Featured Interview With Blair McDowell
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
My early childhood was spent on the Outer Banks Islands of North Carolina, where wild horses thrive among the sand dunes. I loved the sound of the surf and the wind whipping up the sand, and the scent of long needle pine trees. I wanted nothing more than to live there forever. But life happens. I had to go to school. And everything after that changed.
I had a long and interesting career as a university professor in Canada, during which time I wrote six widely used professional books. Then I retired. One of my first thoughts was “I can write anything I want to now”.
So I now run a B&B on Canada’s spectacular west coast, in a house surrounded by hundred-year old cedars, looking out to the Strait of Georgia. Deer consider our garden to be their salad bowl, and the occasional brown bear wanders by on his way to the surrounding woods. During the summer months, people come to stay with us and enjoy the beauty and serenity of our setting.
Then in the fall, we take off, usually for Europe. Italy is our favorite destination, although I fell in love with Scotland when I was there to do the research for my latest book, The McInnis Affair.
Wherever I am my laptop is with me and I spend a part of every day writing.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I was able to read before I went to school and I’ve been writing since I could first hold a pencil. The first book I remember reading was Millions and Billions and Trillions of Cats. I read it so often I think I memorized it. The first story I wrote was called Twins in Double Trouble. My fourth grade teacher was not impressed, but that didn’t discourage me. I always loved to write, and as a teenager I wrote plays that were performed for both my school and my church.
Then came the academic writing. I enjoyed that too, but not with the same enthusiasm I felt for fiction.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I read in every genre, but I must admit to a preference to historical novels. I particularly enjoy books set in the eighteen hundreds, the post Napoleonic Era.
Who inspires me? Dianna Gabaldon. Her descriptive prose is gorgeous and her thousand pages of the first Outlander book are amazing.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
The MacInnes Affair is set in Scotland in the past and in the present. Lara MacInnes, on holiday in Scotland discovers the diary of a woman who loved Lara’s own very-great grandfather. With the help of a handsome highlander, Iain Glendenning, Lara decides to trace the path of this long ago star-crossed romance. Their research unearths mystery and murder. Finding the truth a hundred and fifty years later proves to be a torturous and frustrating trail. To complicate matters, Lara and Iain fall in love. Can they discover the truth and put an end forever to the feud between the MacInnes and Glendenning Clans that has persisted since the Battle of Culloden?
I spent a month In Scotland researching the sites I used in this book. The National Portrait Gallery and the Hall of Records in Edinburgh were important to my story, as were the several “castle-hotels” we visited.
I fell in love with the highland cattle, with their shaggy red coats and their long curved horns. I made them central to my story.
I listen for dialect and tried to capture an authentic Scottish speech for my Scottish characters.
I do not believe I could have written this book without that on-site research.
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