An Author’s Ghostly Encounter … Believe or Not?
Millions are fans of Diana Gabaldon’s popular Outlander series, but few know that Gabaldon’s fictional Castle Leoch was inspired by the real Castle Leod in the Scottish Highlands. The two sisters who lived there at the turn of the 20th century were among the most talked-about women of their era.
Lady Sibell Lilian Mackenzie was a spiritualist, believer in reincarnation, and popular romantic novelist. Her younger sister, Lady Constance, was well-known as a swimming champion and big-game hunter who scandalized British society with her public displays of barefoot dancing in the theaters of London, Paris and New York.
When I first decided to write a novel based on the fascinating lives of the Mackenzie sisters, I knew that I wanted to relate their story as a first-person narrative, but I was conflicted about the narrator. Should I choose Sibell or Constance? My selection was especially critical since the sisters had opposing viewpoints on virtually every subject.
Still in the process of contemplating this dilemma, I awoke one night a little past midnight to see, in the semi-darkness, what looked like a figure in a hooded red cloak hovering a few feet from my bed. I stared at the odd apparition for a while before finally deciding, quite rationally, that it was only a trick of shadow and light. The next day, I took my first look at one of several romantic novels penned by Sibell Mackenzie, Countess of Cromartie, which I had ordered online from an antique book store in the UK. I had scarcely begun reading before I ran across this paragraph: “It was a glorious warm night. I remember every trivial thing I did that evening. I ran up to my room and put on the first cloak I found hanging there, a scarlet one with a hood.”
Whether or not you believe that my experience of the night before was a ghostly encounter, it was at least a peculiar coincidence. And as I tend to look at such occurrences as “signs” of one sort or another, I ultimately chose Sibell as my novel’s narrator!
In my next post, I’ll share with you what I’m reading now and some of my current book club favorites.
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“Heartbreaking and redemptive, inspired by a true story of two very different, equally passionate sisters who were both destined to forge new paths for women in a tumultuous time. Bernard’s tale is richly imagined and thoroughly engrossing, and will have readers quickly turning the pages.”
MEGAN CHANCE, bestselling author of A Splendid Ruin
