Growing up in the military, visiting castles in England, pig fests in Germany, and visiting the historic sites of America’s east coast definitely left a lasting impression upon Laura Vosika, as evidence in her newest book, Blue Bells of Scotland, the first in a trilogy. In addition to traveling the world, Ms. Vosika has earned a degree in music, and worked for many years as a freelance musician, music teacher, band director, and instructor in private music lessons on harp, piano, winds, and brass.
If that doesn't sound as though it would keep one busy enough, Ms. Vosika also has nine children - seven boys and two girls. At present, Laura Vosika resides in Minnesota with her husband and children, as she works on upcoming releases. Please be sure to check out the author's website, Blue Bell's Trilogy, to keep up-to-date on her current and future works.
Please tell us a bit about your book, Blue Bells of Scotland — characters, plot, etc.
Blue Bells of Scotland is a time travel and historic adventure, about two men, polar opposites but for their looks and love of music, who are mistaken for one another. When they each fall asleep at the top of the same castle tower, they wake up in the wrong centuries, caught in one another’s lives.
Shawn is an arrogant, womanizing modern musical phenomenon who has his orchestra in a bind: he has lifted them to heights they never dreamed of, but his rock star ways threaten to be their downfall. His purpose in life is to have fun. Niall Campbell is as different from Shawn as a man can be: a devout medieval Highland warrior, the epitome of responsibility. In the days leading up to the pivotal Battle of Bannockburn, he must cross Scotland, pursued by English soldiers and a traitor from within his own castle, to raise his laird’s clan against England’s might.
If you could meet, in person, any of your characters, who would it be, and why?
I'm torn between Shawn and Niall. Probably Niall. I know Shawn's modern world of orchestral music, although I find people like him fascinating in the charisma they put out that enables them to do the things and exert the influence Shawn does. I'd love to watch that in action.
But Niall comes from a different world than any of us will ever know. He has a medieval mindset, which I don't think is as simple to categorize as many people today believe. He is a man whose country has been at war from his earliest childhood. He sees things very differently from Shawn, which is to be expected, but very differently, too, from Amy, Shawn's girlfriend, who is, at heart, much more like him, but still a product of the twenty-first century.
Article comments