A Summer in Amber Revisited

 

Recently, while thinning out my collection of bookmarks in my browser. I looked in on one of  my sources for the setting for A Summer in Amber. I set the story in a real locale in Scotland and on one site that I still had a bookmark for, I found an aerial photo of the actual estate which, in some multiverse possible future, will become Lord Lemonte's highland estate known as Glen Lonon, Seeing this inspired me to briefly revisit Glen Lonon and that summer in amber in this post.

Let's begin with the map of Glen Lonon I made, with an insert for the estate.

Below here is the aerial photo covering that insert, that of the estate as it exists today, The Lodge is in the foreground, and you can see the garden of Hidden Garden, and a hint of the house itself to the right of the garden. In the distance, you can just catch a glimpse of the stables, near which lies the Groom's Cottage, in the story. These days, the house that I call the Lodge is available to be rented for your family's highland holiday, should you care to experience a slice of a summer in amber yourself.

To put the view above in context, here is a the Google Earth view of the estate, as it is today. 

Though I visited the highlands of Scotland some 50 odd years ago, in writing the story, I was content to explore the actual locales as they exists today using Google's street view. This method did not, of course, take me onto the estate itself. For that, I had to rely on the satellite view above to construct my version of Glen Lonon and made additions as needed, like the Groom's Cottage where Sandy Say stayed during his visit. In the time honored tradition, I fictionalized the names of places, though I think I left enough clues in their descriptions that would allow anyone interested in the real Glen Lonon and Glen Maig to play detective in order to discover and explore them yourself, if only on Google street view.

For more information on the story itself and how it came to be, I have posted several pieces in which I talk about the writing of this novel, including a collection of the paintings I made of the locale. They include:

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/6896160652380675241/4794217157246494780

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/6896160652380675241/6670472666212003150

I reread A Summer in Amber less than a year ago, and I was happy to discover that even though I began writing the story some 15 years ago, it hasn't become a story that I am embarrassed to have written. While I would like to think I've gotten better at this writing thing, I do try to eliminate "ands" and run on sentences these days, I must say that I don't think that my writing style has changed very much, for better or worse. Perhaps that is the curse and blessing of writing in one's 60's - by that time, you know what you like.

And here is the a peek at my current version for the cover for the omnibus version of A Summer in Amber and Some Day Days that is coming later in the summer. Stay tuned!