I mentioned weather, a couple of posts back, as an example of how the real world shows up in my books. Just thought I might as well come clean on another shocking case of plagiarism. Castle Kolglas, as described in Winterbirth, is a real place. Sort of. It certainly started off as a real place: Castle Tioram, on the west coast of Scotland. One of my favourite ruins, now sadly threatened by terminal collapse. I tweaked it quite a bit - I added a whole town next to it, apart from anything else - but that's the place, really. Deep down.

Sadly, I can't find a good, free-to-use pic of it to insert here - or can't find one quickly enough, since I'm in a bit of a hurry - but while searching for one I found somewhere else you can go to view this splendid castle in all its glory, and get a handy biography of its stony life as a bonus, so I'll just point you there instead: the rather excellent website of the Moidart Local History Group.

Labels: Scotland