A Special Place in My Heart

I’ve published three books and written several others, but, so far, none of them are as special to me as Remember My Royalty. This book holds a special place in my heart for two reasons. It combines my love of Texas and her history with my Scottish ancestry.

While I wasn’t born in Texas, my family and I moved here before I was two, so I don’t remember living anywhere else. And when I was still quite young, we began exploring the state we now called home. I was seven years old the first time I visited the Alamo, and I remember being in awe as I stepped through the doors into the dim interior of the chapel. Though I’ve been back to the Alamo many times since then, I’ve never lost that feeling of awe of being at that historic place where so many brave men laid down their lives for the cause of freedom, a freedom that I enjoy today.

In high school, my mom taught a detailed class on Texas history. That further cemented my love for the history of the amazing state where I live. As did traveling to so many historic sites, some connected with our war for independence, others connected to more recent events.

When it came time for me to write Remember My Royalty, I got to pour that love of Texas history into my writing, to pull from the information I had already learned and add to it with other sources.

And that is one reason why this story is so special to me.

The Other Reason

I have quite a lot of Scottish blood, and I have connections with many different clans. One of those clans is Clan McGregor. My last name, Griggs, is a name that was taken by some of the McGregors when their name was outlawed by the king in the early 1600s. Today, Griggs is included in the list of names that guarantees you access to the clan, unlike some of the other names where you must show documentation that your ancestors were connected to the clan.

One of the main historical characters in my story is John McGregor. He was a Scottish immigrant, a bagpiper, and he fought in the Texas Revolution. When I learned about such an interesting figure in the revolution being from one of my clans, I knew I needed to write a story about him. I created the three main characters of the story, Hamish, Catriona, and Ealasaid McGregor, the nephew and nieces of John McGregor.

As I wrote the story, I enjoyed including all sorts of Scottishness in the story. When the characters are speaking English (their first language is Gaelic), they speak with a brogue, using words such as ay, nae, verra, and toon. At the beginning of the story, we see Scottish landscapes and wildlife. There are Scottish foods mentioned throughout the story: tablet, clootie dumpling, nettle soup, and oat porridge, among other foods. There is considerable Scottish literature mentioned, both poetry and works of fiction.

I also enjoyed inserting little bits of things connected with my other Scottish clans into the story as well. I have connections with Clan Macleod, so I included the pipe tune “Mrs. Macleod of Raasay” in the story. I am part of Clan Graham, whose motto is “Do not forget.” So I worked our motto into the story as well as including the song “Bonnie Dundee.” And, though I would have used him anyway, another historical Scottish character in my story has the name of Wilson, and there are Wilsons from Scotland in my ancestry as well.

It was such fun being able to incorporate little bits of my ancestry into this story, and I loved researching all the Scottish aspects of the story and learning more about the country that so many of my ancestors called home.

And now you know why Remember My Royalty is so special to me. It is a story of my home and the country that was the home of my ancestors and felt like home to me when I visited it. There is something special about writing my heritage.

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