I am so pleased to be welcoming Sheila McClure to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for her novel, ScotLander. Hi Sheila, can you tell me about your novel, Scotlander and what inspired it? 

Hello and yes, of course! I used to be an entertainment reporter in Los Angeles and then I moved back to the UK and met and married a Scotsman (whose eyes are remarkably similar to someone’s in the book) and now we live on a farm where the learning curve was STEEP.

I was getting regular queries as to when I was going to write about us and, rather than writing about our actual lives, I thought it’d be fun to write a variation on a theme. When I was thinking about it Outlander was (and still is) huuuuuge. I had never really watched it and had a friend who was a superfan. I think superfans are amazing.

So I decided to combine a few ideas into this one madcap adventure about a fully immersive Jacobean experience and, of course…falling in love when you’re out of your depth.

What’s your typical writing day like? 

I’m an early to bed early to rise kind of gal (clearly destined to be a farmer, LOL). I usually get up around five or six and go straight to the keyboard. I write until about lunchtime and then it’s over to the farm. The only variation is if the dogs or cows need seeing to and then I do whatever needs to be done with them first and then head to the keyboard.

From idea to final draft, how long does it take you to write a book? 

Oh, gosh. That’s tough to quantify. I have a billion ideas all the time, but I would say three to four months is my usual stint on a book. Saying that, I’m writing a couple of crime books right now and they are taking longer!

What songs would make up a playlist for your book? 

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