Whiskey for Tea

I have such a cool concept for my new book! Or at least, I think it’s cool. Do you?

Note: Whiskey is spelled whisky in Scotland

First, the book is about a girl from Oklahoma (surprise!) who goes to Aberdeen Scotland to visit her oil patch father and gets lost in the fog and ends up back in 1867 Scotland. As you might guess, the story has many more twists and turns to get to this point.

One is that the main character’s family has a legend that they are descended from King Edward Vll through an illegitimate son. And, by the way, King Edward Vll is often known as “Edward the Caresser” or just Bertie. He was Queen Victoria’s son and kind of in the same circumstances as Prince Charles is today. He grew old waiting to be king.

Anyway, the royal family has a castle (Balmoral) near Aberdeen, so you can see where this is going, right? In September of 1867, Queen Victoria was a widow. She was at Balmoral, and she may have been married to her “Highland Servant,” John Brown. Or she may not have been. They may have been lovers. Or not. He may have been her spiritualist medium and have helped her communicate with her dead husband, Albert. Or he may not have.

One thing historians are pretty sure of is that he introduced Queen Vicky to having a shot of whiskey with her tea when she was out water colouring around Scotland. That’s where the name of the book comes from. It’s going to be Whiskey for Tea.  

I don’t want to get into all the details here, but the book will be the first in a series and will be in the form of a journal, with hand-drawn maps and sketches of the times.  I think it’s going to be great fun to write and illustrate.  What do you think?