A good memoir is not easy to pull off. If you’re not famous, what do you have to share that’s worth reading? Aside from being a good writer, you have to have had an interesting experience and the vulnerability to share personal details of your life with your readers. Ninya is a writer who pulls off both in her memoir, Scotland with a Stranger. Below is a review of her book along with an interview with the author herself.

Scotland with a Stranger book summary

After a rough couple of years, freelance photographer and divorced mother of two, Ninya, finds herself depressed, overwhelmed, and worn out by her daily life. Seeking an escape, she comes across a woman on a Facebook group who offers to take her on a two week hiking trip through Scotland. Despite her obvious reservations, Ninya takes her up on the offer. What follows is a rollercoaster of a trip that not only recharges her batteries but also helps her come into her own by learning how to assert herself, become more independent, and gives her great inspiration to write a book.

Finding a stranger to go to Scotland with

Scotland with a Stranger is everything that I look for in a good memoir. It’s well told, worth telling, and teaches life lessons through her experiences. Most importantly, it takes its time to set the scene leading up to the trip so that we know who Ninya is and what she’s been through before she gets on the plane to Scotland.

Ninya’s back story involves the end of a toxic marriage, her child’s struggle with substance abuse, the death of her mother and a close friend, a personal health scare, a verbally abusive long term relationship, and an unwanted pregnancy.  She lays out her hardships in a way that evokes sympathy and understanding without demanding it. As a result, she’s hanging on by a thread and seeks out something she can do to heal herself, something to look forward to that is just for her.

Ninya shares excerpts from her journal entries during this time. Her thoughts are deep, poetic, and grasp to try to make sense of her predicaments. Like the beginning of an epic adventure tale, our hero is looking for an escape, even a temporary one.

This introduction takes up the first quarter of the book but still leaves plenty of room for the trip itself. By the time she boards the plane, you feel like you already know Ninya because of how thoroughly she has recapped the events leading up to it. At the time of her trip, she’s in a much better, though far from perfect place. Her wounds are still fresh, and the trip is intended to heal those wounds by offering an escape from her responsibilities and giving her time to write it all down.

Traveling with a stranger

What seems like an impulsive decision turns out to be not impulsive at all. When a woman named Erika reads a discouraged post from Ninya on a women’s photography Facebook group, she makes her offer, and Ninya accepts. But Ninya saw the possibilities that this offer presented. She already had a passport, it would be cheap, and she would have an experienced guide to lead the way.

Vacations can be just as, if not more, stressful than day-to-day life if your travel companion(s)’ travel style and goals differ from yours. It’s the reason why family vacations can be such a disaster and how trips to the beach with girlfriends can sometimes ruin friendships.

So, Ninya’s decision to go away with a complete stranger for two weeks, sharing rooms, and sometimes even a bed to save money, was a huge risk. The red flags that foreshadow the trip turn out to be solid warnings, and her godsend quickly turns into her biggest threat towards ruining her trip. However, it also provides a juicy source of tension and excitement throughout the book.

Erika is loud, opinionated, pushy, and disorganized while Ninya is passive, dependent, and needs to have a plan in place. Identifying more with Ninya made it easy to root for her as the hero of this story. However, she doesn’t present Erika as the story’s villain, even in her worst moments. After all, it’s Erika’s tenacity that gets her to Scotland in the first place. But it’s her quirks that make for some tense, and even life-threatening moments.

Sightseeing through Scotland

Their two week itinerary is packed with places to go and things to see. However, the bulk of the sightseeing is done by backpacking through the towns and countryside. It’s here where you see the women’s two agendas completely split. Erika, the personal trainer, wants to be constantly on the move while Ninya searches for time to sit, reflect, and write.

Her constant inability to keep up with Erika along with her attempts to comply with her every wish starts to slowly build tension throughout the trip. We’ve all been in situations where we were paired with our total opposite and had to either endure or blow up. This is an amplified version of that experience.

The trip itself is told linearly, day-by-day just as she experienced it. She describes the landscapes, architecture, food, and people in great detail, as if telling it to a friend. All five senses are utilized, and she evenly mixes in the good with the bad.

In quieter moments of the day, she diverts to the memories that she reflected on in those moments which inspired her to take the trip in the first place. These are weaved in seamlessly while steering the narration back on track to the next stop, meal, or conflict.

Visual aids

While her descriptions are thorough and lively, it helps to have a visual aid to get a real sense of the landscape. Being a photographer, Ninya includes a link to some of the photos taken on the trip on her website. There you get to see moments from the memoir come to life along with accurate depictions of the terrain that you might not have gotten right in your imagination.

Moments such as the ghoulish tour guide from their haunted bus tour to the fish and chip dinners that she describes with mouth-watering detail all look exactly as I imagined. Meanwhile, the winter-gray rooftops of the buildings and the contemporary-looking rows of shops looked nothing like I’d pictured. We get to see Ninya in her happier moments of the trip in these photographs. It’s satisfying to see her enjoying herself while knowing of the tense moments that she endured before and after those photos were taken.

My recommendation

I recommend Scotland with a Stranger to anyone who needs to feel inspired to take a leap of faith, to be willing to accept the good with the bad, or to anyone who has ever wanted to travel to Europe and hasn’t yet gotten there. Ninya’s trip didn’t fix for her life’s problems or erase her past traumas. Like most trips, it mainly provided the escape she needed, the mindset required to reset her perspective, and the confidence to assert herself and boost her self-esteem.

You have to live a life in order to have a life worth writing about. It doesn’t always have to be adventurous, glamorous, or devastating. It can be messy, unexpected, and even temporary. But as long as it’s real, reflective, and relatable, it can be worth telling.

An interview with Ninya

About the author

Name/Pen Name: Ninya

Book Titles: Scotland with a Stranger, Velvet Guild and AnaStasia

Genres: Non Fiction Memoir, Women’s Fiction and Erotic Romance

Links to Buy

Scotland with a Stranger 

On Amazon

On Apple 

Velvet Guild 

AnaStasia

Author Links

My Facebook Reader Group. Rated R 

My Store: Books and Gifts for R Rated People 

My Blog 

Instagram 

Twitter 

Book summaries

Scotland with a Stranger: A Memoir

An introverted Pollyanna is paired up with her polar opposite—a steamrolling, abrasive female with completely unorthodox healing methods on an insane trip hiking through the Scottish highlands.

Velvet Guild

Friends Don’t Let Friends Stay Vanilla

Desperate times…call for sexy solutions.

Aimee is panicking, a single parent trying to survive. Could she introduce couples to the BDSM lifestyle through a house party format? Instead of game night, it could be blindfolds and bite marks.

Sex sells, and they have the money to pay.

AnaStasia

The Story of One Life Lived Two Ways. Have you ever wondered “what if?”

In this parallel lives story, Stasia’s and Ana’s stories alternate, connecting together at crucial turning points in AnaStasia’s life.

Talking Shop

What is the central theme or message of your story? What do you want readers to take away from it? 

Our lives are magnetic, and you attract people into your experience to teach you the lessons you need to learn. Sometimes these people are guides and teachers. Sometimes they are the catalyst you need to force us to tackle the job yourself. But healing yourself is the most important and beautiful journey you will ever undertake.

How have you promoted your books? What has worked best? What has failed?

Just getting started with that. My reader group, the Ninyons, has been the best for getting the word out about books and release dates, and we have a lot of fun there and laugh nearly constantly. FYI, If you aren’t into sexual innuendo, or you have a problem with the ‘F’ word, it isn’t the place for you.

BUT if you’re naughty and nice like me, then come meet your people. This is where I spend the majority of my time on Facebook and where you get the inside scoop on my books and what is rattling around in my brain. It’s a scary, scary place. I would love to invite you over to the madness. 

Did you use any professional services before publishing your book? Are there any you recommend to indie authors?

Editing. Get the best editor you can find. I also rely heavily on alpha readers for feedback during the writing process.

What’s the best review/compliment that you’ve received about your book?

One of my alpha readers read this memoir in its weakest state and said, “It’s a beautiful story. You have a very authentic voice, and you have something to say in this piece. It is good, and it is worthwhile.” This comment brought me to tears initially and, when I doubted myself, gave me the strength to finish.

How active are you in the online writing community? How has this community helped you as a writer?

When I started, I didn’t even know how to find an editor. So I joined a couple of groups, and the universe connected me with Kendra. An absolute dream to work with, incredibly thorough, and who always makes me look like I know how to use a comma when nothing could be farther from the truth. I joined several Facebook groups to learn the ropes. 20 Books to 50K was the most helpful and how I met Laura. Great people are there living my dream. So I listen hard to their advice!

What famous books can you compare to your own?

Eat, Pray, Love and Wild. Velvet Guild is 50 Shades Material, and AnaStasia is women’s fiction.

What is a fun or strange source of inspiration that ended up in your book?

The memoir is 100% true, I relied on videos and photos and memories to write it. Of everything I have written, it was the easiest to plot out because it was drawn from real events but the most emotionally painful.

How long did it take to write your book from the day you got the idea to write it to the day you published it?

Took three months to write the first draft and then three more months to re-write and a month for the editing and proofreading.

How long have you considered yourself a writer? Did you have any formal training, or is it something you learned as you went?

My first published project was Velvet Guild in the erotic romance genre and the first episode was published November 2019. Someday, I know it will be a series on Amazon or Netflix. Little did I know that advertising it would prove to be nearly impossible. Facebook and Amazon are very prudish, and their rules are inconsistent when it comes to advertising racy material. 50 Shades gets the green light on both platforms, but the rest of us are in the dark, finding readers one by one, the hard way. Still, the series is doing very well. There are fans that have written the most amazing reviews for it and when things are hard, or I want to give up, I pull up one of those reviews, and it helps keep me going.

The second project was another serial called AnaStasia. Parallel lives have always fascinated me ever since I watched Sliding Doors in the nineties. But I was going to connect the lives at various points to give it a new twist. The series is very difficult to write, but it is coming together beautifully as writing sometimes can be magic. It’s one of the things I love most about the craft.

Next, I wrote the memoir. Something I never thought I would do, but the story of what led me to run away to Scotland to heal myself and what transpired there was such a compelling story, I had to do it, and now in a few short weeks it will be out there, in the world, and that is equal parts exhilarating and terrifying. I sent it out to tons of agents who gave me the rejection letters, and that was okay. I was planning on self-publishing it anyway. One of those rejection letters was so kind and thoughtful and full of praise for my writing that I kept it and return to it often.

What is your day job? How, in any way, does it relate to your life as a writer?

I get up at 4 am and write the words and then go to work at 7 am as a lunch lady where I daydream and work through my plot points while I count trays and wash dirty tables. Then I go home and work on marketing and website design and SEO and the million other things that a writer must do to be successful. Being a lunch lady is a simple job that gives me the space to pursue writing and publishing. If I had a more taxing job, it would be harder to do both well. Plus, I love talking to the kids.

Who is on your Mt. Rushmore of all time great writers?

Jodi Picoult, Elizabeth Gilbert,  Jen Sincero, and JK Rowling.

Are your books for sale at any book stores? Have you tried any other methods of selling hard copies in person versus online?

Not yet, but I am open to all possibilities. I just created my own direct selling store. You can visit it here https://shop.ninya.us/  It’s full of books and gifts for R-rated people.

What were your expectations for writing and publishing your first book? Have they changed since then?

Just finishing was a huge accomplishment. Now the journey of marketing and writing and finding the balance is the hard part.

Do you have a writing ritual or any odd habits or superstitions?

I love to write in the mornings first thing before my inner critic can come out and tell me that I am terrible. I use the brainwaves app and set it for 30 minutes. It plays a beach background noise over theta waves that are supposed to make me more creative. Actually, it just drowns out the background noise so I can ignore my kid clamoring for pancakes. She’s fifteen so she can make them herself, but they apparently taste better when I do it. 😉  It’s easy to get lost in the amount of tasks you have to do, but writing is the most important thing. When I want to procrastinate, I tell myself it’s just 30 minutes. That is usually enough to help me power through and get started.

How well do you handle criticism, either while writing, editing, or reviews?  Do you ever use that criticism to change your story?

I love criticism that makes me think and is specific. My alpha readers are excellent at pointing out things that need improvement. My current alpha readers are so smart and catch everything. They are a valuable part of the process, and I feel like all my work is stronger as a result of their questions and comments.

Velvet Guild has been well received by the BDSM community, and they frequently tell me what I missed and what I got wrong. Being accurate and authentic to me is important. So I listen to all critics and will change things when I agree with the reader.

Reviews are always subjective and should be taken with a grain of salt. So far, I have been fortunate that they are mostly glowing right now. The worst one said her biggest complaint is that she wanted a longer book, which I took as a compliment. You can’t make everyone happy. I just try to put my heart and soul into the writing process knowing that if I do that, at the end of the day, it is the best I can produce.

How do you autograph your books? Do you use a special signature? Write a personalized message? Draw picture? Add stickers or stamps?

I always write XOXO in Sharpie and sign it, and if I know the person or they ask, I am happy to personalize and inscribe with a message.

What is the most fun part about writing? The most difficult?

The fun part is when things are flowing and new ideas or subtle ways to tie things together appear. Or you have the perfect sentence that just sings off the page. Moments like that are so exciting and rewarding. The most difficult is remembering all the details when you are working on multiple projects. I am writing character and scene bibles right now to keep everything straight.

Do you focus on word count, hours spent writing, page count, or another way to measure your daily or weekly progress?

I focus on word count on first drafts, and the rest of it has to have the right flow.  In the rewriting process, I go over and over it until I don’t think I can fix it anymore. Then it goes to the alphas and then to my editor. I also just discovered that the best way to see if it reads well is to read it aloud to myself. So I have become that guy who talks to themselves in the library. 😉

What skills have you acquired or information have you learned from writing?

There are more hyphens required than I ever thought possible. I am a naturally curious person. So I love finding out new nuggets of information that I can include and details I can weave into my stories – especially with Velvet Guild. I have gone down some naughty rabbit holes that I personally found so fascinating. But marketing is the biggest area an Indie needs to focus to be successful. If your stories are awesome, you will be frustrated if no one ever reads them. It is the most important process of them all.

 “What If” Scenarios

If your book ever becomes a movie, and you get final say over the cast, which actors would you hire to play your characters? 

Me: Kristin Bell and for Erika: Famke Janssen (she’d have to bulk up for the role, lots of muscles).

If you could have one person that you admire, living or dead, read your book, who would it be?

Oprah. She is the holy grail judge of good books, and to know that she read something I wrote would be incredible.

If you could be in a writer’s group with up to four famous writers, who would they be? 

Elizabeth Gilbert, Jodi Picoult, Neil Gaiman, and Gillian Flynn

A wealthy reader buys 100 copies of your book and tells you to hand them out to anyone you wish. Who do you give them to?

Newly divorced women who feel lost. Or Women at Ala-non meetings who hate going.

Your favorite character that you’ve written comes to life for one day. What do you do together for 24 hours?

Jagger from Velvet Guild. He’s the most fun and also the most naughty, and I’d reenact several scenes from the series and then have him take me for ice cream.

You’re given $10,000 to spend on marketing for your book.

How do you spend it? Facebook and Amazon ads. Hire an expert, and give her a generous budget.

Your book becomes a best seller. What do you do next?

Build the Barbie dream house I’ve been dreaming about that since I was little. Home is really important to me, and I have been apartment living for the last couple of years. To put down real roots would be amazing. I also want to plan a trip to Japan with my kids and boyfriend.

Would you rather own your own book store or your own publishing house, and what would you sell or publish?

I would publish indies whose books I loved. Because being an indie is an uphill battle and like having ten full-time jobs at the same time, I would love to help more people succeed.

Just For Fun

What legacy do you want to leave behind?

I love making people laugh. I would love for people to think of me and smile.

One bucket list item you’ve completed and one that’s still on your list.

Use my passport, and I finally did when I went to Scotland. Can’t wait to see more of the world when things re-open and time and finances allow. I love the mountains and the ocean. Would love to visit all the national parks.

A movie or piece of music that changed your life.

What Dreams May Come wrecked me. Visually for it’s time it was incredible and such a heavy and emotional movie. When I was getting divorced, She Used to Mine was my anthem. I felt those lyrics down deep, replaying it over and over and over.

Favorite time of/part of your day.

Morning, stumbling to the coffee pot still sleepy, no one is awake to bother me. Magical. That first sip of the bean juice warms my soul and makes me think I can do anything. Mornings are so hopeful. If I can get up and hit my writing goal before noon, it’s going to be a great day.

Favorite place you’ve visited/place you want to visit.

Scotland, Finnich Glen, and Hawaii

Food you’d like to win a lifetime supply of.

Aldi’s Peanut Butter Cups. Truly the thing dreams are made of.

Your favorite podcast.

Joanna Penn’s Writers Podcast

The topic you can’t shut up about/the topic you wish everyone would shut up about.

Self-help! HAHA! I can never stop trying to get better. And I wish Politics were off the table.

Celebrity you’d want to be friends with.

Julia Roberts

Your most unrealistic dream job.

Resort Critic. Would love to travel more and not have to pay for it!

Favorite Halloween costume ever.

Unicorn.

A talent you have and a talent you wish you had. 

Awesome cook, especially good at making leftovers taste like a brand new meal. I wish I could dance better and didn’t look like I was channeling Elaine from Seinfeld.

Buy it!

Buy a copy of Scotland with a Stranger here, and help support local bookstores! This is an affiliate link, and I will earn a commission on any sales.

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