The Reiver's Cub by Laura Strickland
I am happy to have award-winning author Laura Strickland back with me today. Just two weeks ago, The Reiver’s Cub one best in its category (Historical Scottish) at the InD’Tale RONE awards! WOO-WHO!
Welcome, Laura.
What was your inspiration for The Reiver’s Cub?
Interestingly, I became fascinated with a British television series called Long Lost Family. It was fascinating to follow the stories of parents and children separated at birth, who nevertheless longed for one another. Most of the stories, though, were about mothers separated from their children. What about the fathers? I began to wonder, and my imagination took me back to historical Scotland, and the feuds that took place on the borders between Scotland and England. What if a father and the son he’d never met wound up on opposite sides? This story is the answer to that question.
What was the hardest part of the story to write/research?
The thing I found most challenging, and most confusing, were the family names. The Scottish Borders, back in the late 1500s, were a seething mass of raids, battles and blood ties. Keeping the parties straight and determining who was fighting whom at any given moment was a task. Many of the names, such as Thomson, survive in both Scottish and English families to this very day.
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Excerpt…
Maxwell gave Callum no chance to reply. With a rattle, he set his helm on the wooden settle that flanked the fireplace and quite deliberately laid his sword beside it.
“Surely, mistress, we can discuss this in a civilized fashion. Are we no’ civilized folk, after all?”
She shifted her stance, the better to face him. Many the stories she’d heard of this man over the years. On that day, the day she’d fled through those dark passageways with Dexter, she’d not seen his face. But she had an eyeful now, right enough.
Merciless, folk called him. Any account of his past deeds would also brand him so. But he did not look it.
He had a strong face with high, slanted cheekbones and a jaw clean of beard. He held his lips now in a half smile and kept his expression pleasant. But the dark brows hovered in an incipient scowl. A face like a rainy day, she decided—sunshine one moment and storm the next. His dark hair, very nearly black, surprisingly held a few threads of silver. And his eyes—
Ah, but he could not disguise the expression that lay there, and she beheld the truth of his reputation and, quite possibly, the origin of the name he’d been given. The eyes of a wolf they were, tawny gold and brimming with unfettered threat.
“Civilized?” she echoed incredulously, and her hand moved unpreventably to her dirk. “Both you and I, Master Maxwell, know that is no’ true.”