern England. As I learned his history, I became increasingly intrigued by this “third country,” where the Scots on one side of the line and the “Inglis” on the other had more in common with each other than either did with the rest of their countrymen. This was a Scotland that called to me, so I followed the muse across the border.
What sparked this specific story? Was it a character? An historical event? A scene you just couldn’t get out of your head?
I wanted to write a real “bad boy” hero. Since all my books have featured a character born on the wrong side of the [English] royal blanket, I wanted him to be the son of a really hated member of the royal family. I discovered that John of Eltham, a younger brother of Edward III, spent several months commanding the English troops in a Scottish invasion. He was rumored to have burned a church filled with people who had sought sanctuary there. I thought his son would be well and truly hated on the Scots side of the border, so that was my hero’s origin.
Did you have to do any major research for this book? Was it an easy transition?
Yes to the research. Not at all to the easy! It was much more difficult than I anticipated. Not the dates and places, but to learn the Scots mindset. I compare it to learning to writ
e left-handed. I’m a life-long Anglophile, so I was very comfortable with that world view. I didn’t know what I didn’t know until I got into the story and had to learn the “back story,” if you will, of a whole country! During this period, and for several hundred years to follow, Scotland was more closely allied with France than with England. That made a difference in their court, their culture, their law – and that’s not to mention the Celtic echoes. I’m very grateful to the “Write Scottish Romance” yahoo group of writers who walked me through so much of it.So how do you feel about Scotland now? Did you learn to love it?
Actually, yes, I did. The Scots, particularly on the Border, are a stubborn, independent, hard-headed, ornery, freedom loving lot. My kind of folks! In fact, my next book will be set on the Scottish border, too.
What do you like least about this period?
I’m very familiar with the 14th century by now, so again it was the location, not the era that challenged me. In my last few books, I’d incorporated various trappings of educated royalty: art, music, dance, university studies. Life was rough on the Scots Borders. Art and “culture” were scarce. But that actually lead me to some character development, as my heroine longed for the kind of culture and comfort that she would find, she thought, by marrying a French knight. (Not the hero!)
Did you stumble across anything really interesting that you didn’t already know?
I had no idea how pervasive falconry was until I started studying it. Falconry, or hawking, is the sport of hunting with trained birds of prey. Its origins are ancient and despite having written four medieval romances, I had not realized that between the 12th and the 17th centuries, virtually every noble and even some non-noblemen would have hunted as a matter of course.
The sport and the birds became a strong theme in the book, symbolic both of her emotional state and of the developing relationship. And while I began by feeling quite clever for using it as a simile for the love story, I quickly discovered I was not the first to think of it. Much of the art of the period uses the falcon in just this contest. Several centuries later, Shakespeare, in “The Taming of the Shrew” uses the falconer/falcon analogy for Petruchio and Kate’s battle of wills. My story is not a “taming of the shrew” premise, but it made me feel better to know I had chosen a metaphor that indeed applied to love, as well as sport.
Anything that constrained you or that you had to plot carefully around?
The life cycle of the falcon! Because it was such a thematic arc for the story, I had to know when falcons mated, how long it took for the eggs to hatch, when the chicks first flew and how they were trained to hunt with humans---that cycle set the framework for the story. (The illustration of hawking here dates from the same era as my story.)
Any gaffs or mea culpas you want to fess up to before readers get their hands on the book? I know I always seem to find one after the book has gone to press. *sigh*
Somehow, my idea of Scotland included sprinkling nay and nae randomly throughout the text. (Well, not randomly. I thought I knew what I was doing.) But when the copy editor questioned my usage and my editor pointed out the confusion, I had an eleventh hour fire drill to go through the manuscript and correct or change my various and inconsistent usage. (Please don’t email to tell me I missed one!)
Thanks for being with us.
Thanks for having me back. I’d love to hear comments on the appeal of Scotland and what it represents to writers and readers. Any thoughts?
HIS BORDER BRIDE is a May release from the Harlequin Historical line. Blythe loves to have visitors at www.blythegifford.com or www.facebook.com/BlytheGifford.
Cover Art used by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises Limited. All rights reserved. ®and T are trademarks of Harlequin Enterprises Limited and/or its affiliated companies, used under license. Copyright 2010
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