Craignavar - My Novel
It was 1999 when I had an idea. I was thinking about random obscure things as I am wont to do, and this time I was trying to come up with a place to hide stolen goods. You know, say if I stole a painting like the Raeburn portrait of Mrs. Robert Scott Moncrieff. Not saying I would, but a good detective should probably turn up at my house if it ever goes missing. Anyhow, if I had stolen goods where would I stash them until it was safe. Then I thought that wouldn’t it be cool if Brigadoon was a real thing. If you don’t know it Brigadoon is an old MGM musical (not a very good one admittedly) about a Scottish town that appears once every 100 years. Looking into the town I found that it was supposedly based on a German short story called Germelshausen. Not that you need my literary analysis, but this was a much better story than Brigadoon where Germelshausen is a cursed village allowed to appear only once every century. Germelshausen was itself based on the Tibetan myth of Shambhala or later renamed to Shangri La, a utopian village located in the unexplored regions of the Himalayas.
Regardless of the origin, a town that appeared for one day every 100 years would be a brilliant place to stash a painting, or maybe money or perhaps some jewellery. That set me off wondering if anything of great value was ever stolen about a century ago. Maybe an unsolved mystery, and history never seems to disappoint as low and behold I ran across the theft of the Irish Crown Jewels. What a rip roaring mystery that is, I’d encourage you to give it a perusal, but the best part is that it is still unsolved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Crown_Jewels
So if the Irish crown jewels were stolen in 1907 and hidden in a town that only appeared for one day every century, where exactly would this town be? Well as it turns out there is a gorgeous little abandoned (or is it laying dormant until 6 July 2107 having appeared in 2007?) township in Glen Almond called Craignavar. These days it amounts to the crumbling footprint of a small town in the Scottish Highlands, but back in it’s hay day it was bustling with the activity of a handful of families
This is all well and good, but it begs the question, how exactly can a town appear for a single day every 100 years? As it turns out I am in a very unique position of having a background in Scottish History. So if a rip roaring story about a real live Brigadoon was going to be written I might have some notable skills. Now there are two major ways in which history is written. The first is to take a subject and look at it from a new angle. A good example would be to re-write a history of World War II from the position that Hitler was actually Jewish. Perhaps he was very upset when his mother took away his dreidel when he was young? Oy vey! The second route of history is to take a gap in our historical knowledge and attempt to fill it up with new research. Now this was my route of history when I studied Renaissance Tower Houses in North East Scotland. If you’re ever interested there is a brilliant thesis sitting in the British Library about the subject: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?did=3&uin=uk.bl.ethos.521681. (I’ve just discovered that the British Library misspelled the title of my thesis. What wankers!) However, what my history degree gave me was a broad overview of the gaps that exist within the historical record. And beyond that a good basic knowledge of the weird and wonderful events that have helped to shape the direction of Scotland. And knowing these gaps and writing a fiction you could obviously fill those gaps up with anything you wanted and you couldn’t be proven historically inaccurate. It is the perfect evil plan!
The British Library misspelled the title of my thesis. What wankers!
So faeries. What better way to explain a village that appears once every century than faeries. And not those cutesy faeries that fly around and grant wishes and such like. I mean the evil little bastards that faeries were until Disney got their hands on them. I could write a story on the struggle between the faeries and humans that has lasted millennia only to have seen the faerie world locked away at the beginning of the seventeenth century in retribution for killing the real father of King James VI. I mean, why else have the kind of disappeared from daily life? Perhaps when faerie-land was locked away faeries were trapped not only inside, but also outside with the humans. And it has been those faeries that have been attempting to unlock the gates to their homeland through actions such as the theft of the Irish Crown Jewels and gifts of technology (faeries were always more advanced than us) it also explains why until the beginning of the 20thcentury we were so slow to develop.
The book while taking me a bit longer than necessary to write, has been a lot of fun. One of the best side effects is that in the beginning I gave all of my characters names of people that were close to me or in my family. Then in a macabre cathartic exercise I can kill them. The whole point of story is to give a character a desire and then make it impossible for them to get it. Do they overcome the obstacles? Or do they die horrific deaths? So yeah, I had to scale back some of the deaths and murders. I was quickly becoming Ian Rankin.
The fun hasn’t stopped me writing though. It was just never prioritised. I’m trying to say that I’m not a modern equivalent of George R. R. Martin. My current rough draft is sitting at 80,000 words which is about 80% of a novel length draft. And while I was listless a bit in the beginning I think I’ve hit on the structure that I’m going to use. This is important as I started the story jumping around in time and it got way too confusing way too quick. I’ve settled on a straight forward telling of the tale chronologically starting in the year 143 (I’m not missing a number there).
Going forward in 2021 I’m going to prioritise the book again and try and get this massive undertaken to a position where I can finish the story and complete it’s editing (at least by me and a few beta readers). Then on to the next great adventure of attempting to get the book published. Literary agents, publishers, query letters, drafts sent in the mail all sound like enormous fun. There is a long tradition in the process of writing a book of going through these steps and while I understand my chances of getting published are slim I will be excited for the process none the less.
And who knows, I might even get an agent, or even get published. I’ll get to see the real live object of a book with my name on it (thesis didn’t count if the British Library can’t even get the title right). I’ll get to be a prima donna and swan into book shops wearing a scarf and demanding tepid water and dry toast before I can sign books. I’d be insufferable, can’t wait!