"Tic-ked off....by Cathy Ace" said every editor I ever had

Do you have any writing tics (habits or problems which you repeat in your prose)? How do you deal with them?

Yes, I do. And. But. Very. But. That. But. And. Very. That. There you go – out of my system now.

Some things are true writing tics, some I see as habits of speech my characters use – there’s a difference. 

The tics are things I search for – hunting them down and getting rid of them when I can. But I still enjoy starting the odd sentence with “But”. And I reserve the right to do so (and to begin a sentence with the word “And”!)  Beyond that I do seem to develop a couple of tics with each different manuscript, and my editors tend to spot them – thank goodness, because I honestly don’t even know they are there. I read past them as I comb through the manuscript – or else I’m too distracted by all the Ands, Buts, Verys and That’s.

Beyond that, we all have tics when we speak – a turn of phrase, a favourite saying – and they work just fine in real life, but they can grate on the page. Thus, I try to use a character’s speaking tics in a spare manner, though I admit it’s not always easy and I often need an editor to reel me back in.

None of us is perfect – I know I’m not, and I also know I’m always learning. I doubt I’ll ever learn enough to become a totally tic-free writer, though. But I’ll try. And try. Very hard. There, that’s that. (Editor keels over, weeping.)

Cathy Ace writes the WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries (book #2 THE CASE OF THE MISSING MORRIS DANCER will be available in trade paperback on August 31st in the UK, and in November in the US/Canada, and the Cait Morgan Mysteries (book #7 THE CORPSE WITH THE GARNET FACE was published in paperback in April). Find out more about Cathy and her work, and sign up for her newsletter at http://cathyace.com/   

A traveler's tale or two...by Cathy Ace

Where is the best place you’ve ever vacationed? Has that setting made its way into any of your books?

Anyone who’s read a Cait Morgan Mystery knows how difficult it is for me to answer this question: all those books are set in places where I’ve lived or have visited frequently. The south of France, BC wine country, Pacific coastal Mexico, Vegas, Hawai’i, Amsterdam…I have spent years or months in all of them, and have often sneaked there for a short vacation too! And they are all in my books (Budapest is up next, by the way, folks!). My WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries are set in Wales where I grew up, so there's that, too.

Yes, that's me floating in the Dead Sea

I’ve been fortunate to travel a great deal during my life. At least, I see it as fortunate – I know that, for many, travel isn’t something high on their personal agenda. So I’m going to talk about places I have visited and loved, which have not made their way into my work (yet!!).

Jordan: I adored Agatha Christie’s beloved Nabatean and Roman city of Petra where she lived for more than a year with her archaeologist husband, Max Mallowan; floating in the Dead Sea made me giggle (yes, the water tastes absolutely disgusting but being told that just isn’t the same as tasting it for oneself!); Amman’s amphitheatre is stunning; Jerash is about as perfect a Roman city as I have seen anywhere; Mount Nebo makes one feel utterly spiritual and the Crusader citadel of Kerak Castle took my breath away.  It was great fun to ride a camel through Wadi Rum, where the Seven Pillars of Wisdom frame the landscape.

Yep - it's me! At Petra, New Year's Eve

Tunisia: I decided I wanted to be at Carthage for my birthday one year. Having grown up studying Latin, it was a place that had filled my teen years with wonder. I managed it, and was bitterly disappointed! Yes, I know a city famous for being sacked will probably look a bit sorry for itself, but I’d hoped for more than remained, which boiled down to a few columns and the subterranean parts of the Roman baths. Fortunately the joy of visiting Tunis itself, with its wonderful Bardo Museum, made up for this underwhelming experience, as did a totally joyous trip to the village of Sid Bou Said, which is known for its blue and white architectural themes. I made the stupid mistake of buying a star-shaped lamp made of brass and glass there – given that it was about two-feet in diameter it made for a very interesting flight home!

Outside the museum in Cairo

Egypt: if I have to pick a favourite, this is it. I’ve spent a lot of time in Egypt (months), and there hasn’t been a moment I didn’t enjoy. No, hang on, I take that back….about fifteen minutes after sunset each night, a wall of hot air would roll across the Nile and hit you like a giant hairdryer, followed about ten minutes later by swarms of the most nibbly mosquitoes I’ve ever experienced – those moments…running to find the respite of the hotel’s air-conditioning…weren’t much fun at all! I’ve cruised the Nile, visited Agatha Christie’s suite at the Old Cataract Hotel at Aswan, clambered up inside the pyramid of Cheops in Cairo and have stood in the Temple of Karnak at dawn on Midsummer’s Day. I had the magnificently-painted tomb of Queen Nefertari all to myself for half an hour on the morning of my 35th birthday and I’ve ridden through the

Tip: don't wear black when you're on a motorbike in Egypt in August

Valleys of the Kings and Queens on a motorbike in August (not recommended unless you fill a back-pack with water to pour over yourself!). Sailing in a felucca on the Nile to its tiny islands is a delight, as is taking a horse-drawn kalesh (a small, open carriage) to dine at the Winter Palace in Luxor where they have some of the the most magnificently unnecessary fireplaces I’ve ever seen. To balance that luxurious experience I also drank tea made from Nile-water and ate goat stew in a traditional mud house, sharing a hookah pipe with my hosts afterwards…an interesting breakfast!

Apple shisha - my favourite!

I’m not sure if any of these places will find their way into my future books, but I’ve loved them all, and hope to return one day. Where have you been that you'd like to revisit? 

Cathy Ace writes the WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries (book #2 THE CASE OF THE MISSING MORRIS DANCER was published in hardback in February, and will be available in trade paperback on August 31st, and the Cait Morgan Mysteries (book #7 THE CORPSE WITH THE GARNET FACE was published in paperback in April). Find out more about Cathy and her work, and sign up for her newsletter at http://cathyace.com/    

Strange is the new normal by Cathy Ace

WHAT IS THE STRANGEST THING YOU HAVE DONE WHILE RESEARCHING A BOOK?

This is a tough one to answer because “strange” is such a subjective concept. I’ll be honest and admit many things I think of as being perfectly normal might be construed as “strange” by others. 

Take some of the research I've undertaken for my Cait Morgan Mysteries, for example: I thought nothing of engaging a lovely lady by the name of Patti for an hour or so on the lounge deck of a cruise ship so she could explain the details of exactly how her chum had been hypnotized to stop smoking…just so I could take my initial thought of “what a great way to kill someone” and contemplate the logistics of how that might work. (I used the idea in THE CORPSE WITH THE GOLDEN NOSE, but you’ll have to read the book to see just how it played out…no spoilers here!) Indeed, I’ve had so many lengthy conversations with people about matters which, in my mind, lend themselves to murder that I don’t even blush anymore when I explain why I’m quizzing them. See? “Strange” is highly subjective.

The better part of a day I spent tasting tequila (for THE CORPSE WITH THE EMERALD THUMB, set on a tequila-producing hacienda near Puerto Vallarta) went well…up to a point. I don’t think anyone here needs to know exactly how it went off the rails. Quite an experience – but not “strange” given the amount I’d consumed! And who knew there was so much to learn about the supply chain for, and correct storage of, caviar and the challenges of running a restaurant that can only be reached by elevator? Thanks to Lyle at the Eiffel Tower Restaurant at Paris, Las Vegas for spending all that time with me in person and online – it was essential research for THE CORPSE WITH THE PLATINUM HAIR (even drinking all that champagne was critical!).   

I find the emails that pass between me and my ever-so-helpful-and-friendly local coroner to be perfectly normal, and my husband no longer thinks it’s odd that I sometimes eat food I don’t really fancy, but which I think Cait Morgan would try…just to find out what it smells and tastes like, and how it feels in my mouth. Trust me when I tell you snail caviar doesn’t have the flavor or texture of fish caviar and, apparently, there is a limit to how much white chocolate bread pudding a person can eat! (THE CORPSE WITH THE GOLDEN NOSE and THE CORPSE WITH THE PLATINUM HAIR, respectively.)

For my WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries I capitalized upon my love of unusual museums and ended up finding out more about antique dentures than I had previously imagined anyone would ever care to know (see how that worked out in THE CASE OF THE DOTTY DOWAGER). That said, learning about Winston Churchill’s false teeth didn’t strike me as “strange”, but fascinating. 

Maybe that’s how it is for a person who writes mysteries – my “normal” might be “strange” to others – but I have no real way of knowing. Which is probably for the best. 

 
Cathy Ace writes the WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries (book #2 THE CASE OF THE MISSING MORRIS DANCER was published in hardback in February, and book #1 THE CASE OF THE DOTTY DOWAGER was published in trade paperback on March 1st) and the Cait Morgan Mysteries (book #7 THE CORPSE WITH THE GARNET FACE was published in paperback in April). Find out more about Cathy and her work, and sign up for her newsletter at http://cathyace.com/ 

Confessions of a book lover - by Cathy Ace

Do you read differently now than you did as a teenager?

Of course my teen years provided me with school and university reading lists, so I certainly did my fair share of reading “great works” as part of syllabus-stipulated English literature and language classes. To be honest, I enjoyed most of what I “had to study”. Especially Shakespeare – we would read it aloud in class and I loved the feeling of the words on my tongue. Iambic pentameter feels so natural.

What I chose to read was a bit different. By the time I hit my teens I’d consumed every Enid Blyton, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Ellery Queen and Tolkien the shelves of local libraries (and my mum) could provide.

Some of the books I brought with me to Canada (Photo by author.)

Then I moved to Llwyn-y-bryn Comprehensive School for Girls. It had two libraries: the Upper Library contained thousands of volumes of what one would call “The Classics” – those books from around the world that had distinguished themselves somehow. So I began reading works by Mann, Nietzsche, Zola, Goethe, Camus, Sartre, Joyce, Austen and Dickens, poetry by Chaucer, Dylan Thomas, Hopkins, Elliot and Proust, as well as plays by Congreve, Wesker, Yates, Pinter, Ibsen, Osborne, Shaw, Wilde, and, of course, Shakespeare, for fun.  I understand now this is somewhat unusual behavior for a young teen, but, at the time, it seemed perfectly normal to me. When I turned sixteen it was decided that the Lower Library would be closed, and all the books were to be sold off at sixpence per volume (I think that would equate to about 5 cents). As a volunteer-librarian I spent weeks sneakily transferring books from the Upper to the Lower Library (and saving the money I earned working at a shoe shop) thereby ensuring I could snap up a wonderful selection for myself. (I might not have been reading many crime novels at the time, but I was certainly acting them out!)

I still have those books; they are my old friends, so, of course, I shipped them to join me when I moved to Canada. The photo here shows some of them. Certainly not all. I’ve read and re-read most of them, and am always delighted to discover how much more insightful the authors seem to become as I get older. Now in my mid-fifties, I am just beginning to understand how stunning it was that Zola had a vision across twenty novels – and that he had that plan when he was in his twenties! I’m so glad I found the books I did in my teen years, and not just because of what it has led me to read in later years; every rom-com I’ve watched on the screen takes me back to Jane Austen’s blue-print for those tales.

So, in my teen years I inhaled the classics - the Nobel prize-winners’ works, the lauded and the famous titles. I’m not sorry I did it. I learned a great deal, and my eyes were opened to a world far beyond the library walls of my school in Swansea.

Little did I know when I first read Lowry’s Under the Volcano, back in the early 1970s, that I would end up mirroring his migration from the UK to British Columbia, and would find myself living not far from where he wrote that book.  (Photo by author.)

 

After that I put in more than a quarter of a century of wide reading, however, I hate to admit it, but I don’t now read as much as I’d like to. That said, I could happily read for thirty hours a day! When I do read, if I’m not revisiting old favorites, I read crime fiction. If there isn’t a crime, a puzzle, a conspiracy, or a dead body in a book I keep waiting for one to present itself. I can’t help it. It might be seen as some sort of sickness, but, for me, it works. There are so many crime fiction authors – living and dead – whose works I have yet to discover, or at least fully enjoy, that I know there are enough books to see me happy when I do sit down to read.