Happy St David's Day! by Cathy Ace

HAPPY ST DAVID’S DAY, Patron Saint of Wales...

…and please forgive me if I take this opportunity to celebrate the release, on 20^th February of my latest novel, THE CASE OF THE CURSED COTTAGE, which is set in…yes, you guessed it...WALES! 

The 7^th book in the WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries series was just published, and I want to thank everyone who pre-ordered the book, has downloaded it since its publication, has ordered it at their local book shop, or has asked their library to get it for them: 

THANK YOU SO MUCH! DIOLCH YN FAWR!

Wondering how much more Welsh today's post can get? Hmm...let me see...

The whole post is in red, white and green; I'm looking at a vase of daffodils as I type; I'll be having leek tart for dinner tonight...and the book that just came out? Well, yes, it's set in Wales, and the cover art photo is of a real cottage in Gower, one of the world's most beautiful and scientifically interesting areas - and that's not just me saying that: Gower was the FIRST area designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural beauty (AONB) in the UK, back in 1956, and now has dozens of specially conserved Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) .

The specific cottage in the photo is of a style that's common in Gower: whitewashed stone walls, a slate roof, with dark or black gloss trim. That might sound either generic, or specific to you - but it's what I grew up seeing, and knowing, and it still pulls at my heart strings.

Even more specifically, this cottage is on the Penrice Estate in Gower. The Penrice Estate dates back to the 11th century, when the knight, de Penrice, was gifted the land after the Norman Conquest. The last of the de Penrice line died in the 15th Century, but the line married into the Mansel family, so the land went with it. 

I come from the Gower family of Aces, and was born and raised in Manselton - a Victorian planned community, with dwellings built by the Mansel family to house workers at the local copper works (Swansea was known as Copperoplois for a long time due to its prominence in the global copper trade).

Thus...Gower, Penrice, Manselton...they are all connected in my mind, and in my soul. And this book allows me to indulge the process whereby inspiration and invention are allowed to work in harmony within the mind of a writer of fiction.

Here's the blurb:

‘IT MURDERED ONE OF OUR GUESTS, AND NOW IT’S TRIED TO KILL MY HUSBAND.’

When the women of the WISE Enquiries Agency are approached by the frantic owner of a historic cottage in a picturesque Welsh seaside hamlet, they agree to help. After all – there can’t be any such thing as a killer cottage, can there? And isn’t a cursed cottage just as unlikely? They’re about to find out – when Christine and Annie take up residence.

Meanwhile, Carol goes undercover to investigate a day spa with some dangerous treatments, leaving Mavis to stake out a man who might be incapacitated because of a work-related accident. Will this bricklayer become belligerent if he spots her on the job?

Because our engaging private investigators are busy with paying clients, it falls to Henry, eighteenth duke of Chellingworth, to try to solve the riddle of the miss
ing silver mugs, which is a pressing priority for his mother, the dowager, as she seeks to take over the organisation of the christening of his son and heir.

Early spring in Wales is a busy time for the WISE women, and the titled Twyst family – join them to find out how they cope, in this, the seventh book in the series.

If you haven't read books 1-6 yet, now's the time! 

The first 4 are available for just $3.99 for all four (for Kindle).

Details of all the books, and purchase links, are here: https://www.cathyace.com/wise-enquiries-agency-mysteries

“…a gratifying contemporary series in the traditional British manner with hilarious repercussions (dead bodies notwithstanding). Cozy fans will anticipate learning more about these WISE ladies.” 

Library Journal, starred review

Keeping up with the... by Cathy Ace

The world is changing faster than you can write - technologically, politically, environmentally etc. How do you roll with the changes in your fiction?

Budapest's tumultuous history permeates this book

Oh my, yes, this is the sort of thing that can present an author with constant challenges. For each of my two series – both of which are set in contemporary times – I have tackled such potential pitfalls in two different ways.

In my Cait Morgan Mysteries, Cait is faced with a traditionally-shaped, puzzle-based mystery to solve, and in each book I use a classic closed-circle framework, where only one of a relatively small number of people could have dunnit. Bear in mind that I use real settings for the Cait books: the south of France, BC’s wine country, Mexico, Vegas, Wales, a cruise ship/Hawaii, Amsterdam, Budapest. In each case, despite the "classic" shape of the tale, I recognize certain realities of the setting – the history, architecture, culture, food, and even quirks. In some cases (eg: the books set in Mexico and Budapest especially) the political background of the location is critical to the story. 

The quirks of the local inhabitants? Normal here!

As such, I do a huge amount of research, and I also use settings with which I am familiar – having either lived or worked there, or at least having spent months there, off and on. Sometimes I’ll use the setting in a specific way, for example, in the case of THE CORPSE WITH THE EMERALD THUMB, set on the Pacific coast of Mexico, environmental factors such as the shortage of water, the need for both tourism and agriculture, but the imbalance caused by the massive amount of water used by tourists is one of the elements that sours the locals to the incomers in the tale. So I think it’s fair to say that in the Cait Morgan Mysteries I allow my fiction to grow from the roots of reality. In all aspects, and with all the changes we see in the twenty-teens. But the Cait books are not political diatribes – neither with an upper or lower case p; that’s not what I’m writing about, though my characters do not live in a vacuum, and are the product of their upbringing in every case.

In the case of my WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries, whilst they are set in Wales (which, contrary to some opinions, is a real place!) they are specifically set largely (allowing for some spectacular excursions) within the fictional environs of stately Chellingworth Hall, and the nearby village of Anwen-by-Wye. Now these are not real places, but they do operate in the real world. Indeed, one factor of all the WISE Enquiries books is that modern technology plays a significant part in the major cases that these private investigators are tackling. 

Use the Internet here? But of course!

In THE CASE OF THE CURIOUS COOK, 3D printing plays a key role, for example, and I’ve brought state-of-the-art surveillance equipment, google mapping, online dating, social networks and the general use of online sources of research data to bear in the books. It’s interesting to allow for the interplay between the sort of lives lived by people with a title that goes back to the fifteenth century and modern life. 

One thing to my advantage, you might think, is that Wales is full of mountains, lakes, empty spaces and few people, and it really does have massive areas where you cannot get any cellphone reception…but I have to be careful how I use that, because readers might think I’m using such a device unfairly, however realistic it is. 

Yes, lots of Wales is "empty"!

Cathy Ace is the Bony Blithe Award-winning author of The Cait Morgan Mysteries and The WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries (#4, The Case of the Unsuitable Suitor will be released in hardcover in the UK in September 2017 and in the USA & Canada on January 1st 2018).  You can find out more about Cathy, her work and her characters at her website, where you can also sign up for her newsletter with news, updates and special offers: http://cathyace.com/

 

 

 

 

Location, Location, Location….by Cathy Ace

So it’s time to turn to the question of place and setting in writing…which is great! For me, the setting is critical. It shapes the entire tale. It is, for me, usually one of my critical starting points.

Niçoise book, Niçoise tablecoth!

 

For those of you familiar with my Cait Morgan Mysteries, you’ll know each one is set in a different country, and I honestly believe the story I tell in each book couldn’t happen the way it does anywhere else in the world. Each book is completely immersed in, and in many cases springs from, the history, art, architecture, culture, people, food and drink of its setting. The critical framing elements of each story are specifically tied to the location. 

This has been the case since the first in the series, THE CORPSE WITH THE SILVER TONGUE is set in Nice, in the South of France. The mixture of incomers (wealthy non-French inhabitants of a swank apartment block that has a murky past as Gestapo HQ), with those whose entire lives have been spent in the area (a man whose tending of the grounds and gardens has an unexpected reason, and a woman who did what she had to do to survive the war years) leads to tensions and, yes, murder. The nearby Roman ruins play their role, too, as does the fact that the city is one the border between France and Italy. It’s all VERY Niçoise…and this tale could only take place here. It’s the same for the entire series – the last book, The Corpse with the Ruby Lips, being set in Budapest, where a bloody history and an engrained need for secrecy within a population too used to being overseen, and overheard, by authoritarian dictatorships leads to a web of deceit that has tragic consequences…so Hungarian. 

I have always traveled extensively, and every Cait book is set in a city I know well – having either lived or worked there – so that I can smell the place and hear its sounds as I write; even now I’m sitting here with hints of garlic and paprika haunting me as I write about Nice and Budapest, while accordions and zithers battle for my inner aural attention. It’s great fun to “be” in a place when I write – and I hope the feeling of the setting for my work comes off the page for my readers. 

Travels with Cait are great fun, and I have tried to avoid “Cabot Cove Syndrome” (you know, where Jessica Fletcher’s beloved seaside township is blighted with a body-count higher than anywhere else in the world!) by having Cait move from place to place. 

For my other series, I have thrown those worries to the winds, and have set all the WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries in one small locale – Chellingworth Hall and the nearby village of Anwen-by-Wye in the rolling countryside of Powys, Wales. Why did I take such a chance? Well, a couple of reasons: first of all, because these are stories about professional private investigators, there might not always be a corpse involved and, secondly, I wanted to place a series in Wales because I think my homeland deserves showcasing. Think about it – I expect you have a pretty good visual image of what Ireland, Scotland and England are like, but what about Wales? There really aren’t too many books set there, and I wanted to rectify that. 

I’ve invented Chellingworth Hall, the entire Chellingworth Estate and even the village of Anwen-by-Wye that sits upon the land owned by the Twyst family – but I have been able to use the very real local towns and cities of Hay-on-Wye, Builth Wells, Brecon, Swansea, Cardiff and other areas like the Gower Peninsular (all of which are places I know well, having only left the UK after I turned forty) as well. I want to take readers to haunts I love in my bones, and have them at least see them “fictionally” in my work. Maybe some readers will want to, and be able to, visit them in reality, and, for others, I hope that visiting in the pages of my work proves satisfying, and illuminating. 

Happy reading, and happy armchair travels! 

Cathy Ace is the Bony Blithe Award-winning author of The Cait Morgan Mysteries (#8 The Corpse with the Ruby Lips was released on November 1st) and The WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries (#3, The Case of the Curious Cook, was released in hardcover in the UK on November 30th and in the USA & Canada on March 1st).  You can find out more about Cathy, her work and her characters at her website, where you can also sign up for her newsletter with news, updates and special offers: http://cathyace.com/