First Fridays with the Crew - Tartan Day

What's special about April 6? It's Tartan Day—a celebration of Scottish heritage that's also held in Australia on July 1st. But why those two dates?

• On April 6, 1320, the Declaration of Arbroath was signed declaring Scottish independence in a letter to Pope John XXII. 
• July 1 is the anniversary of the repeal of the 1747 Act of Proscription that banned the wearing of tartan. 

Where is Tartan Day celebrated?

• Tartan Day originated in Canada in the mid-1980s after being proposed at a meeting of the Federation of Scottish Clans in Nova Scotia. 
• In Australia in 1989, the Scottish Australian Heritage Council began encouraging Australians to wear tartan on July 1 to celebrate Scottish heritage and raise funds for charitable causes such as drought assistance. 
• In the USA in 1997, the Scottish Coalition USA in Sarasota Florida worked toward seeing a Tartan Day recognized. In 2002, a parade that included 8,250 pipers and drummers was led by Sean Connery through the streets of New York. 
• In Scotland, the first Tartan Day festival was held on April 6, 2004. 
• In Argentina (where they have the largest community of Scottish descendants outside the English-speaking world), the first Tartan Day parade was held in Buenos Aires on April 6, 2006. 

Sean Connery with members of the USAF Reserve Pipes & Drums.
Tartan Day, Washington D.C.

What do people do on Tartan Days?

• Events include parades of pipe bands, Highland dancing, and other Scottish-themed activities. 
• And I bet there's also a lot of reminiscing about the Scottish stories that we love. 

Read on to see the Get Lost in Story crews' favorite Scottish stories, heroes, heroines & more! 

~ * ~

Jacqui Nelson 

In The Last of the Mohicans, cultures collide along with love and war in the Adirondack Mountains in 1757. The French enlist the Huron. The Iroquois side with the British. And Hawkeye and his adoptive Mohican father and brother are caught in the middle…along with two Scottish sisters, Alice and Cora Munro.

Oh, Cora Munro - what a character and a performance by Madeleine Stowe! Cora speaks her mind, she misjudges Hawkeye, she apologies, she’s miffed by his response to her apology, she surprises him by pulling a musket from her skirt pocket because he wisely advised a soldier traveling with her to pick up a weapon after they survived a brutal attack earlier that day. She’s smart and adaptive. She’s brave and protective - not only of her loved ones but strangers too. She judges people by what they do, not by who they say they are - or might one day be when life is easier. And she’s Scottish :)

What else is Scottish about The Last of the Mohicans movie? Its beautiful music. The main theme song was taken from the tune The Gael by Scottish singer-songwriter Dougie MacLean. I also love his song Caledonia (Latin for Scotland). CLICK HERE to listen to Dougie MacLean sing Caledonia, or CLICK HERE to listen to The Gael played by Royal Scots Dragoon Guards (and see some lovely pictures of Scotland too).

Read an excerpt from my novella Choosing Bravery set in Oregon 1868 with my Scots-Canadian hero, Lachlan Bravery, and my French-American heroine, Élodie Rousseau.

Avril Tremayne

I have to give a shout out to Clandara, by Evelyn Anthony. I can't remember when I first read this book, but I know that every time I re-read it the power of it is every bit as breathtaking. It's really stood the test of time for me, and that's saying something, given it was first published in the 1960s.

Katharine Fraser and James MacDonald fall in love when they meet outside their native Scotland - they would never have done so if they'd met at home, because their families have been feuding for hundreds of years. Despite both families being furiously opposed to their relationship, a betrothal is finally wring from both families - only for a heartbreaking betrayal to tear Katharine and James away from each other.

This is a brutally passionate story of a love that will not die, no matter what the hero and heroine put each other through. The love plays out against the turbulent backdrop of the Jacobite rising of the 1740s, and it is completely engrossing. I think I'm going to go off and read it again right now!

Amanda McIntyre

My first encounter with a Scottish Highlander came in the form of Christina Skye's Roan MacLeod, the guardian ghost of Draycott Abbey. (*insert sigh) In CHRISTMAS KNIGHT,(c.1998) tis true that poor Hope O'Hara never had a chance-nor did this lasses heart.

On my keeper shelf, I have read it a number of times, like a breath of fresh air, the descriptive scenery and deeply emotional and flawed characters renew what I so love about reading--why visiting Scotland remains at the top of my bucket list.

 Skye weaves in the magic and history of Scotland and raises the bar on the epitome of chivalry, honor and what it means to be a hero.

Other fav books featuring Scottish heroes include:
The  Great Scott by Donna Kauffman
The Madness of Lord Ian MacKenzie  by Jennifer Ashley

Movies:
Highlander
Rob Roy


MacIntyre DNA:
Recently we  did the DNA testing on one  of the ancestry sites and it resulted in my husband being more from Irish roots, while mine were decidedly more Scottish roots.

I chose McIntyre as my pen, it's a family name derived from clan MacIntyre-which Americanized became McIntire on my grandmother Glenna's side. Tartans vary from ancient to modern, but I've always loved this version of MacIntyre tartan.

Learn more at the Scottish registry of Tartans

Lizbeth Selvig

In all honesty my first introduction into the world of Scottish fiction was the television show The Highlander. I had some serious crushing over Adrian Paul going on at that time. It was weird, wild, and kind of wonderful despite all the beheadings, and since I'm totally a contemporary girl when it comes to books and movies, it fit my preferences, too. But unlike most of my fellow authors and readers, I didn't binge on historical Scottish Highland romances. It wasn't until I met Patience Griffin at reader event and heard about her contemporary Scottish romances that I had to try one. It was just darling--the story of Cait Macleod, a disillusioned reporter returning to her small home town of Gandiegow, Scotland, and Graham Buchannan, a movie star who retreats to the town for anonymity and has no love of reporters. Perfect conflict! From the moment I finished the book, I knew I wanted to write one of my own--but I had no moral authority to  think I could pull of a Scottish novel.

Then a year ago I took a walking trip in Scotland and got to know 100-miles of the Highlands up close and personally--rain and all. My story ideas flowed and I'm now working on a new series! My moral authority then showed up in my Ancestry DNA test where, to my Scandinavian surprise, I learned I had 1% Scottish blood. I am definitely taking what authority I can get! Suffice it to say I'm now binging on all books contemporary Scottish. I'm hooked on Scotland and all the beautiful tartans, and everything that comes
along with having fallen in love with that beautiful, wild country!

~ * ~ 

Hope you'll share your favorites in the comments. 

We'd love to hear what you love about the Scots! 

Getting Naughty with Avril Tremayne

I’ll share a secret. Getting Naughty was originally pitched something like this: 

Teague Hamilton is the ultimate good boy – a clean cut, unflappable lawyer. Every element of his life has been chosen with even-keel confidence, including pretty, polished Lydia Laverton with whom he’s trying to fall in love. When his old college friend Romy, a restaurant consultant, asks him to help one of her clients cut through the red tape to open an eatery in New York, things don’t go according to plan for the very first time in his life.

Hana Larsson is a Danish dynamo, a girl who won’t take “no” for an answer and doesn’t expect to hear it. At their first meeting, Teague explains a few things she can't do and she promptly sacks him. Neither of them can understand how they end up having sex in Teague’s office, but from that moment, Teague’s tame life seems suddenly unbearable – especially when she dares him to greater and greater wildness.

The book that actually emerged had only one of these elements in it: Teague Hamilton is definitely the ultimate good boy, clean cut lawyer, whose life is pretty well prescribed for him. Other than that... Well, there's no sign of Lydia. And instead of being set in New York, the book ended up at Bondi Beach, Sydney. There's no Danish chef – the heroine, Frankie, is an Aussie, and dances in a gentleman’s club. And most importantly, Teague and Frankie knew (and wanted) each other ten years ago but he was never game enough to take a walk on the wild side with her. And then they meet again ten years later...

I don't really know how the changeover from story A to story B happened, but my best guess is that my subconscious was busily wresting the story from me from the moment I sat down to write book 1 in the series, Getting Lucky. You see, I wrote a reference in that book to Teague almost drowning once upon a time while participating in the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race. So risky, with such an imperfect result - most un-Teague-like! And then I started penning book 2 in the series, Getting Even, and I started to understand why he entered that race. Teague is the lighthouse in his circle of friends - calm, stalwart, supportive, guiding his volatile friends when they're adrift in turbulent seas aboard rickety boats. He doesn't precisely want to be in one of those rickety boats, but he sure wants to come down from the lantern room and leave the lighthouse to get out in the elements from time to time, even if it's only to watch the sea from the cliff's edge. Once I knew that about him, I saw that he didn’t need a woman to fall in love with his hidden depths; he needed a woman who liked him exactly the way he was - a woman who would let him decide for himself whether to stay in the lighthouse, walk along the cliff, get out on the water - or do all three! And suddenly there was Frankie, already an off-stage character in both Getting Lucky and Getting Even, and she was waiting for him to turn up at her house in Bondi…

Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia

 Here’s a little excerpt from Chapter 1, after Teague has arrived at Frankie’s to deliver something from their mutual friend Matt (the hero of Getting Lucky). Frankie has just propositioned Teague and he’s having a hard time believing she means it!

He frowned like he really did not get it!

    “Teague!” she cried. “Seriously!”

He looked behind him, as though he thought she must be talking to someone else even though she’d just addressed him by his damn name.

 “I’m talking about you having a fling while you’re here.”

“I don’t have flings.”

“Oh, I know that, Teague! I tried hard enough to get you to have a fling with me the whole time I was in DC! But now... Well, now you’re here, and I never thought you would be, so I’m making one more attempt. And you can say no, but I hope you don’t, because I think I can help you not be miserable, or at least give you a respite from it while—while you’re here. In Sydney. So. That’s all.”

Silence. Stillness.

A rush of heartbeats later, with her words hanging in the air, he shook his head. “No,” he said.

“Well!” She blushed again, brought both hands up to her face. “This is embarrassing.”

“No, I mean—” He made a sound—like a cross between a sigh and a huff. “You said something about meeting your friends, so I thought you must mean I should have fling with one of... But—” Slight head shake. “Do you mean a fling with you? No. You can’t mean that.”

“That’s funny, Teague, because I’m pretty sure what I’m doing right at this moment, sitting here at some godawful hour of the morning when I’m far from at my best, is offering myself to you straight up, since you’ve never been able to take a damn hint.”
 

Buy the book HERE!

I'm giving away a signed print copy of book 2 in the series, Getting Even. It's a hottie, so approach with caution. To go into the draw,  follow me somewhere! (eg, like Amazon or Bookbub or my 18+ Facebook page Tremayne Untamed). The links for all of the options are HERE, where you can tick off which option you chose and leave me your email address. Meanwhile, I'd love to hear if you prefer sweet or sexy romance - and if you've read any DAREs!