The Authorized Version

Donna: Sally Wright is back with us today to share more about the backgrounds of her wonderful Ben Reese Mysteries— all of which are now available in ebook format. Today Sally shares about a passion we share— Scotland— followed by an equally enchanting location— Oxford. Looking at these pictures can give you some idea why I'm such a big fan of the Ben Reese books— reading them is like taking a trip to some of my favorite places.

Sally: Typically, I start with some idea of a basic plot, or a situation I want to explore, or a couple of characters I’ve become obsessed with - and then I go where I think I want to place the book. It’s when I get there and begin exploring that the settings whisper and shout at me and tell me what to write.

In Scotland and England, where several of my books are placed, I’ve been helped immeasurably by Dr. David Munro, a long time family friend and geographer who was Director of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society for many years. He’s a renaissance man who’s vetted my books and answered endless questions with patience and aplomb.

In Pursuit And Persuasion (an Edgar Alan Poe Award Finalist in 2001), a tiny castle not far from Stonington on the east coast of Scotland (which was then a very eccentric B&B) became the major location of the book, because once I’d seen it, all sorts of plot ideas immediately leapt to mind. It also enabled me to use the ruins of Dunnottar Castle - one of my favorite places on earth, and just a few miles away - for the deadly denouement that couldn’t have been anything like it is if I hadn’t used Dunnottar.

                        (Only entrance to

                          Dunnottar Castle)

David Munro found that B&B for me, and the other country house too near Aberdeen that became another important location. There, a deliberately neglected walled garden owned by a volatile neighbor, and the grave of the real dog Vaida from Scot’s ill-fated voyage, took me by surprise and became part of the story. It was seeing them with my own eyes that told me how to use them and write a plot around them.

I managed to squeeze in Oxford too, where our daughter studied for a term. I opened the book in a tiny hotel I’ve always wished I’d stayed in, then used Magdalen College and Addison’s walk, and bookstores I’ve loved.

Still, Ohio and Malysia and Woodstock, New York, are dovetailed into the story, Scotland’s Isle of Lismore too, with its ferry ride across, and a lovely home on the River Tay up by Dunkeld where I amused a roomful of tea drinking guests who watched me being chased across the valley by a large herd of cows when that home was a hotel.

It’s the writer being there in person, negotiating serendipitous events, that gives a book a sense of reality. It makes the difference between a scene that lives, and one that lies in stillborn sentences stuck upon a page.

At least I believe that’s generally true, though the best may do better.

Sally Wright, a 2001 Edgar Finalist, has studied rare books, early explorers, painting restoration, WWII-tech teams, the Venona Code, and more, to write her university-archivist-ex-WWII-Scout books about Ben Reese, who's based on a real person. Like most authors, Sally's been obsessed with books all her life and considers Jane Austen, C.S. Lewis and Dorothy L. Sayers among the ones that've influenced her most.