I’ve done it at last! It’s finished. So sorry to all my followers and regular readers that this blog has been quiet for so long but I am breaking my silence right now. You see I’ve just put the final full stop at the end of my first novel Sky Dance. I am elated, no more being chained to a desk wondering what it’s like outside. No more staring at a screen wondering how the hell I’m going to make sense out of the chaos in my head. No more slumping gown on my settee and wondering if I can ever finish the book.

It’s done.

And now, oddly, I feel a little sad. No longer will I sit in Glen Bothy and listen to old Angus’ tales of mountain heroics or hear young Rory spinning us his dreams about just how wonderful the Highland landscape could be if we let the wolf roam free. I won’t be able to listen to Donald, the old ghillie, talking about how his ancestors were cleared from the land. I won’t sit beside the fire in the great hall with Lord Purdey while he rants about the damage these “bloody vegans” are trying to do to his ancient way of life based on blood sports. I’ll not be able crouch silently behind a bush and watch as Delila, the young female lynx, lies in wait for a careless roe deer.

I’ve lived, drunk, walked and talked with all these folk and more over the last eight months and, now that the book is finished and off to my wonderful editor, Alex Roddie, I miss them. They are in a bothy somewhere sharing a dram or two and a yarn or picking their way up a highland mountain watching the clouds boil up over the horizon.

I followed their journey and, in so doing, made a journey myself. Sky Dance is my third book, I learnt a lot from my previous two, The Last Hillwalker and Bothy Tales but this book has moved me on as a writer much further than I thought was possible. Somewhere between the first and second draft I changed. I suddenly found I could do things I couldn’t do before. I found my writing taking off and going in unexpected directions. There were times when the story seemed to possess a life all of its own, times when I wasn’t sure who was writing it as the words tumbled on to the paper. In short, somewhere in the making of this book I became a writer.

A writer doesn’t work with words he works with ideas and emotions. Sometimes, when I struggle to get the emotion I want on to the page I write it over and over again and still I know it’s not right. Then something will happen, from out of nowhere a phrase comes, then it’s like the words pour out of me and suddenly it’s there and I have tears in my eyes. At moments like that, I know why I write.

Sky Dance is a novel set in the Highland hills I love. It comes from the same world I travelled with my two previous book, a world my readers will know too and have shared my journeys. Sky Dance differs from my first two books in that it was born from anger. My rage at seeing what we are doing to the Highland landscape. These hills are ravaged by sporting estates that cram them with deer so rich man can soot them. Our hills bear the scars of grouse moors where the heather is burnt, predators are poisoned, shot or snared by game keepers whose remit is to produce a surplus of grouse so their employers and their friend can blast them from the air. They call Hen Harriers, stoats and weasels vermin, I call them wildlife. Once when I looked at these Highland hills I saw a landscape filled with natural beauty, now I see a scarred blood soaked desert.

It could be so different. The forests could return and our hills could breath again and begin to push back climate change. The forests could be filled with lynx, wild cat and wolves. We have been given a wonderful treasure and we are squandering it. In Sky Dance I have tried to raise some of these issues and to make my readers aware of what is happening in the hills. I hope there will be some laughs along the way and perhaps some tears too but I think I’ve written something that will change a few minds along the way. Sky Dance will be published later this year by Vertebrate Publishing a company full of great people who are all as passionate as I am about the outdoors. The title comes from the mating display of the male Hen Harrier, a spectacular aerobatic dance in the sky. The Hen Harrier is a bird that has been driven almost to extinction in England by the practice of driven grouse shooting and in Scotland is far more scarce than it should be as a result of the practice.  Find out more

So, at least until my next book starts hammering on the back door of my imagination, I’ll be back wandering these wonderful hills and bringing you some little snippets from the places I go, the people I meet and the creatures I happen upon. There’ll be wet feet, tired legs and bleak days but I’m sure I’ll also find a little magic and a few laughs along the way. Why not sign up for my blog and come with me on my Highland wanderings. I’m off to the magical Island of Mull tomorrow, so get your boots on, pack your rucksack and come with me. It’ll be worth the walk, I promise you that.

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