Life is imitating art in Phyllis Cast’s world, and the award-winning fantasy and romance novelist couldn’t be happier. Better known to her legion of fans as PC Cast, the number one New York Times bestselling author of the House of Night, the Partholon series, and the Goddess Summoning Books, the writer for Mills & Boon, Harlequin, Berkley and St. Martin’s Press has found love and adventure in her personal life to rival anything found in the pages of her books.

Currently dividing her time between homes in Grand Cayman, Oklahoma and Scotland, the author shares her passion for life and lore with her life partner and creative collaborator, Seoras Wallace.

After years teaching in the public schools system, Cast struck a rich vein that has seen her feted for her compelling plots and finely wrought novels, but the success, shared with daughter Kristin, co-author of the House of Night books, was tempered by her less than eventful love life.

Fate steps in

A decade spent as a single mother and learning her craft had left little time for a relationship, the writer admits, but fate changed that when she met Wallace, Scottish Clan Chieftain and direct descendent of the family of William Wallace, immortalised in Celtic culture and film as Braveheart. Seoras Wallace, an old soul whose lineage and chieftain status is a proud legacy, is every bit as dynamic and intuitive as the characters in her plots.

In a series of flashbacks, Cast relates how destiny brought her together with the rugged highlander, a fight director and actor in such blockbusters as Braveheart Highlander and Gladiator.

“A year ago, I decided that the seventh House of Night book was to take place in the Highlands of Scotland, a place I’d visited several times and continually seem to be drawn back to,” she says.

Little Brown, her UK publisher, in arranging the working trip, suggested she take a mini tour of the area. “I was interested in Scottish mythology and wanted to set a key part of Burned in the Highlands and draw on local lore.”

When her publisher realised Cast was going to bring a large part of the plot of her number one bestselling series to the UK, they instantly offered to add an expert in Scottish lore to the tour.  “Other than appreciating my publisher’s enthusiasm and generosity, I really didn’t think much more about this man who was going to be my Highland guide,” says Cast, reminiscing from her North Side home, where she’s working on yet another novel and several film projects.  “I’d been single for a decade and thought I was perfectly content that way. And then Seoras happened.”

Cast’s latest House of Night book had debuted at number one in the UK and the US, and the rural splendour and sweeping vistas of the untamed Highlands was seen as the perfect counterbalance to the frenzy and press calls that would follow in the five-city UK tour, ending in London. So that particular morning last summer, Cast was looking forward to the relaxation the day would bring as she set out to research one of her favourite parts of the world.

“My publisher put my daughter and teen editor, Kristin, and me up in the wonderfully appointed Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh. My publicist let me know the driver and Scottish expert would pick us up at 7.30am the next day.”  Their 7am wake-up call while jet-lagged and slightly blissed out by the dram of whisky the hotel puts into its bowls of Scots porridge, left Cast feeling far from “sparkly”.

Dressed for a day spent “schlepping through the Highlands”, she had on sweat pants and sneakers and wasn’t wearing makeup, in hindsight a less than stellar look for meeting the man who would come to play a leading role in her life.

“To be perfectly honest with you, I was expecting a donnish, potbellied historian, a bespectacled expert, steeped in Celtic history: the type who has a pipe permanently clamped to his mouth,” she recalls, throwing Wallace a playful look. What she got was a lot more than she’d bargained for: a lithe and brawny Glaswegian with a firm handshake, mischief in his eyes, dressed in full Highland regalia, no less. His opening line was: “So you’re my blind date, are yie?”

“That sentence broke the ice,” says Cast. “The first thing that I liked about him was his rough, broad, calloused hands,” she says of the man more used to wielding a heavy sword than a pen.

The attraction was instant,” she confides with endearing candour. The sword master, folk historian and fight director nodded in agreement, his body language unconsciously mirroring hers. “He was very down to earth, witty, totally irreverent and yet, without ever having read my books, Seoras had an intrinsic grasp of how the history of the Highlands, so much a part of his life as chieftain of the Clan Wallace, could inform and enrich my next novel.

“He introduced me to friends of his with a similar pride in their history,” Cast says.

“The experience added to the book in a way that would not have been possible if we’d not met.”

The might of myth

Here Wallace picks up the narrative thread: “Phyllis is the kind of person whose interest is infectious, she’s got real respect for the culture. Aye we hit it off from the get-go, it was obvious that we had a great affinity there but it was enhanced by her personality”. Warming to the theme, he adds: “What I liked about [her] is that she tries to tell history through her myths, which is easier to grasp than dates and strategies.

“She allows the imagination to lead you there rather than you being put off by the often myopic approach of academic study... She creates new myths and can concertina history in a way I’d felt when told by my grandmother about the capture and death of William Wallace in 1305: an oral recounting of history passed down through generations in my family.”

Swept up in a meeting of minds and a deepening attraction, the pair later discovered that they shared a lot more in common than being a long time single and the parents to twenty something-year-old girls. Both have strong and engaging personalities, are quick to tease each other and are proud of each other’s work. And with enough years behind them to know when they were “on to a good thing”, they knew that this was going to be more than a spring fling.

The tour had come at the end of the Casts’ rest period and the next day saw them heading off on the first leg of what was a hectic tour schedule to promote the books and meet fans.

“Seoras and I kept in constant contact, emailing and calling each other as often as we could,” she says.

“A night snatched together in Edinburgh, then back to Tulsa for six weeks and back into Inverness... and in through the Highlands and up to Skye (where Burned is set)”.

Within months of first meeting the couple knew that a long-term Transatlantic relationship was out of the question.

“Our relationship has the blessing of our daughters Uliann and Kristin and is shored up by a lot of affection, respect and plain old fashioned animal magnetism,” Cast admits.

Finding the perfect place for them to live when not in Scotland or in Oklahoma was easy. “I’d been coming over to Cayman since 1996. Actually, I turned in the last two books in my House of Night series from here, so it wasn’t hard to decide that this would be a great place to work from... away from all the usual distractions,” says Cast.

Goddess of the Rose

This dynamic partnership, fuelled by a chance meeting, has spawned a romance that, while passionate, has also ignited a practical working partnership. The couple is currently working on a script for Cast’s Goddess of the Rose book.

Goddess Films, Cast’s newly formed production company, is currently in pre-production with the nucleus of the creative team here in Grand Cayman for endless rounds of rewriting, storyboarding and logistics. The US-registered company certainly has plenty of back material to work with and are pooling talent from the US, Ireland, Lithuania and Grand Cayman.

Ideally, the couple would like to see part of the film shot on location here and are in discussions with the Cayman Islands Film Commission. “The film could potentially bring employment and revenue to Grand Cayman,” says Wallace. Cast agrees, admitting that she’s already got her location scout hat on for certain scenes, including an area of the Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Park.

“We love the Cayman Islands. We like the tranquility of working here, I’ll probably finish my next House of Night novel here, too, at the rate I’m working right now,” says Cast.

The plan is for them to collaborate and work on solo projects, where their interests and inclinations permit.

“I’m working on the script of another film, which could potentially be shot here about a seafaring ancestor of mine. It involves epic fight scenes, the African Diaspora in the Caribbean and though based on historical fact, would be a story that had never been filmed before,” says Wallace.

Another Cayman connection

The Wallace/Cast partnership has given birth to additional Cayman opportunities.  Wallace recounts how Cayman has sparked ideas.

“When I first came to the Island, we stayed at the Cotton Tree at West Bay, and every day I would ride West Bay on horses from Pampered Ponies stable there.

I was struck by the amazing panorama of that part of the Island, reflecting on the mountains and highlands of Scotland.  It brought to mind an eco-project I had planned that demonstrated and shared for the general public a Highlander-style of life.

“Using my experience as a film fight director over 20 years, I could see a great opportunity to propose a similar type project for Cayman, as the warmth and friendship shown to us by the folk of West Bay was so like the folk back home, and later the same attitude was reinforced by our travels throughout the Island.  It confirmed to us that we would like to give back something positive in return” he says.

“Braveheart was an international success based on my ancestor William Wallace, and as a clan Chieftain of the Wallace, I felt that to offer something positive to the community here and to tell the story of another of my ancestors, a buccaneer called Peter Wallace, would be an exciting possibility,” says Wallace.

“He is most known for attacking the Portuguese and Dutch slaving ships and freeing the African people who were bound for slavery,” Wallace says. “Many fought with him and his crews, many were set on land that eventually became known as Belize, Creole for Wallace, with many of the African people taking their names from Scots who had given their lives for African Freedom.”

The project principle, would be to build a buccaneer-style village of the period, not essentially historic, leaning more toward the romance, adventure and legend of the Spanish Main privateers, who came from many different nationalities, and races,” says Wallace.

“The educational value of the project would be centred on the leading personalities of all races, creed, and colour who fought for freedom with Peter Wallace, demonstrating that throughout history the battle between good and evil was not racial, but united many, against the despots and power brokers of tyranny.”

Wallace continues, “What I would like to do is get involvement from schools and theatre groups, as it would be a project that would spread the wealth of success throughout the community. And far from us being more folk who come to the Island and keep ourselves hidden away, we would love to contribute where it was wanted, for the benefit of all”.

An adventurous idea, and with assistance and support, the couple think that the project could be of immense value, as a unique international tourist attraction, film location, arts and crafts and educational venue of quality.

Local script writer Philip Pekstein is co-writing the screen adaptation of Peter Wallace as a future Hollywood production by Goddess Films, and the team would like to film the main scenes on the Grand Cayman.

“What we need is permission for this project in West Bay, or a sympathetic landowner who could see the value of an international interest project such as this,” says Wallace.

Leave taking

I leave the couple as other team members arrive, the talk is of casting for Goddess of the Rose; Dwayne ‘The Rock’ is mentioned, as well as some up-and- coming actors keen to make their first real break. With the Islands’ proximity and amity with the US, why not The Rock on the rock? He is after all a huge Braveheart fan. If anyone can make fantasy come to life in glorious technicolour its couple, who rarely see anything in black and white.