# Someone to #Lean on- #Dougie MacLean

Friday means it's time to give those supporting secondary characters a bit of the limelight!

Today, I'm joined by my lovely Crooked Cat author friend, Yvonne Marjot, who has chosen a really brilliant character from her wonderful novel Walking on Wild Air. Dougie MacLean is a character to easily pin your heart on, but I'll let Yvonne tell you more about him. 

(You can also find more about Yvonne's previous visits to this blog by using the 'Search' facility on the right sidebar to access my review and posts where Yvonne Marjot has been my guest.) 

Welcome again, Yvonne! It's lovely to be reacquainted with Dougie...

Glencoe by Angus Stewart (see below)

There is Magic in the Heart of the Wind…

Today I’d like to talk about Dougie MacLean, supporting man from Walking on Wild Air, my paranormal romance set on a mysterious and beautiful island in the Scottish Hebrides.

It’s hard for me to think about Dougie as a supporting character, he’s so real and vibrant in his own right. I have a strong picture in my mind of what he looks like – Gerard Butler crossed with Douglas Henshall, with a touch of the young Peter Capaldi. But more than anything, he is based on my own partner, who died before he had a chance to read the final, published book. Mark always supported my writing, and believed in me long before I had the courage to start sending my books out into the world. Walking on Wild Air is dedicated to him: like Dougie MacLean he inhabits his own island hilltop, wild as the wind and free from all pain.

At the beginning of Walking on Wild Air Sushila Mackenzie, part Scottish and part Sri Lankan, lands on the island – her childhood home – looking for the right place to scatter her father’s ashes. She’s lonely, hurting, and very defensive. That last thing she’s looking for is a man.

But when she gets lost on the hill, as the mist comes down, a local shepherd and his dog come to her rescue and she falls under Dougie’s spell. Scotland’s misty hills are full of legends and strange tales, and Dougie has walked straight out of one and into her life, turning everything she thought she knew upside-down.

He’s a charming rogue, a dependable friend, an attractive older man, with a surprisingly naïve and open outlook on life. Sometimes he seems like a creature out of legend, a man of the distant past – and at others as modern and enlightened as Sushila herself. He might be just what she needs to heal her wounded spirit. But the discovery of who – and what – he is could break her, heart and soul.

At the summit of a bare hill, on a quiet island in the bleak west of the world, a storm was brewing. Lightning flickered and dark clouds glowered over the hilltop, their rain-heavy bases lit from within by sullen flashes.

Courtesy of Yvonne Marjot

A bolt split the sky and the rain sheeted down, half hiding the ground with its jumbled boulders and sparse coating of grasses. For a moment the scene flickered, like a jerky film noir, and then a figure could be seen on the hilltop, curled up in the foetal position, unmoving.

Thunder cracked overhead and the man raised his head, hauling his body wearily after it. He climbed to his feet and pressed them against the ground, as if testing its ability to hold him. On one buttock there was a red mark, where a rock had pressed into his side, but as he stood in the rain the mark bruised and faded, leaving no trace.

He squared his shoulders against the deluge as the clouds roiled overhead. A great shaft of lightning hit the hilltop precisely at his position, limning his figure for an instant in a halo of blue and white. He looked down at his fists, unclenched them and regarded his hands as if seeing them for the first time. He put his head back, staring upward as the rain poured over his face, drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and howled a cry of pure anguish.

Yvonne Marjot

Yvonne Marjot lives on an island off the west coast of Scotland. She has been writing stories and poems for as long as she can remember, and once won a crate of port in a poetry competition. You can follow her work at

https://www.facebook.com/TheCalgaryChessman/ 

or by following 

https://twitter.com/Alayanabeth.

'Glencoe' by Angus Stewart, reproduced by kind permission of the artist. http://angusstewart.co.uk 

To Buy Yvonne's novel CLICK 

myBook.to/WildAir

Thank you for bringing Dougie today, Yvonne. It makes me want to go back and re read Walking On Wild Air, which I do doubt will sometime in the future! As always, my very best wishes with it and with current and future writing.

Slainthe!