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Yes, both of the plots for my Horatio Wilkes mysteries were stolen from Shakespeare--but in my defense, he stole them first.

There's a long tradition of course of authors borrowing stories and themes (and sometimes even characters) from other writers and giving them their own spins, and Shakespeare was no different. In fact, he was one of literature's greatest practitioners of the lifted plot!

Hamlet, for example, has a number of antecedents. Hamlet-like tales have been around for centuries, but Shakespeare's tale relies heavily on the Icelandic legend of "Amleth," and the Spanish story of "Ambales." Both stories feature a prince's feigned madness, his accidental killing of the king's counselor in his mother's bedroom, and the eventual slaying of the uncle. Later, Saxo Grammaticus took those legends and wrote his Vita Amleth, "The Life of Amleth," in the 1200s. He added the girlfriend, the mother's hasty marriage to the uncle, and the death of two retainers. The Grammaticus version was widely available in Shakespeare's day. By the 1500s, a french guy named François de Belleforest took Saxo's play and rewrote it into French, doubling the length and adding the main character's melancholy to the mix.

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Celtic music plays a big part in Something Wicked, the Macbeth-inspired follow-up to Something Rotten, and part of the fun of going to highland festivals to research the book was hearing all the great bands and pipers. At the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games, there are two special "stages" that are really natural amphitheaters, with enormous rocks for stages and hillsides for auditoriums. Off in the shade, 5,000 feet above sea level, there's really a sense that you've escaped into another world. They call them "the groves," and some year soon we're going to forgo all the other great stuff at the festival and just camp out in one of the groves all weekend long and listen to music.

I namecheck a number of my favorite "Sham-rock" bands and musicians in Something Wicked, so it only made sense to put together a sort of Something Wicked soundtrack. You won't be able to buy a CD anywhere, but both Amazon.com and iTunes feature the music of most of the bands, so I created songlists you can listen to and purchase, if you're so inclined.

The soundtrack page on my web site can be found under the Something Wicked Fun Stuff link on alangratz.com or by clicking here.

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Whenever I talk about Something Wicked being set at a Scottish highland festival, I'm often surprised at how many people don't know such things exist. I grew up with one held annually in nearby Gatlinburg, Tennessee, so I was used to seeing pictures of log-tossing, kilt-wearing Scotsmen once a year on the evening news.

I attended three highland festivals during the writing of Something Wicked, each time walking around as though viewing the games through the eyes of my snarky, sarcastic teenage detective Horatio Wilkes. Scottish highland festivals celebrate the culture and heritage of Scots-Irish immigrants, and I found lots of great material among the festival-goers who wore kilts, played bagpipes, danced flings, and ate traditional Scottish fare like meat bridies. (And, yes, haggis.)

As a part of my research, I wanted to see if Horatio had any Scottish blood in him--so I went to one of the many genealogy tents that stand ready to find even the most tenuous connection to your name in their books of clans and septs. "Your name?" the woman behind the desk said.

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Alan Gratz is our guest blogger during the week of October 20th. If you have any questions for Alan Gratz, add a comment to any of his posts. Here is some more information about Something Wicked:

The Scottish Highland Festival in Tennessee is all set to begin, but there’s one problem: Duncan MacRae, founder of the games, has just been murdered. The police arrested Malcolm, Duncan’s son, but is he really the killer? Horatio Wilkes, for one, has doubts.

Horatio is attending the festival with his childhood friend Mac, Mac’s super-hot yet controlling girlfriend Beth, and geeky sidekick Banks. Once there, he quickly finds himself caught up in the cutthroat world of the Scottish games, where fair is foul and foul is fair . . . and his best friend may yet turn out to be his worst enemy.

Join Horatio as he navigates the sinister world of Shakespeare’s Macbeth in this fun and clever follow-up to Something Rotten.