I love it when a plan comes together...

Based on my (very rudimentary) early research into surrounding clans, I had written in Alec's intended betrothed (no, that's not a redundancy) as one Janet Cameron, youngest daughter of Sir Ewan Cameron of Lochiel, and in her mid-late teens at the time of my story. Most of this I pulled out of thin air - there was a later, famous Janet "Jenny" Cameron who (reportedly) led a branch of the Camerons in the '45 and so the name stuck with me. (Diana mentions her in Dragonfly, pg. 633 of the paperback.) The age was for convenience; younger than Elspeth, basically, and illustrating how early women were betrothed back then.

Tonight, being too restless to actually write, I thought I would look up Sir Ewan Cameron's children to see if I could swing that.

Check this out.

Ahaha! No birth year given, but if you click the link for her father Sir Ewan's listing you'll see she was the youngest of his daughters (by his first wife, at least). Her younger brother, the later Lochiel himself, is listed in one of my sources (Prebble's Glencoe: Story of the Massacre, I think) as being in his teens at the time. So that would make her probably not much older.

And I love how it says the contract for her marriage was signed in March 1696, etc. So maybe, if she were supposed to marry someone else in 1692 but they got themselves outlawed/condemned before the contract was formalized, and so that was dissolved and it took a little bit to arrange another marriage for her to Grant of Glenmoriston...

Sometimes stuff falls into place so neatly it kind of weirds me out. *g*

OTOH

While reviewing my swelling spreadsheet in order to organize my most recent fragments into some kind of chronology, I was struck by the number of significant bits I have yet to even think about/visualize, much less write.

I'm nowhere near done. *headdesk*

I think this thing is going to top 120-125K before all is said and done on the SFD. It will eventually get pared down to a nice, tight, less-than-100K MS but until then it means I'm not "almost" done or 4/5ths done, it's more like back to 2/3rds done and where I was two months ago.

So much for September. October? Eh, a girl can dream.