What is the title of your newest book? How many books have you published?
My most recent title in the USA and Canada is The Case of the Unsuitable Suitor. It’s the fourth title in the WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries series. I also write the Cait Morgan Mysteries series, in which there are currently eight titles. I also recently had the anthology Murder Keeps No Calendar published.
How did you develop your character and choose your location?
The WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries feature four softly-boiled female private investigators (one is Welsh, one Irish, one Scottish and one English – hence WISE), plus a sleuthing sidekick, the dowager duchess Althea Twyst.
Gathering the women together took a little time, as I wanted them to each have a unique background, to allow for a range of influences within the group. I began with a broad overview of the range I wanted, then worked out how these could best be brought together in a realistic, and believable, way. I ended up with a group I think works well as a professional group with a fit-for-purpose skill-set, as well as offering a variety of personal backgrounds that allow for both tension, and overriding sisterhood. This is who they ended up being…
(Welsh) Carol Hill grew up on a farm in Carmarthenshire, learned English as a second language, and remained in her shell growing happily round as she studied hard. She wasn’t really aware she was a nerdy geek, but the men she worked with knew it, and they all underestimated her. She finally ended up with the top job in computing and systems management at a global reinsurance giant in The City where she met David, who she recruited; working long into the night on complex projects turned into a few drinks, then dates, and finally marriage. Desperate to start a family, she was advised by her doctor to give up her stressful, exhausting career if she wanted to conceive, so joining the enquiries agency as their technical heart allowed her to relax and unwind. In her mid-thirties, she’s finally, and joyously, pregnant. Her husband dotes on her and is able to work from home when they move to Wales as a global computing consultant. She’s back in her Homeland, and cannot imagine how she could be happier. It’s her ability to glean information from around the world via her enviable network of other techno-geeks that allows the WISE women to have a real edge. Everything about Carol is round, except her smile which is as broad as her hips and as warm as her motherly heart.
(Irish) Christine Wilson-Smythe is reveling in her twenties, and is, truly, usually the smartest (she belongs to Mensa), best-looking woman in the room. Her impoverished viscount father used his silver Irish tongue to make a name for himself and build a good business in The City, and spent as much as he could (which was a fair bit) on his children’s education. Christine’s older brother will get the title, but she certainly got the brains. Her early years were spent happily riding and generally getting into scrapes in the Irish countryside with the local children, but she was taken from her wild ways and the run-down Georgian home she loved so much to attend public school in England. A strict nanny and a good education were followed by university and a career in The City, but she still yearns for her wilder years, and truly believes she’s immortal. She followed in her father’s footsteps for a while, but rapidly outstripped him – and all the pathetic men she worked with. She has a love of adventure, and sees working as an investigator as a wonderful way to never get bored. She despises the time she has to spend attending various charity functions in London, and would much rather be following a lead, or being with Alexander Bright – a man with a more-than-shady past for whom she will not for one moment admit she’s fallen rather hard.
(Scottish) Mavis MacDonald has lived a life of service. Her husband was a soldier, but pensioned out when he was injured by friendly fire during a training exercise. With her two sons at an age where she felt able to allow her husband to do most of the parenting, she trained as a nurse and joined the forces herself, rising to become matron of a barracks specializing in the care of old soldiers. Her sons are grown, married, have their own children, and still live in her, and their, native Scotland; her husband is dead and deeply mourned; her mother’s had a stroke and is in a care-home in Dumfries. Now in her sixties, she believes she can still serve those who have problems that need solving – thereby caring for them in a way. Always correctly attired (her sensible navy gabardine mackintosh sees her through at least three seasons of the year) she carries her compact frame erect, and adopts a workmanlike attitude toward hunting out potential clients. She’s a tartar when it comes to making sure contracts are signed, accounts are properly kept, and that the company is run as efficiently as possible. Mature, level-headed, with a great attention to detail and a generally dour approach to life – which doesn’t stop her sometimes having a good laugh – Mavis is an old nurse through and through. She understands how to act in a crisis, and has a way with the sick, infirm and elderly built upon years of experience in situations where soldiers found it hard to come to terms with their injuries, be they physical or mental. Fiercely loyal, she won’t accept any folderol or shenanigans, and expects to be promptly paid a pound for a pound’s worth of work.
(English) Annie Parker was born to immigrant St. Lucian parents within the sound of Bow Bells, raised in the East End of London and, if you cut her through the middle like a stick of rock, you could read COCKNEY written right through her. For her entire life she’s barely acknowledged the fact she’s black, but she knows she’s working class; her father was a bus driver and her mum managed a launderette when they moved out to “posh Plaistow”. A receptionist at a firm of Lloyds Insurers for decades, she’s spent her entire working life life surrounded by friends (Carol amongst them)with whom she’d share a couple of bottles of wine after work, and men whose racism was trumped only by their misogyny. Describing herself as a tall stick insect with a big bum and feet like flippers, Annie’s now sweating her way through her early fifties on a diet of gin and tonic, sneaked smokes, and hot sauce – which her mother has raised her to believe should be added to absolutely every item of food. Happily single, fiercely independent, Annie’s entire life has been spent in London – so she’s not looking forward to moving into a thatched cottage built for “tiny little Welshies” in the countryside, which she sees as a bleak and empty place. Being too far from a Marks & Sparks is the least of her worries though, as she finds she’s no longer able to go undercover in a part of Wales that’s “pretty milky”, so she often has to stay away from even her village home to work in Swansea and Cardiff, where it’s her accent that stands out rather than her color. She’s a devotee of everything gumshoe, and thrives on developing her undercover backstory while indulging and leveraging her ability to gossip to anyone about anything, and get them to open up to her because of her utterly disarming manner. Mavis-baiting is Annie’s favorite sport.
(Their sleuthing sidekick) Althea Twyst is facing 80, can’t ride her beloved steeds anymore because of a nasty fall in her early seventies, and has just one canine companion, not the packs she was used to. She’s almost embarrassed by her stuffed-shirt son and flaky daughter. (She blames the nannies and public schools her husband, the late duke, insisted were allowed to raise her children.) The arrival of the WISE women at Chellingworth gives her a new lease on life, and she takes to sleuthing like a human version of her own beloved Jack Russell, McFli. Convinced her son was given a sense of humor bypass at birth, she wickedly mocks him by throwing Monty Python references in his direction whenever she can and, after fifty years as a duchess and dowager, takes much for granted she wouldn’t have even known existed when she was born to a working class family of Welsh, Irish, Scottish and English stock – a background which allows her to fit in with the other WISE women. She took being a duchess seriously, and applied herself to her county and courtly duties. She has absolutely no idea she’s eccentric – she’s the only normal person she knows, and has been able to do what she wants, when she wants to do it, for most of her adult life, so she does it…much to the chagrin of Mavis, her new house-mate, who tries to stop Althea’s wicked sense of humor from causing trouble. Mavis usually fails in this respect, as she just can’t get Althea to understand the difference between carrying out a professional investigation rather than sometimes-dangerous amateur sleuthing.
The Welsh setting? I’m Welsh, and I just don’t see enough Welsh settings in crime fiction…so there’s that, and the fact I can “visit” my Homeland every minute I’m writing!
What is a day in the life of an author like? Do you write a certain number of words, do you write in the morning or evening?
I might be a bit of an odd duck when it comes to writing, because I have three distinct phases of the whole writing process, each of which means I face a very different type of day. I am very much a plotter, so I spend a great deal of time planning my work, carrying out research, writing up background notes of characters and locales, then preparing detailed chapter outlines. I tend to do this on a pretty sporadic basis, with hours of internet research, thinking then note-making being spread over weeks. When I finally sit down to write the first draft of the book I do just that…hammer away at my keyboard for hours on end, usually groaning in agony when I get up from my chair after too long sitting in it! If it’s a “light promotional time” I will do this during the day, but my most productive hours tend to be from about 9pm to around 2am. After that there’s the editing phase, which I find I can do in fits and spurts during the daytime, whilst keeping up with other, promotional, responsibilities.
Do you belong to a writers group or are you in touch with other writers? How does that help your writing?
I joined Crime Writers of Canada just as my first novel was being published, knowing I would throw myself into it, but not realizing the full extent to which I would end up doing that. I have spent the past five years as firstly a Regional representative for BC/Yukon/NWT, then I had two years as Vice Chair, and I have just stepped down after two years as Chair. During that time I have met, got to know, and hope I have helped, many dozens of other Canadian crime writers either online or at events across the country. I also attend conventions where I get to meet other authors, and we all head to the bar to moan about our “tough lives” whilst all agreeing we have the best possible lives! I regularly attend Left Coast Crime, Malice Domestic, CrimeFest (UK) and Bouchercon. I’m incredibly honored that I will be Toastmaster when left Coast Crime is held in Vancouver, BC in March 2019. While I don’t ever attend the sort of get-together that aims to improve writing craft, I find that just knowing other authors and understanding that we all face the same sort of problems, even if we write very different types of work, helps me to do the one thing that offers me the chance to become a better writer – I keep on writing!
Do you model your character after yourself or any one you know?
Within the group of WISE women, each character is based upon a mixture of real people I know, but none is based upon one individual. If you want to meet a character more closely based upon me, then Cait Morgan might give you a few insights!
Who is your favorite author?
Agatha Christie, without question!
How do you keep track of character details from book to book so they are consistent?
I have a digital folder which contains physical and psychological profiles for all my characters, together with their backstory and key happenings from book to book. This started off before I even write the first novella, and I keep adding to it as “new” things come along.
If you could not be an author, what would you like to do as a career?
This is my third career. My first was in marketing communications in London, UK, as a person who created communications campaigns and also trained non-marketing managers to take on directorial responsibilities in marketing and marketing communications; my second was as a lecturer in marketing and marketing communications on MBA and undergraduate programs in Canada; and now here I am…killing people off, and loving it! If I had to choose a fourth career (because I certainly am not a person who enjoys looking, or moving, backwards) I would like to be a painter…unfortunately, I’m just not gifted in that respect!
For a review of the latest book in the WISE Agency series, The Case of the Unsuitable Suitor, click here.
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1 comment:
Nice interview.
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