You must never call it the Shetlands. Islanders are proud and can be prickly about the name: it's either Shetland or the Shetland Islands.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Shetland has always been a place of sanctuary for me. I visited when I dropped out of university, and I just loved it from the minute I got there. It's a bleak but very beautiful place.
Shetland's influences are far more Scandinavian than Celtic.
Shetland is the most remote place in the U.K. It's a part our country, but completely unique. It might be British, but it's closer to Norway than to Edinburgh, and it feels very different from the mainland.
I lived in Shetland for a short while in the seventies and have been visiting ever since, so I have lots of useful contacts!
Ah, Scotland. I am three-parts Scottish and terribly proud of it, although maybe we should divide it into eighths, because my two-eighths are Danish and English, the Lumley part. But the bulk of the rest of me is Scottish - and Scottish ministers especially.
I'm fiercely proud to be Scottish.
Both my parents are Scottish, and although I grew up in Canada after moving over, all of my family are proud to be Scots.
'Shetland' is adapted from the novel 'Red Bones.' The book is based around an archaeological dig, and the mystery starts with the murder of the elderly woman who crofts the land where the dig is happening.
There is something so quiet and so industrious, something so Viking about the Scots.
My first novel, 'Sacrifice,' was set on the Shetland Islands.