Jane Stain

Jane Stain started attending the renaissance pleasure faire at Paramount Ranch in 1973, when she was ten. At that age, she enjoyed trying to climb the twisty rope ladders and eating the huge turkey drumsticks. As teens, she and her friends came in costume, pretending to be The Three Musketeers or Dragon Riders of Pern.

Jane was 25 when a friend invited her to join the crew of faire workers. She discovered a whole new perspective on the faire, and she shares that perspective in her faire books, but she shares the magic, rather than the debauchery (mostly).

Her characters travel back farther in time than Diana Gabaldon's, to the period depicted at the faires in America: 1540 - 1560 rather than the 1800s. The Scottish clans are fighting each other for territory, and something horrible is happening to the MacGregors of Glen Strae, something which causes many of them to be sold into slavery in the New World.

This something extends into Ireland as well, so she thought it would be feasible that a MacGregor might be a gallowglass in the service of Shane O'Neill.