Photo Gallery

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Only entrance to Donnottar Castle (except for a small hidden postern gate), near Stonehaven, Scotland. Pursuit And Persuasion “…It was a long climb on a dirt track to a cobblestone lane of long shallow stairs cut toward the heart of the cliff between high stone walls, just wide enough for a horse. Ben could almost hear the beat of hooves, ringing on the stones, sparks shooting from metal shoes, horses clattering up to the first arched door, men in armor, in kilts and cloaks, leading horses through, then left fast in front of four cannon ports facing the low door, inside the outside arch. Ben walked slowly, wondering how much had changed since then in the minds of soldiers and shepherds, and what it had been like for the chatelaine and the shepherd’s wife under siege on the edge of the earth.”

Second set of entrance pillars on the lane leading to the ruins of Dungeness, the abandoned Thomas Carnegie mansion on Cumberland Island, Georgia that burned mysteriously many years ago. Called Kirkconnell in Out Of The Ruins. “…He walked down a long allée of tall palms that led straight to Kirkconnell across a huge stretch of open lawn, staring at the broken stone and brick skeleton of what the house had once been – the torn stairs and gaping doorways, the strips of wall under straight brick chimneys, the towers of granite and crumbling tabby surrounded by piles of stone and brick covered in tangled vines.”

Cumberland has lots of landscape—huge live oaks, thick oak-palmetto woods, pristine salt marsh, long deserted beaches. This is the edge of a marsh near Dungeness at low tide at sunset. Out Of The Ruins (Ben Reese arriving by boat) “…He stared off on his right, at the west coast of Cumberland, when they came to it ten minutes later, as they worked their way north through Cumberland Sound along Cumberland’s long intercostal side. Most of it was fringed with saltwater marsh, with twisting creeks in marsh grass, golden then instead of green, growing low in front of live oaks and widely spaced spikes of tall palm. Ben started to watch the water, bottle green and grass green and blue where the sky lay shining on its rippling skin, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off Cumberland – where whole flocks of white ibis, their four-inch beaks curling in toward their chests, stood feeding in grassy shallows and meandering low tide creeks…”

Donnottar Castle, near Stonehaven, Scotland, seen from a landward cliff. Pursuit And Persuasion “…There, a hundred and forty steps led down toward the sea, to a narrow band of land at the bottom, where the climb started again, on the other side, to the high rock hill where the broken walls of Dunnottar stood silhouetted on a sharp rocky summit. That spit of land that held the castle was like the next stone bead on the string he was standing on, and the wind rushed through the crack between them, whipping Ben’s hair in his face and his coat around him, till he buttoned it as he started down the stairs…”

Lindisfarne Castle, Holy Island, Northumberland England seen from the ruins of the Benedictine Priory on the landward side of the island. Pride And Predator “The path from the ruins of the priory to the castle wasn’t hidden in early morning mist that day, and the seabirds were easy to follow as they glided silently, crying to each other, or the sea itself, while they rode the east wind. The sun hadn’t been up long and it hung low above the water, pale and soft and salmon-colored…Few people from the mainland came over to Holy Island that early in the morning…Yet that Friday, there was a tall thin man in three-piece tweeds with a knapsack on his back walking into the wind toward the castle… He moved easily with long, quick, loose-jointed strides, with his head up and his shoulders back. But he didn’t hurry like day-trippers intent on the castle and the priory in less than an hour. He stopped beside the harbor and watched a cormorant fly past just above the water with a long stream of seaweed in her beak. He smiled to himself and hopped from rock to rock without having to think about balance, breathing in salt air with silent satisfaction, the iodine and the fish and the seaweed he’d loved as long as he could remember…”

Bridge of Sighs, Oxford, England. Ben did research in Oxford at the Bodleian Library across the street, and at a fictional research institute nearby in Burford on the Windrush River. Publish And Perish “…Ben sat in a small paneled booth, staring at a solid, respectable English phone, pondering the fact that he was now wide awake and was not going to go back to sleep. For one thing, the tall clock on the staircase was striking the chimes of Big Ben, while the house murmured to itself, heavy and slow and profoundly British, smelling of old books and polished wood and dusty draperies, creaking with age and the effects of the night air on antiquated ducking.”

This is Max, who’s half-quarterhorse and half-thoroughbred. If you think his left eye looks funny, you’re right. The eye had to be removed, and the upper lid is sewn onto the lower at the bottom of the socket. (I talk about it in the fifth book.) He’s “lipping” my coat sleeve, but also licks coats and hands, unlike a lot of horses. He hums too, usually when we’re walking cross country, lazing along beside farm fields. In this picture, he’s hoping for an apple. He gets two, and he knows when he’s only had one.

Maxie’s now 28. He adapted well to having one eye, and still moves (a semi-technical horse term) amazingly well. Brushing him off, getting dirty and sweaty myself when I ride him – it’s a great release from sitting in front of a computer all day beating on my own brain.

This is Maggie, our brindle boxer. She’s a bon vivant and the most interesting dog we’ve ever had. She’s unusually intelligent and extremely well meaning. And when we bury her in the woods, there’ll be more people left bereft than when either Joe or I die.

Kinnaird Moor View of Tay River Valley and Highlands The picture doesn’t do justice to the panorama from the moor above Kinnaird Hotel (Balnagard Castle in Pride And Predator and Pursuit And Persuasion). There’s snow in the distance on the highland mountains. “…Neither of them said anything else as they walked the horses down the last stretch of the old rutted track that snaked down from the high moors on Balnagard Estate. Jennifer kept her eyes on Matthew’s head, but Ben watched the River Tay, when he could, sliding by below them on the other side of the B898 running north from Dunkeld, Scotland.”

This photo and the next two are shots of Locando Dell’Amorosa, a small farm estate south of Siena, Italy that’s been turned into a country inn. This is where the fifth Ben Reese has its denouement. It’s the book I’m just finishing (which, as of this morning will probably be called Wages of War, OR Watches Of The Night, but may change tomorrow).

“…The dark wooden box had already been lowered into an open grave…beside the old Cathedral. It lay in the shade of a huge old oak, below the torn tracery of a gothic window…Ben listened (to Bach from the parish church) in that cool thicket of flat upstanding stones, two hundred feet from the River Tay, while he studied the reactions of Jon’s mourners…Then he turned away toward the sweep of lawn and the clipped shrubs and the sunlight skating on the river, away from his own memory of Jessie’s coffin being lowered into hard Ohio ground…”

Muchalls Castle near Stonehaven, East coast of Scotland; former B&B, now private residence. Cairnwell in Pursuit And Persuasion. “…A heavy oak door with rivets around the outside edges was set at a diagonal across that corner, and Ben rapped on it twice with the long brass knocker, while he studied the crest above the frame. He thought about pulling the thick braided rope on his right, but the high bronze bell looked large enough to startle every farmer in the neighborhood. And he decided to look for Ellen on the grounds …”

Path from Greyfield Inn (Whitfield in Out Of The Ruins) to its private beach on Cumberland Island, Georgia. Hannah Hill remembering: “…Most of the old oaks are behind you by then. New ones, startin’ to get smalluh aftuh that, above the saw palmetto. That’s where there’ll be a spiduh web. Breakin’ cool and sticky on your skin…”

The Nathanael Greene family cemetery on Cumberland Island where Light Horse Harry Lee, Washington’s finest cavalry officer, was buried when Robert E. Lee, his youngest son, was still a small boy. Out Of The Ruins Ben Reese musing: “…It’s interesting, to me at least, that Robert E. Lee would’ve stood right here. In a gray uniform the first time. Before he had the Army of Northern Virginia. When he was still called ‘Granny Lee’ by the dim, the dull and the demented. The next time…he knew he was dying and wore himself out coming back. Largely because of the crowds on the way that wouldn’t leave him alone. Celebrity being what it is. Hard on the body. Bad for the soul. Nothing I’d want to live through.”