Hi Margaret, thank you so much for joining me and inviting Novel Kicks onto your blog tour. Can you tell me about your novel, Highland Fling on the Whisky Trail and what inspired it?

Whisky production is a big thing in the area I live. There are two distilleries quite close to me and even more the further north you travel. I read an article about a family run distillery in the highlands and how they’d been forced to diversify and adapt to keep up with larger companies.

It sparked the idea but I didn’t initially see it as a story in itself. The first book in the Glenbriar series Stolen Kisses at the Loch View Hotel is where I first used the idea for the whisky business.

As that story developed, the idea for Highland Fling on the Whisky Trail developed too. The main characters have both appeared as side characters in previous books and they fitted perfectly into this story.

What’s your typical writing day like? Do you have any rituals and from idea to final draft, how long does it take you to write a book?

My writing days are on Monday and Tuesday. I pretty much have to stick to that as I have another job the rest of the week. Once I get writing and get in the zone, I can become immersed for hours! I don’t have any rituals but I do follow a plan for each book.

Usually the better planned they are, the quicker I can write them. The fastest first draft I ever wrote was seventy thousand words in 6 days! But normally it’s nowhere near as quick. That was a very happy fluke. My first drafts usually take about two months to write and then I spend at least that again, sometimes more, on editing.

What research do you usually undertake and how do you know when you’ve done enough?

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