Priscilla Brown meets a Scottish horse (kind of)

I love to travel in Australia and overseas, and recently was lucky enough to visit Europe (at least 21 hours flying from Sydney, folks!) As I travel, I am noting locations, characters and situations which eventually may weave their way into my contemporary romantic fiction. But I cannot work into this genre of novels a story I found in Falkirk, Scotland. Before this visit, I knew kelpies only as Australian sheepdogs. Then I discovered "kelpie horse" structures located by the Forth and Clyde canal.

Unlike kelpies, horses appearing in "Hot Ticket", a recently published Books We Love contemporary romance, are warm-blooded handsome characters in their own right, with parts to  play in the blossoming love between their owners. Love or her career? Will ambitious lawyer Olivia listen to her heart or to her head before it's too late? Her career, and she can ride her beloved horse Silk Georgette every weekend. Love, the length of the continent away, what can she do with Georgette?

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  These Falkirk structures replicate the head and neck of kelpies of Scottish folklore.

 Their complex engineering, at 30 metres tall (about 100 feet) the world's largest equine sculptures, took approximately 18 000 pieces of steel for each one. While impressed with the design and construction, I became interested in the kelpie mythology.
According to the lore, kelpies are water spirits, and also known as spirits of the dead. They inhabit lochs and rivers, appearing in the shape of a horse, usually white, and identified by its wet mane; they can also shape-shift between horse and water, and on land into a human. This shape-shifting ability may be located in its bridle (how a wild thing like a kelpie came to have a bridle seems unexplained, but then this is myth, no logic necessary), and if a human could grab it and keep it, that person could control the creature. Apparently this would be useful, since it purported to be as strong as ten 10 real horses.
These beings are malevolent, and like to lure humans, especially children, into the water. A common tale I heard from more than one Scot involves nine children, attracted by a ride on the kelpie's back; the kelpie's skin then became sticky so they couldn't fall off and escape.A tenth child, managing to avoid the trap, was chased by the kelpie, but still got away, presumably to relate the story. The nine were dragged down, killed and eaten.

I peered into a river close to where I was staying; an angler asked me what I was looking for. I told him, and he shook his head. He didn't laugh.

Best wishes, Priscilla