Cwtch Corner: where authors from Wales get to talk about their work, what inspires their writing and their favourite authors and books.

Cwtch Corner went transatlantic this month. I’d dearly have loved to visit Canada to talk in person with Cathy Ace but the tortuous journey home from New Zealand has made me less than enthusiastic for long haul flights. Maybe I’ll get a chance to meet her when she makes one of her frequent trips home to Wales to visit family or attend a crime fiction festival. 

Cathy moved to Canada to teach at the University of British Columbia. It was a long way to go to meet and marry a ‘boy’ from her home town of Swansea! She lives in rural British Columbia where she gardens and writes. She has two series published: the Cait Morgan series features a Welsh-Canadian criminologist who specialises in profiling victims and the WISE Enquiries Agency series based on four women with a nose for mysteries. Her newest novel The Wrong Boy is a psychological suspense novel set on the Gower peninsular. 

Q. Hi Cathy, The Wrong Boy was published in January this year. Can you describe it for us in just one sentence?

Thanks for having me along to your lovely Cwtch Corner today. I adore the word cwtch and everything it means – I even used it in the book, where there’s a place called The Rhosddraig Cwtch (a small café/restaurant in the village of Rhosddraig, where the book is set – which is really Rhossili, but I disguised it to protect the innocent). But, I digress (not unusual for me) so, back to your question.

Oh my goodness me, describe this book in one sentence? Any limit to the length of that sentence, or the amount of punctuation I can use within it to allow it to be just one sentence? No? Hmm, well, maybe I’m not up to it…so I’ll let multi-award-winning author Elly Griffiths do it for me:

“A wonderfully dark, atmospheric tale about the way that evil reverberates through generations.”

Q. You’ve written two successful series – do you tend to plan a series as a whole or does each book just flow from the last one?

“In the case of the Cait Morgan Mysteries I was given the opportunity to propose nine books to the publisher when I submitted the very first manuscript. Eight of those books were published with that publisher, so I was delighted to be able to follow the majority of the arc I’d planned for the two main characters – Cait Morgan and Bud Anderson – as well as “visit” the countries where I’d wanted Cait to discover each book’s titular corpse (eg: The Corpse with the Silver Tongue). Each was a country where I’d lived or worked for a period of time, and I very much wanted readers to get the chance to see a little of what I loved about each place. As for the ninth novel? That’s still in the pipeline.

For the WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries I proposed two books to that publisher (a different one) at first, then another two, though in my mind I’d already planned five or six.

In both series the books follow a natural timeline in the lives of the main, recurring characters – though each novel truly stands alone, without any cliffhangers preventing readers from achieving full closure. That being said, I really think it helps to understand character development if a series of books is read in order – unless the characters experience very little true personal development (as in the case of Marple or Poirot, for example). As a reader I do dip into series, but usually find I want to go back to the beginning to find out where the characters ‘began’.”

Q.You’ve won several awards for your work (most recently an Independent Publishers Book Award for The Wrong Boy). How important are awards to authors? Do they tend to translate into sales? 

“To be clear, I should say that I know different authors view different awards in different ways, so I can only speak for myself in this response.

To be shortlisted for an award, or to win one, provides an enormous boost to my confidence; I adore it when I meet, or hear from, readers who tell me how much they enjoy my work – but I still struggle with how to react…without gushing, or blushing, or stammering.

Being nominated or shortlisted for, or winning, an award is a time of pure joy – so the first thing I do is celebrate! There are so few moments when I’m not worrying about the book I’m trying to get folks to consider reading, or the one I’m plotting/outlining/writing, that it’s worth revelling in just one evening of indulgence…so I pop a cork, and sip with satisfaction – then the next day I get back to work.

In terms of sales? The effect can be immediate – there’s usually a bump in sales – but it has to be something you work at to make it a sustained advantage. What I will add is that I’ve found that being shortlisted for an award but not winning it (that’s happened to me three times, for different awards) can have exactly the same effect upon my psyche and my sales – so the effort to get out the news about about being shortlisted is equal to the effort I put into news about winning.”

Q. Though Welsh born, you’ve lived for many years across the other side of the Atlantic. How has that distance from home affected how you write about your native country

“I didn’t migrate to Canada until I was forty so I will always be truly Welsh, though I’m now also “becoming” Canadian (except for the accent!). My husband is also Welsh, and both my mother and sister – as well as my husband’s family – all still live in and around Swansea…so I still feel close to home (I talk to Mum for about an hour on the phone every day!).

That said, I now have the distance between me and the day-to-day realities of life in Wales to allow me to stand back and see my Homeland slightly differently than I did when I lived there.

I didn’t begin to write fiction until I moved to Canada, so I don’t know how I might have written about Wales before I left…but I think it’s important in all scene-setting in fiction to paint just enough of a picture to allow the reader to fill in the gaps – like a Pointillist or Impressionist painting, rather than a photograph. I think the distance helps me do that, because I can better focus on aspects of Wales and Welshness that are critical to the reader’s understanding, instead of trying to pile on the details that might confuse rather than illuminate. At least, that’s what I hope I manage to do.”

Q. Who do you think is the most interesting sleuth in crime fiction?? 

“Oh gosh, that’s a difficult question to answer because there are some truly engaging sleuths – of all types – around.

Millhone (Sue Grafton), Warshawski (Sara Paretsky) and Spenser (Robert B. Parker) all have rich personal lives without being out-and-out weird professional investigators; Poirot, Marple (Agatha Christie) and Holmes (Conan Doyle) are unchanging, yet interesting despite that; Rebus (Ian Rankin), Reacher (Lee Child) and Rumpole (John Mortimer) pursue justice in totally different ways, face life-changing situations, yet still come up trumps; Galloway (Elly Griffiths), Bryant and May (Christopher Fowler) and Stanhope (Ann Cleeves) are some of my favourites too, yet all are completely different. And I could go on. And on. See? It’s an impossible question to answer…sorry.“

Q. Your home is on fire… Which book will you choose to save?? 

Fire? My nightmare! We live half way up a little mountain in a rural area, where the nearest fire station is run by volunteers – so, around here (in the middle of a rain forest) most domestic fires lead to the complete loss of a home because none of us even have mains water – we all have wells. So you get out (hopefully) then have to watch everything burn, praying the fire doesn’t jump to the trees and become a major disaster, as you wait. Dreadful! *shivers*

But…OK, I’ll imagine a fire, just for you. Of course my beloved dog and husband get rescued first (wrong order?), then our photo albums (yes, we still have such things – and I must find the time to scan and save all those photos at some point). Then a book.

I look at it this way – a book is something that can be purchased again, whether as a new book or as a previously-loved copy of something that’s out of print. Books mean most when they’ve been given by someone, or are signed by someone who’s no longer around.

With that in mind, the one book I would save would have to be my copy of A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens; it’s a copy that was given to my mother for Christmas in 1944 by her aunt. I cannot imagine how expensive it must have been to purchase, or how wonderful to receive – an illustrated hardcover book, printed and published in 1944 with all the war shortages at their height…what a treat! Mum and Dad gave it to me for Christmas in 1969, and Dad and I would sit and read it together. I am deeply attached to the illustrations (by Emil Weiss) which stoke my nostalgia almost more than the words. My father loved A Christmas Carol – the story, the lessons, the book, and every version of it on film (he most enjoyed the one with Alistair Sim as Scrooge). For me, it’s an irreplaceable book, and therefore worth saving.”

If you’d like to learn more about Cathy or discover how to buy her books, take a look at her website  

She’s also on social media:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Cathy-Ace-Author-318388861616661/

Twitter: @AceCathy