Category Archives: Writing

WELSH WRITING WEDNESDAYS: CHRIS LLOYD ON WALES AS A STATE OF MIND

Posted on by

Wales has an extraordinary breadth of landscapes and moods. From cities to hamlets, from rural idylls to the legacy of the mines. A beautiful country pockmarked by elements of its past that has learnt to make a virtue out of the ravages it’s experienced. It’s a landscape and a history that invite legend and myth to flourish, a haven for stories and storytellers.

So, if that’s the case, why do I set all my books outside Wales?

In many ways, Wales is a state of mind. A way of viewing the world – both our own and others – that is born of being a small nation. How I view the world, the places I’ve lived, the countries I’ve visited, is determined not just by where I happen to be, but where I happen to be from.

When I was twenty, I went to Spain for six months as part of my degree. I ended up going back there after graduating and staying for twenty-four years, twenty of them in Catalonia. My connection with Catalonia – initially the small city of Girona and then the big guns of Barcelona – was immediate. I felt an affinity with its history of being the smaller partner to a more powerful neighbour, a culture that had been denied and pushed and pulled about at various times, a language that had been banned and belittled, and a culture that continued to thrive despite everything it had faced. And I viewed it all through the prism of my own background.

And that is why, despite the richness of Wales as a setting, there was never any question in my mind that I should write about Catalonia. The problem was that I waited until I was living back in Wales before having the idea to write a book set there, a monument to my planning skills. Except it wasn’t a problem. Just as when I’d first gone to live in Catalonia, I found myself looking at Wales through new eyes and finally understanding how I felt about being Welsh, so writing about Girona from a distance actually helped me pin down my thoughts and feelings about my former adopted home. Oddly, I’ve found that to write about somewhere I love, I need a distance from it, which is probably one of my barriers to writing stories set in Wales – I live here.

The first in my Catalan trilogy, City of Good Death, featuring Elisenda Domènech, a police officer in the newly-created Catalan police force, draws enormously from Catalan culture and the history and legends of Girona. A killer is using the Virgin of Good Death, a small statue dating from the Middle Ages, when it served to give convicted prisoners a final blessing before they were led out of the city to their execution, to announce the impending death of someone they feel is deserving of execution. Unfortunately, there are those in the city who agree and who applaud the killer’s every move. Until the victims become less deserving.

It was a similar passion that led to my new series, featuring Eddie Giral, a French police detective in Paris under the Nazi Occupation. I’d been fascinated for years by the notions of resistance and collaboration, and the blurred lines between them, but I wanted to write the story from a Parisian’s point of view, not the guns and guts heroism of the movies, but the day-to-day survival of ordinary people trying to get by. As near to the real history as possible. And I think that that is an essentially Welsh vision of life – an interest in society and community, an affinity with the underdog and the need to preserve a sense of self.

 

Follow Chris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/chrislloydbcn

 

 

 

 

WELSH WRITING WEDNESDAYS: INTRODUCING CRIME WRITER CHRIS LLOYD

Posted on by

With writing, there’s always a spark that ignites the flame. In my case, it was a small grey plaque almost hidden inside the entrance to a school.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. My name’s Chris Lloyd and I write crime fiction. I’m from Wales, but I studied Spanish and French at university and fell head over heels in love with the Catalan city of Girona when I spent my study year there. So much so that after I graduated, I hopped straight on the first bus back to Catalonia and there I stayed for nearly a quarter of a century.

I taught English in Girona for a few years before moving to Bilbao, in the Basque Country, where I opened the Oxford University Press office. After that, I moved back to Catalonia – specifically to Barcelona – where I lived for the next sixteen years, apart from a three-year stint in Madrid. I also spent a semester in Grenoble, where I researched the French Resistance movement – you’ll discover the reason for that in a moment.

My job in educational publishing meant that I was paid to travel all around Spain giving workshops and book presentations, which was great fun until it stopped being great fun. That’s when I took voluntary redundancy three days before my fortieth birthday and set up as a Catalan and Spanish translator. I also wrote travel books for Rough Guides at the same time, until my wife and I decided it was time to move to Wales, which is where we live now, in the town where I grew up. All good stories should come full circle.

Which brings me back to the spark.

It was a small grey plaque in a nondescript building and it stopped me in my tracks. It was in the Pletzel, a district of Paris that was home to much of the city’s Jewish population in 1940, and it listed the children from the school who had been sent to Auschwitz and never returned.

I was already researching for a novel set in the city under the Occupation – my fascination with the era and the oddly blurred notions of resistance and collaboration had been ignited when I was in Grenoble – but it was that moment when I felt the small hand of history tug at my sleeve and I knew that I had to tell the story of the city under the Nazis as truthfully as possible.

But I had to tell it my way, through crime fiction. About a Paris police detective, Eddie Giral, a veteran of the last war, who struggles to do his job and retain a moral compass under the new rules imposed on the city and the people. On the day the Nazis enter the city, four Polish refugees are found gassed in a railway truck, and only Eddie among the police feels the need to find out the truth of what happened to them. This will lead him into conflict with his fellow police, an American journalist, the Polish Resistance and, most dangerously of all, the Occupiers. It will also lead him to question decisions he made in the past and decide what he must do to atone in the present.

The first book in the series, The Unwanted Dead, recently won the HWA Gold Crown Award and was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger. The second book, Paris Requiem, comes out in 2022, and I’m currently writing the third in the series, set at Christmas 1940, although with little seasonal cheer or goodwill.

On which note, please allow me to wish you all the very best of cheer for Christmas and the year ahead. And lots of good books to enjoy.

 

 

Read more about Chris at https://chrislloydauthor.com/

 

 

 

 

ANNA HOLMES ON THE ENVIRONMENTAL INSPIRATION FOR HER LATEST NOVEL

Posted on by

The back cover blurb for my novel begins like this:

Set in the Indonesian rainforest, Blind Eye is a fast-paced environmental political thriller exploring moral predicaments and personal choices.

In a nutshell Blind Eye is about illegal logging.

Governments’ failures to stop this practice is depleting the worlds rainforest at alarming rates. In the eleven years since I first wrote my story as a screenplay, to when I turned it into a novel, forest cover roughly the area of Mexico has been lost according to figures compiled by Global Forest Watch (GFW) of the World Resources Institute.

My background is in dance, theatre, yoga and writing. I know a lot about these subjects and next to nothing about trees and timber. So what drew me to write about this subject?

My partner was a founder member of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) which promotes responsible management of the world’s forests. He is still involved. At that time, he had a company supplying FSC timber and he had travelled to different places in the world to support community forestry projects. I felt there was a story waiting to be hatched in my brain.

Many of us recognise that distinctive logo incorporating a tree with a tick on it and the initials FSC. It appears on toilet paper packaging, books, wooden kitchen utensils, garden furniture and much more. All these wood and paper products can demonstrate a chain of handlers from a well-managed forest or plantation through the milling process to the finished product. Big projects that signed up to sustainable building include the Senedd building (Welsh Parliament) in Cardiff Bay with its the magnificent curvy wooden interior and the hardwood decking outside leading to the waterfront. That is a project I know about as my partner’s company had a small role in this. Gosh, I even remember the name of the Brazilian hardwood decking: Massaranduba. Not bad!

As I said, the timber trade is not my thing, but I am environmentally conscious.

I love world-building and am a plot and character type of writer. With my debut historical novel, Wayward Voyage, (inspired by a true story) I thrust Anne Bonny into a harsh seafaring pirate life. In Blind Eye my protagonist, Ben Fletcher, is thrust into the murky world of illegal logging in an Indonesian rainforest.

With Blind Eye I am not interested in hammering readers over the head with a preachy, do-goody story. Who needs that? Readers should want to turn the page to find out what happens next. And I don’t want to just highlight the problems – we know what many of these are – so I leave readers with some hope and show that solutions are possible.

One review blogger writes: “Holmes has put together a first-rate thriller, mixed in a little romance, and shown the brutal side of business putting profits ahead of people. If the end result of reading this book is not just an enjoyable ride through some thrilling pages but also beginning to open our eyes a little wider, then we can be grateful for this story on multiple levels”.

Think about it. Don’t turn a blind eye when replacing your garden furniture or purchasing a new coffee table. That wood has a story to tell. What is it?

 

Links to Blind Eye retailers on Anna’s website

https://www.annamholmes.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

ELAINE SPIRES: TURNING A NOVEL INTO A STAGE PLAY

Posted on by

In her second article Elaine Spires turns a novel into a stage play

In my previous article – Turning a Stage Play into a Novel – I shared my experiences of turning two of my plays into novels and of the relative ease with which this was done. Writing a play from a book (Singles’ Holiday) proved much harder.

Photo credit: Danann Breathnach

Originally I wanted to write a screenplay but knew the probabilities of getting it in front of anyone that mattered were slightly less than winning the Euromillions next Friday. And although I know lots of actors, writers and directors, I unfortunately don’t know anyone with the financial means to make such a film or TV series. Producing Singles’ Holiday for the stage, however, was much more feasible.

The book has a fairly large cast of characters, and I wanted them all to appear in the play.  This was impossible.  As interesting as their backstories were and of importance in explaining how this totally diverse group of people come to holiday together in Antigua, it couldn’t be told in two hours.  So the culling of characters began.  It felt like I was murdering my own children.

To start, I took a red pen to all the minor characters.  Then I concentrated on those remaining to move the story along and produce my first draft. I’ve always preferred writing dialogue, but writing only dialogue proved a challenge resulting in lengthy stage directions.

The draft was four hundred and two pages: totally unrealistic as it would mean a six-hour show.  Actor Nick Campbell who knew the book well, had encouraged me to write the script and wanted to produce the play sat down with me and after much foot-stamping on my part persuaded me to cut two more characters but this meant we lost a huge plot twist.

I feared this would diminish the story but I could see that he was right; it was better to concentrate on writing a play that worked rather than a faithful rehash of the book that didn’t.  There’s nothing worse than theatre that doesn’t entertain.

It turned out to be sound advice.  I realised that Singles’ Holidays is, in fact, almost three books in one and by carefully plotting the story arc and concentrating on a smaller cast it could work well.

Once the second draft was ready I got a group of actors together for a table read.  This is a vital part of the playwriting process as it’s the first time a writer sees her characters come to life and hears them speak, outside her own head, of course.  It also shows what works theatrically and what doesn’t. As this draft was over two hundred pages I already knew further editing would be necessary.  I made copious notes and worked on the script again. Cutting out two further characters and their dialogue brought us to one hundred and sixty pages.

And it was time for another table read.  A fabulous director friend Jane Gull came along and was brutally honest with me, asking,

“Whose story is it, Elaine?”

This one question (answer – Eve the tour manager’s) showed me what I needed to do: cut out anything superfluous to developing her story.

Finally, I had a one-hundred-and-thirty-page play script. Another table reading showed it worked!

And in October 2014, Singles’ Holiday had a hugely successful week’s run at the Brentwood Theatre, courtesy of Melabeau Productions.

Singles’ Holiday is now the first in the six-book Singles’ Series. The others are set in worldwide tourism destinations and continue Eve’s story.  I still think they would make great TV.  Does anyone know someone at Netflix?

 

www.elainespires.co.uk

 

 

 

 

ELAINE SPIRES: TURNING A STAGE PLAY INTO A NOVEL

Posted on by

In the first of two articles Elaine Spires shares the secrets of turning a stage play into a novel

My first novel, What’s Eating Me, started life as a stage play.  It’s the story of Eileen Holloway, a struggling single parent of two teenage boys who’s holding down a demanding job while dealing with her difficult mother. Food is the drug of choice that gets her through the day until she is tricked into appearing on Barbara’s Beautiful Bodies, a reality TV show. She becomes a celebrity over night, albeit a reluctant one. Compulsive overeating is a grossly misunderstood condition and it was a story I was keen to tell.

Photo credit: Danann Breathnach

The play was a one-woman show, which I took to the Edinburgh Fringe. Although we played in a tiny venue, it had great reviews.  Afterwards, though, I just couldn’t let Eileen go. So I decided to turn her story into my first book.

As the play was a three-act soliloquy – Eileen sharing her thoughts with the audience – it seemed to me logical that the book should be written in the first person (I) as this would tell Eileen’s story in her own voice, giving it an intimacy that would have been missing in the third person (she).

A huge advantage for a writer turning a play into a novel is that the characters have already been brought to life and their voices have been heard. A great tip for writing novels, especially dialogue, is to read your words out loud to hear the characters’ voices and when converting a play this part has already been done for you.  Your characters are already 3-dimensional and alive; you’ve seen and heard them. The audience feedback i.e. where they reacted by laughing, gasping, clapping, stunned silences or – hopefully not – bored indifference is also a great indicator of what’s working and what isn’t, not just re dialogue but also plot twists and story arc.  I would recommend watching your play performed as many times as possible. You’ll be surprised that you see something different every time. Actor input also plays a helpful, vital role.

Regardless of when events and back stories appeared in the play my first step was to put them into chronological order thus giving me a time line of scenes. Then I worked on each scene, developing character/personality traits, adding or expanding on backstory thus giving not only deeper insights to the individual characters but explaining, in this case, Eileen’s reactions to them.  This I call sprinkling the glitter – where the creative process really gets to work. It’s the part where ideas often appear from nowhere that move the plot along or take it in a different direction. This, in turn, helped demonstrate the Why behind Eileen’s self-destructive behaviour. In the end, although the main events of the story occur in diary form in the novel, backstory events are revealed as and when the plot demands it, thus producing twists.  And everyone loves a twist, don’t they? Perhaps this sounds complicated but with detailed A3 sheets on the wall covered in post-it notes, it worked for me.

I thoroughly enjoyed this way of writing and so another play – Sweet Lady – became my second novel.  And this book, too, is written in first person, although quite different from What’s Eating Me.  The rest of my novels haven’t been plays but I always visualise them as such, making notes and envisaging scenes of dialogue, which I perform aloud – fortunately I live alone – before I start the proper writing of the book.

Readers often remark that my books would make great TV series. I think that’s the result of the way I plan.

 

www.elainespires.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

WELSH WRITING WEDNESDAYS: INTRODUCING CRIME WRITER GAIL WILLIAMS

Posted on by

I am a writer. That thought has been with me for as long as I can remember. I am a writer.

It’s not complicated, but it’s not something I was confident to say until fairly recently. So, hello, I am GB Williams, a crime writer. I have always known that writing is what I was supposed to do, though not what I’ve always done, still it’s what I’m here to talk about, I’m here to introduce you to my writing.

The Chair is a thriller-romance set on Cader Idris, in beautiful southern Snowdonia. The heart of the story starts with a hacker taking what he shouldn’t in London, and when cyber threats turn to physical threats, he has to run as far from the internet as possible. Remembering his parents’ complaints of no signal in north Wales is what brings him to Cadre Idris. Poor driving and the resulting crash is what keeps him there and draws local vet, Branwen Jones and the local hermit, Cobb, into his world of trouble.

Having grown up in the southeast and lived more than half my life in Wales, I know both sides of this story well enough to feel I can do justice to both worlds.

There are a lot of contrasts between London and Wales. Pace of life. Freshness of the air. The wide-open spaces, or lack thereof. But there are strong similarities too. We are all humans trying to survive after all.

That drive is what takes us all though life, and we discover different things alone the way, sometimes to find what we don’t know we’re looking for, we have to change trajectory.  That’s something I did, moved from a high-pressure office job, to writing and editing, and I love it, never been happier.

Changing trajectory is what I do with the characters in The Chair.

Cobb comes to Pen-Y-Cwm after tragedy changes his life. All he wants to be is alone to avoid heartache – only meeting Branwen threatens to drag him out of such splendid isolation. Branwen is looking to leave Pen-Y-Cwm because she can’t take the isolation and heartache of being there, a pain Cobb’s presence exacerbates. Jay is looking to make a quick buck in London, but to save his life he has to run, ending up in Pen-Y-Cwm. Baron works for money, inflicting pain isn’t what he enjoys, it’s just something he’s paid to do. He goes to Pen-Y-Cwm, because that is where he’s sent. He’d happily leave Branwen and Cobb alone, but they are between him and the mark.

This disparate group of people come together for a life-threatening climax, that you’ll just have to read to find out who survives, and decide for yourself if you think they should.

 

 

The Chair

Cobb retreated to Cadre Idris for a solitary life of peace and quite. It’s a bubble that bursts when he and Branwen Jones, the local vet, find an RTA victim during a blizzard and must shelter him in Cobb’s home.

When London’s underbelly reaches Wales, they discover that modern inconveniences persist, and this isn’t the uncivilization they know nor the one they expected. Their presence throws close-knit community life into stark relief.

Forced to help hide an injured hacker from people who will kill to stop the spread of stolen information, Cobb’s not sure he’s ready to rejoin the world when that means putting another woman in the firing line. Branwen’s not sure she can face the revelation of her darkest secret.

When they face the final showdown, they will all find that a Welsh mountain is no place to hide.

 

Author’s website: https://gailbwilliams.co.uk/

 

 

 

 

How I got a Literary Agent.

Posted on by

In January this year one of the most amazing things happened to me: I got a literary agent. Having an agent was always something beyond my wildest dreams, more than that, my agent is the amazing Susan Yearwood. Champagne popping time indeed.

I spent the months in the run up to Christmas researching agents and sending off submissions. I went through The Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook with precision, choosing ten agents to send my book off to. I researched every agent heavily and Susan called to me. There are a few interviews I found in which Susan and her ethos resonated with me. I knew she was The One.  In fact, before her email asking to schedule a call with her, I had a dream she was my agent and we were being interviewed at a literary festival together.

In the end I sent my first novel off to a lot of agents and publishers. I got a lot of good feedback and a few full manuscript requests. I also got a wonderful rejection from Harper Collins, who read the entire thing and sent me four paragraphs of feedback. They even asked me to send them anything else I wrote. In the end Susan passed on my first novel, but she liked my writing enough to ask if I had anything else I could send her. Thankfully I did. I always write a first draft of a book and then get started on another one while I let the other one sit. Then I go back to it with fresh eyes, alternating my drafts. I did not think the other book was ready and had spent hundreds sending it off to a professional editing agency for feedback. By the time the feedback came back Susan had been my agent for three months! It may have been a waste of money, but I have no complaints.

Susan loved the book and took my on as a client after our phone call. I was a true pinch me moment. For anyone who wants an agent and does not have one yet I would say the following things:

  • Write a good book. Send off the first three chapters, along with a synopsis that really grabs.
  • Collate all of the writing you have done and any awards you have won. Write a paragraph about yourself that sells all you have to offer. Covering letters are important.
  • Get a copy of The Write”s and Artists’ Yearbook and research what agents work in your genre.
  • Start submitting.
  • Keep submitting.
  • Take rejection in your stride.
  • Listen to all feedback.
  • Redo your submission to suit various agents.
  • Start writing your new book.

 

Good luck!

 

WELSH WRITING WEDNESDAYS: INTRODUCING AUTHOR AND BLOGGER JESSIE CAHALIN

Posted on by

The tranquil, ancient setting of the Wye Valley always soothes me and encourages me to let my mind wander and have always felt at home there. I was in Tintern five years ago when I realised the need to connect with my dream to write. Indeed, William Wordsworth adored this spot, and his ballad, Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, captures the beauty of the setting we can still enjoy over two hundred years later.

These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.

Tintern breathed life into the fictional setting of Delfryn in my work in progress, Loving You. Delfryn is a Welsh word for pretty view and the perfect place for my characters, Pearl and Jim, to seek sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of the town. Writing about Delfryn has also been a wonderful destination, particularly during lockdown.

Jim is a car mechanic who wants to be an artist and adores to visit his sister’s farm in Delfryn. Pearl is a seamstress who wants to sing. The landscape inspires Jim to paint and is also the romantic setting for him and Pearl. Alas, life in the country will not allow Pearl to fulfil her dream to become a singer.

Pearl and Jim fall in love but both want to follow their dreams. The novel is set in the seventies because I wanted to travel back in time to the decade I was born. Exploring the seventies was not as familiar as I thought it would be and the restrictive nature of society shocked me. During my research, I reflected on how my parents had very different opportunities to me and used this to add colour to my characters. Like Jim, my late father excelled at art but was from a working class, northern family and was expected to earn a living in a trade.

Despite their experiences, my parents always encouraged me to grab opportunities, pursue my dreams and celebrate creativity. I am also so grateful I can pinpoint the time and place where I chose to change the ‘what ifs’ into a destination. Ironically, I recently discovered that my ancestors hailed from Monmouthshire in the Middle Ages, so it feels as if I have gone full circle.

I will publish Loving You, a family saga, one day and discover whether Pearl and Jim will follow their dreams and their hearts. And the beauty of writing is you can provide the characters with opportunities, but they will still decide which paths they wish to take.

 

Contacts: 

Website:     http://jessiecahalin.com/

Facebook   https://www.facebook.com/people/Jessie-Cahalin/;  https://www.facebook.com/JessieCahalinAuthor/

Twitter        @BooksInHandbag