'Amazing' Scotland is the inspiration for my best-selling books, says top author

Her books have helped Harry Potter publisher Bloomsbury rake in record profits and fuelled the hugely popular ‘Romantasy’ sub-genre.

But while the stories created by American author Sarah J Maas might be set in fictional worlds of humans and fairies, her work has been inspired by Scotland’s famous landscape.

Bloomsbury – the publishing house best known for JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books – has just posted a 57 per cent rise in profits, taking in £49 million.

When discussing the lucrative period, Bloomsbury chief executive Nigel Newton had one name in mind – Sarah J Maas.

Mr Newton said the 38-year-old’s romantic fantasy series Throne of Glass and A Court of Thorns and Roses had flown off the shelves, with readers ‘addicted’ to her books.

So where, you might ask, does Scotland fit in to all this?

Ms Maas’s first book – Throne of Glass – was published in 2012 and proved the start of a body of work that has stretched to several series.

Along the way, she has had the opportunity to travel the world. And one destination was high on her list. In a 2014 tweet, New York-born Ms Maas shared her excitement ahead of a holiday to Scotland, including the Isle of Skye, and said she would be using the time to carry out research for her second fantasy series, A Court of Thorns and Roses.

She wrote: ‘I’m so ridiculously excited to spend a few days on the Isle of Skye. Dream come true.’

While staying there, she enthused: ‘When I die, I want my ashes scattered on the Isle of Skye. I think I’ve been looking for this place my entire life.

‘I literally started crying at a lookout point today because I was so overwhelmed by its sheer beauty and size. I never want to leave. Like, the land is singing to me.’

In a later post, Ms Maas shared a dramatic image of the peaks of Aonach Dubh, Beinn Fhada and Gearr Aonach, in Glencoe, and made no bones about its influence on her work.

Alongside the photo, she said that a weekend spent editing had given her an ‘excuse to look through all my pics from my trip to Scotland last year (since some areas in the book were inspired by the terrain)’.

Some of her writing also makes reference to the ‘Picts’ – surely a nod to the ancient people of the same name who lived in what is now eastern and north-eastern Scotland.

In later years, the author and her husband Josh Wasserman visited Edinburgh with their then baby son Taran.

After she shared a photo of the elaborate doors to the Palace of Holyroodhouse, some fans were quick to draw a link between it and the setting in her novels known as the Night Court. She has also spoken about her love of the Outlander time travel books and TV series – set in Scotland – and has visited Doune Castle in Perthshire, which stands in for the show’s fictitious Leoch Castle.

An image from the time shows her leaping in the air in front of the castle.

The only question that must surely be on the minds of fans and estate agents handling sales of properties to the world’s rich and famous is: will she ever make Scotland her home?

If, as she says, the land is ‘singing’ to her, just maybe she’ll answer the call.