Another Location From My Novella

Since I got a handful of comments from people who enjoyed the photos from Ireland, I thought I’d share one more. Since my story stays in County Cork, the characters had to visit Blarney. (Honestly, you can’t visit Ireland without visiting the Blarney Stone, it’s just…silly.)

Now, in my mind, I expected Blarney Castle to be one of those castles you see in other parts of Europe – you know the ones, brooding turrets, battlements, portcullises (portculli?). That, of course, changed the first time I saw an Irish castle – they tend to be square towers. That’s it, just a tall, square tower. And Blarney doesn’t stray from that.

When you look at that, you think, okay, imposing tower. Still an awesome castle (and it is) – and then you want to see inside and find and kiss the Blarney Stone. Totally worth doing – except what you don’t know ’til you get inside is that there isn’t much left of the inside, so you’re climbing steep, skinny stairs around the inside wall. And the top, where the Blarney Stone is? It’s high. And you have to lean out over the wall (backwards!) to get to it. It’s not for the faint of heart.

The real highlight of Blarney Castle though? The grounds. There are expansive and incredible grounds with all manner of gardens (rock gardens, poisonous plant gardens, kitchen gardens, you name it, they have it.) You can spend hours wandering around the grounds. And my characters do.