I posted a photo of my grandfather and his first wife that was taken presumably on their wedding day a few years ago. I’m reposting it along with two more from the family archives.

This photo was definitely taken in a studio setting and judging by their clothing and the way her hair is styled, it had to be a special occasion. Hence, the thought of it being a wedding photograph.

Grandpa Robertson was born in 1856 and married for the first time 20 years later. And yes, that is my grandfather, not great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather.

After looking carefully at the photo for a few minutes, close your eyes and imagine it in full colour, an oil painting of huge proportions… 3 ft by 5 ft or even bigger 4 ft by 6 ft and it’s hanging on a rich oak panelled wall. Can you visualize it in that setting?

That’s where it is in my novel. This is the Laird and Lady of Weetshill on their wedding day. Now, the heroine (Sarah) looks very much like the young woman in the portrait. The hero resembles the young man.

In my novel, the old Laird looks much more like this…

This photograph of an older Grandpa Robertson was taken some time before his death in 1930. I’m thinking maybe between 1915 (the year my grandmother-his second wife) and 1917 (the year my father and four of his nine siblings were admitted to The Orphan Homes of Scotland). By that time, he’d had a stroke with loss of memory and was unable to keep up the farm.

This is how I envision the hero’s grandfather. White-haired, balding, mustache and beard.

The old Laird in my novel also walks with a cane.

And finally this photograph from the archives…

This photo was taken on Angus’s wedding day in Scotland. My father (Robert) was serving overseas with the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders at the time but was able to get leave to go back to Scotland for the occasion. It would have been the last time my father saw his brothers.

Now there’s no mistaking the men in this photo are related but look closely at the young man in the first photo, the old man in the second one and lastly (mostly Robert) the men in this photo. Perhaps, a natural progression of how my hero will age?

Have had a rather productive Saturday thus far… and a lie-in to boot! So far I’ve managed to get 1207 words written in my manuscript and it’s not even 2:00 yet!

I actually made progress on my manuscript last night. I started out with 91395 words and ended with 91729, an increase of 334 words. Whether or not it stays or hits the cutting room floor remains to be seen but I had my butt in the chair and words were flowing.

Well the extent of last night’s writing amounted to what I wrote on my blog. Good thing I’ve got some ideas percolating up the gray matter. Hopefully, tonight I’ll get them from up there down the arms and out the fingers and into my document.

We’ll see what this evening brings.

Well, I did a major purge which put my word count down to 91309. ACK! I had to go out after supper so didn’t take a lot of time to write but managed to get a few words down… very few. I ended with 91395… a mere 86 words. Still on the positive side so that’s a good thing.

Have ideas percolating… just deciding on how best to get them from the grey matter onto paper.

In the meantime, the laptop needs to charge so will ponder where I’m heading while it does that.

Back home from another successful writing date with two of the gals in my local group. It’s amazing what we manage to get accomplished when we’re away from our usual environment. I worked on scene(s) from my novel in a separate document since I’m not 100% certain where I’m going to insert it. The other, I only wrote a couple of lines – again for the same reason.

In addition to my novel work, I made a start on the monthly 250 word prompt. So in total my word count today is… 15 (main novel file), 743 (scenes), and 249 (prompt) for a whopping total of 1007 from about 1:o0 to 3:15. That’s about 400 words better than I accomplished on our first writing date and I was pleased with those results so you can imagine how chuffed I am with these.

And best of all, I remembered my epiphany from this morning and mentioned my title idea to them. They both loved it.

All in all, a good day on all accounts.