Tag Archives: Welsh Writing Wednesdays

WELSH WRITING WEDNESDAYS: INTRODUCING JAN BAYNHAM AND HER WRITING

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I was born and brought up in the tiny mid-Wales village of Newbridge-on-Wye and moved to nearby Llandrindod Wells when I was fourteen. Fortunate to have had a very free and happy childhood, growing up in such beautiful rural surroundings has always stayed with me. Although I have now spent more years living in the south of Wales, first in Swansea and then for the most part in Cardiff, I still call Llandrindod ‘home’. For as long as I can remember, apart from a very brief spell of wanting to be a glamourous model or an airhostess, I always wanted to become a teacher, my two main loves being English and Art. Having studied in Cardiff, I have taught in a wide range of settings – from opening and running my own nursery, teaching all year groups in primary school, secondary school English and Art and Pottery up to A level, and teaching art, crafts and pottery in adult evening classes when my three children were small. For the last six years of my career in education, I became a Teacher Adviser for English.

You will notice that I have not yet mentioned writing. I was extremely late to the party and it wasn’t until I joined a writing group at a local library when I retired that I wrote my first piece of fiction. In my job, I was passionate about children’s writing but this was for me, for my enjoyment… and I loved it. I was hooked! Soon, I went on to take a writing class at Cardiff university and began to submit short stories for publication. In October 2019, my first collection of shorts was published.  My pieces started getting longer and longer so that, following a novel writing course, I wrote my first full-length novel. My debut novel, Her Mother’s Secret was published in April 2020, followed by Her Sister’s Secret, a few months later, by Ruby Fiction. The third novel in the three-book deal is due out in the summer.

So, what do I write about? My dual-narrative novels are about families and their secrets. The strapline for my publisher is ‘Stories that Inspire Emotions!” and I hope that my books do just that. They are character driven. I have always been fascinated by long-held family secrets and skeletons lurking in cupboards and these form the germs of ideas to develop into a novel.

Fascinated by the ever-present link between past and present, I try to explore how actions and decisions made in one era have an impact on subsequent generations. In all my novels, I want to tell two stories showing a special bond between mothers and daughters. The daughters’ stories are written in first person and I’ve tried to get inside their heads, feel their emotions and show the reader why they act in the way they do.   In each novel, setting plays an important role, too. There is always a journey to a contrasting setting vastly different from the area in mid-Wales where my characters are from. I hope I manage to transport the reader not only to the heart of Wales but also to Greece, Sicily or France. I’ve also tried to capture the different times during which my characters lived.

Having a lot of catching up to do, I take every opportunity I can to learn more about the craft of writing by attending workshops, talks and conferences. Joining that small writing group in Whitchurch library was the best decision I could have made to start me on my writing journey.

 

You can link up with Jan on Twitter – @JanBaynham https://twitter.com/JanBaynham or Facebook – Jan Baynham Writer https://www.facebook.com/JanBayLit or you can follow her blog – Jan’s Journey into Writing https://janbaynham.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

 

 

WELSH WRITING WEDNESDAYS: EVONNE WAREHAM ON WALES AS A SETTING FOR FICTION

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You’ve probably noticed that many romance novels and some crime stories are set in picturesque locations in the British Isles – Scotland and Cornwall are particular favourites.You don’t get books set in Wales quite so often, although dramas like The Pembrokeshire Murders are putting Welsh settings on the screen.

I’m a Welsh writer, living on the South Wales coast, who once worked for the National Parks. That’s a lot of baggage. I’ve set books in Wales in the past and am ambitious to do more. I write in the genre romantic suspense, which is better known in the USA, less so on this side of the Atlantic. If you’ve read books by Nora Roberts, Karen Rose or Karen Robards you’ll have an idea of what I am talking about. Those books are set in places like Sacramento, Washington and New Orleans, or sometimes in the American farmlands or backwoods.

It’s not so much the Welsh urban settings that appeal to me – although I’m sure that Cardiff and Llandudno can be interesting locations, if not sounding quite as glamorous as New York or Los Angeles. The attraction of Wales for me is the potential of the rural and coastal landscape, and the way that it can be turned in two directions. Wales is blessed with mountains, big skies for cloud watching and star gazing, and a beautiful and dramatic coastline, accessible from a coastal path that circles the entire country.

Is there anything more romantic than a deserted beach at sunset on a warm summer evening? A place for lovers to discover each other. But give the story a twist – the same beach in winter, or at night, with a storm blowing, and you have the backdrop for mayhem. A seaside or country cottage can be an idyllic bolt hole from the world or a deserted and lonely trap, with a heroine on the run. Writers think about these things. I’m often told that taking a walk with an author who is sizing up the surroundings for a good place to bury a body is a disconcerting experience. You get the picture.

The historic legacy of Wales, from castles to folklore, is another attraction. Welsh castles range from Castell Coch, a quirky Victorian Gothic Revival built on thirteenth century foundations, to massive medieval fortifications like Caerphilly, which were anything but quirky. The myths and legends of Wales are rich in magic and the supernatural. Traditional customs, like the Mari Lwyd, a poetic wassailing party featuring a horse’s skull, have plenty to tingle the spine.

There is also the attraction of the natural world. One of the perks of being an author is the ability to make your own weather, and Wales has plenty of that to choose from. If you need a fierce storm to strand your hero and heroine together, you’ve got it. Two of the things I like to play with as a writer are the impact of silence and writing against expectation of the setting. The silence of a lonely location can be peaceful or sinister, or even better, progress from one to the other.  A setting can echo a character’s mood – like a wet day reflecting bad news, but it can be very effective when bad things happen in good places. Being surrounded by beauty and sunshine can make a threat even more devastating.

Those are the things I get from setting a book in my home country. For me the landscape has romantic beauty and a wild and potentially sinister edge. As a Welsh writer, I want to be able to share that with readers.

 

 

 

WELSH WRITING WEDNESDAYS: WHAT I WRITE AND WHY – INTRODUCING EVONNE WAREHAM

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Who am I, what do I write, and why?

Well, I’m either an academic and bureaucrat who has a second career in romantic fiction, or a romance writer with a blamelessly boring past and an academic streak – you can take your pick.

I’ve wanted to be a writer ever since I was a teenager, but it took me thirty odd years and a lot of dead ends and near misses before I actually achieved publication. I had a paying career in local government and charity administration, a large part of it in London, most of which I enjoyed as I climbed the career ladder. When I wasn’t enjoying it I would take a lurch into academia – with a Master’s degree and then a PhD in History. Alongside that I was always writing, and always romance. Part of that was because of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, which encourages unpublished writers through its new writers’ scheme, which requires you to submit a manuscript for professional critique every year. It meant a great deal for an aspiring writer to be able to mix with other hopefuls and also published writers, many of whom are very big names and are generous with their time and friendship. I also like writing romance – for me it’s positive and life affirming and I always want a happy ending. I’m a thoroughgoing escapist where my reading matter is concerned, and that’s what I write too.

Photo credit: Sian Trenberth Photography

During those years of apprenticeship I experimented with all types of romance from family sagas to Regency historicals. I eventually noticed that everything I wrote had an element of crime in it, but I knew I didn’t want to write police procedurals or psychological thrillers – I didn’t have the expertise. Then, eventually, when I’d almost given up, I read an American novel in the genre romantic suspense – a hot love story with a crime element – it was The Reef, by Nora Roberts. It made me think – can I do that?

It turned out that I could. It still took a while. I had some success in American competitions for unpublished authors, including a reality contest run by a big romance review magazine – that was a roller coaster and a lot of fun, although I didn’t get anywhere near winning. Then at last, I got a British publisher who liked what I was doing – American style but with European locations. I achieved a dream and my first published book – Never Coming Home – won the award that the Romantic Novelists’ Association gives for the best new writer each year.

I write across the romantic suspense spectrum – some books are grittier than others. At the moment I’m enjoying a series at the lighter end, set in resorts on the French and Italian Riviera – plenty of glamour and sunshine and a sexy encounter or two. For the future I’m looking to return to the grittier stuff, and I want to set a lot more of it in Wales, my home country, where I’m now living. I love the landscape, especially the National Parks, for their romance and their more sinister potential for a thriller writer. My books can be dark and scary, and they have a lot more dead bodies than your average romance, but there will always be a love story and always, always, a happy ending.

 

You can find out more about Evonne on her website https://www.evonnewareham.com/home and her weekly blog https://evonneonwednesday.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

 

WELSH WRITING WEDNESDAYS: SALLY SPEDDING ON LIVING OTHER LIVES

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‘Write what you know’ is a common enough diktat for the newbie writer, but how about the more subtle ‘write what you sense’ which carries far more possibilities. Material delivered by mysterious inner forces, as opposed to merely outer observations. Why? Because I’m a believer in the transmigration of souls, whereby a departing spirit finds the first empty womb to inhabit, as espoused by the hounded, tortured Cathars particularly from that beautiful, historic Ariège region of France during 1294 – 1324.

To visit it, having read the historian, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s moving account of their lives in the hamlet ‘Montaillou’ and its seemingly still mediaeval surroundings, is to experience, like the shepherd Pierre Maury, mysterious timeslips. When interrogated under torture, as to where he’d been on a particular day, he replied, ‘out looking to find my shoe.’
‘What shoe?’ asked his interrogator.
‘One that I cast when I was a horse.’ Sealing his fate.

To read of these Cathars’ cruel deaths in Pamiers, Foix, and in Carcassonne’s ‘Tower of Justice’ during the early fourteenth century, is chilling, yet these gentle people who posed such a threat to the Catholic Church, will never be forgotten, and whenever I start new work, whether a poem, short story or novel, conflict between good and evil begins.

Having reluctantly moved from our cottage near the River Sawdde in Llangadog, to urban Northampton, because of my now late artist husband Jeffrey’s new post at its university, I felt bereft, so, using a ruler to find the nearest coast, found where the River Nene, dividing Norfolk and Lincolnshire, meets the North Sea. Even now, that sense of death lurking in its silence, still lingers. I soon began ‘digging’ then writing the first few chapters of a part-contemporary/part-historical novel provisionally entitled, ‘Snare.’

Imagine my surprise having discovered Hilaire Belloc’s vivid collection of essays, ‘Hills and the Sea,’ in which he describes how once a newly-cleaned footbridge was re-opened in Sutton  Bridge, those who’d been waiting then walked across it ‘into the Wringland.’ This name intrigued me, but learning it had evolved from ‘wrungo’ the old High German for ‘snare’ added to the weirdness. I met several people living on the Fens who wouldn’t allow their children to go out after dusk because of ‘evil spirits.’

‘Wringland’ was the first in a two-book deal with PanMacmillan in 2001. Here, the ghost of Martha Robinson – one of the last to be publicly executed in 1862 – tells a fragment of her story before each chapter, in which young, keen Abbie Parker, a saleswoman in a new housing development, arrives at its Show Home to find the door already unlocked, the alarm disabled, and a strange, black-clad woman sitting by her desk demanding Plot 2 be reserved for her. Someone badly wronged, seeking justice. But at what price for Abbie, with her new career?

While looking for a holiday home in France, we’d stopped by the Grotte de Lombrives near Tarascon, where I immediately began shivering with fear and begging Jeffrey to drive on. Only afterwards did I learn from my Dutch aunt how Frenkel – my middle name – evolved from those Franco-Raphaelite Jews, purged by the Spanish Inquisition. Many of whom were walled up alive in that very same grotto. This might explain my claustrophobia. I still can’t use the Underground, lifts or aeroplanes. Meanwhile, France with its relatively few cremations, although harbouring so much dark history, continues to inspire my later books.

 

http://www.sallyspedding.com