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American Psycho meets the Wasp Factory - 'Dovetail' by Welsh Author Jeremy Hughes
By AmeriCymru, 2013-12-23
'Dovetail' - A Review
The unbalanced state of Tim''s mind is explored with cold, clinical precision as he apprentices himself to his Spanish mentor and perfects his skills with devoted and obsessive diligence. The love interest is provided by Elena, his childhood sweat heart but to dwell on that would be to give away too much of the plot. .
Practical woodworking tips abound as this macabre tale unfolds accentuating the obsessive nature of Tim''s mission and perhaps providing a useful supplementary primer for students of the craft. A mysterious, imaginary character called ''The Conductor'' also makes frequent appearances. His conflicted relationship with Tim is related in the form of an ongoing interior dialogue fraught with ominous overtones. ''The Conductor'' is based upon a character in a 1946 movie called ''A Matter of Life And Death'' starring David Niven.
Interview With Author - Jeremy Hughes
AmeriCymru: Hi Jeremy and many thanks for agreeing to be interviewed by AmeriCymru. I have seen Dovetail described in the following terms:- "American Psycho meets The Wasp Factory". Care to comment? Does it have anything in common with these two titles?
Jeremy: The voices in American Psycho and The Wasp Factory are both thrilling to me. The protagonist of American Psycho describes his actions and beliefs with conviction and ‘normality’, though his evaluation of situations and events is completely warped when judged against what is conventionally acceptable. The Wasp Factory is a master class in keeping the reader interested. I hope I’ve managed to capture something from both of these books.
AmeriCymru: Revenge and obsession. Would you agree that these are the twin themes of ''Dovetail''?
Jeremy: These might be regarded as main themes, but there is also striving for great art and the exploration of personal identity. Love and death are clearly important, too, as well as the tensions between binary opposites throughout.
AmeriCymru There is an enormous amount of detail concerning the art and craft of woodworking in the book. How did you go about researching this?
Jeremy: I trained as a carpenter/joiner before I went off to university, so most of the research was what I already knew. Craftsmen have a particular and almost ineffable relationship with their tools.
AmeriCymru: You reference the David Niven film ''A Matter of Life and Death'' a number of times in ''Dovetail''. Care to tell us a little about its significance?
Jeremy: I first saw the film as a child and was completely enamoured with the fantastic nature of the story i.e. that a man fails to go to heaven at his allotted time, and the normality of Niven’s character being able to see heaven’s Conductor 73. The significance of the film within the book ultimately lies with the reader.
AmeriCymru: Given the intensely ornate and detailed nature of the infernal apparatus with which Tim despatches his victims were you tempted to include graphics in the book, diagrams etc ?
Jeremy: The killing machine is better left to the reader''s imagination, but I did sketch details for my benefit when I was working out the book.
AmeriCymru: Can you reassure our readers that there are currently no mass murderers on the loose in the vicinity of Twmbarlwm?
Jeremy: The last time I was there, no, but now...
AmeriCymru Who are you currently reading? Any recommendations?
Jeremy: Over the last twelve months...
Fine Memoirs:
Andrew Motion’s In the Blood
Bill Bryson’s The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
Diana Athill’s Somewhere Towards the End
And one especially for Welsh expats: Byron Rogers’s fabulous Three Journeys. He also wrote the very good biography of R. S. Thomas, The Man Who Went into the West.
Many war books, including Karl Marlantes’s novel Matterhorn (Vietnam), Sebastian Junger’s reportage War (Afghanistan), and Patrick Hennessey’s memoir The Junior Officers’ Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars. Adam Thorpe’s novel The Rules of Perspective(WWll) is wonderful: humane, perceptive, writerly and surprising. Pat Barker’s superb novel Regeneration (WWl). I found Michael Ondaatje’s novel The English Patient (WWll) deeply satisfying.
Other novels:
Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections
Paul Harding’s Tinkers
Don DeLillo’s Point Omega.
AmeriCymru: What''s next for Jeremy Hughes? Any new work currently in progress?
Jeremy: My second novel, provisionally titled Tender Green, is very different, set in America, England and Wales. The first half of the book concerns the pilot of a USAAF Flying Fortress who is stationed in Suffolk, England during 1943. He marries a woman from the nearby town and is lost when returning from a mission his aircraft crashes in Wales. It’s a mystery, since the bodies of the crew are recovered, but not the pilot’s.
The marriage produces a son who is not permitted to know about his father, because the mother is so grief-stricken. When the mother dies and the son turns fifty, he sets out to find the place where his father crashed. He unearths much more than he expected about his father and mother, as well as himself.
I am about half-way through the first draft of novel three, Paint, a crime novel set in Wales, Madrid and Barcelona. I’ve had a wonderful time doing the research, visiting the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, as well as the Reina Sofia and Prado in Madrid.
AmeriCymru: Where can our readers go to find your other published works?
Jeremy: I have published two pamphlets of poetry, breathing for all my birds, which is no longer in print, and The Woman Opposite, which is. Unfortunately, I haven’t written any poetry for several years since concentrating on fiction.
AmeriCymru: Any final message for the readers and members of AmeriCymru?
Jeremy: I am delighted that there is an audience for Welsh writers in the US.
I have been meaning to visit New York for some time (yes, I realise that’s not representative of America!), to visit the fine museums and galleries. There are so many paintings I’d like to see. But all sorts of things have conspired to prevent me. One day.
I hope AmeriCymru readers enjoy Dovetail.
With all best wishes,
Jeremy Hughes
Book Details
Dovetail
Tim is emasculated by a gang of bullies at the age of fifteen and devotes his life to revenge. He plans to build a machine that will kill each member of the gang one by one.
Written by: Jeremy Hughes
Published by: Alcemi
Date published: 2011-09-11
ISBN: 0956012531
Available in Paperback
BUY ''HUNKY DORY HERE ( DVD REGION 1 USA ) ( DVD REGION 2 EUROPE )
“Finding certain roles is bit like falling in love, when you read something and you get a clutch in your stomach then you know you absolutely have to do it. And that doesn’t happen very often, but I can tell you categorically, I had to make this film”.
“I suppose when you break it down it was the nostalgia and the sweetness that attracted me to it. It’s so bittersweet and for me, those are always the best films, they’re my favourite films – ones that have the grace of that bittersweet moment”.
“There’s something about this story that’s universal. But I already got asked in Toronto whether we were making Glee, which is so annoying! The kids are really playing the instruments and the music is an organic part of everything that we’re doing here and that’s the other part that I loved. I’ve been waiting for a really long time to find a musical project, that had meaning and wasn’t a sort of fabrication. So this was definitely it, on a lot of levels”.
“You’ve got to love a women who’s at a crossroads but who has had to go back to find her way forward and that’s really where Viv my character is in the film. She’s gone back to the town she grew up in, probably the school that she went to, having walked away from something far more glamorous, but she needs to do that to find who she is. It’s really interesting that she finds her meaning through teaching. Something clicks into place through whatever ignites and happens between her and these children, herself and the music. There’s something very liberating about that, because it all sounds so wildly clichéd but you know, music really does set you free if you let it”.
“Viv is longing to go back to that place where Davy is beginning but she actually discovers that you can’t go back, you must go forward. Then she sees Davy challenging himself and moving forward, he’s setting out and jumping off and out and into his life, and Viv realizes it doesn’t matter that she’s forty, she has to do the same. She has to strike out and that we all have to do that. Age really isn’t an excuse, it’s just the way you look at it, it’s always about your perception”.
“When you board a project like this, you jump on board the director/writer’s passion and energy. There’s a reason they cast you, because you joined the dots of the outline that they had and suddenly you can see that in their direction, and in their eyes. It’s so amazing to breathe life into something that has been someone’s idea for such a long time. Marc is so vivid and clear about the story that he’s telling and it’s just the happiest set”.
Minnie Driver as Viv in Hunky Dory
BUY ''HUNKY DORY HERE ( DVD REGION 1 USA ) ( DVD REGION 2 EUROPE )
A: I suppose technically the film is a musical, but our approach was specific in the sense that we thought it would be great for everybody who plays music in the film, to play the music for real. We recorded it more-or-less ‘as live’. That came out of what I’d observed from making music documentaries. There’s something very intimate and alluring about people making music for real - there’s a concentration there and the idea of young faces doing that was something I felt could be very cinematic.
So it’s a musical, but the focus is the rehearsals more than the show. I wanted to illustrate the sort of camaraderie and intimacy and the complete involvement of the rehearsal space in which these kids are living, compared to the other world of isolation that teenagers inhabit. Brian Wilson’s got a song called In My Lonely Room and there’s a Beatles song by John Lennon called There’s a Place That I Can Go When I’m Alone. So it’s about the loneliness of these kids, and then the complete involvement through this teacher and this music. It’s a very simple premise. That’s what we wanted to do was do a film that felt very authentic and very raw in a way around the music.
Welsh director Marc Evans
Q: How was it working with the kids?
A: One thing I can say about the filmmaking process is that at times, there was no directing required, because when we got into that school hall with those kids, the violinist was playing the violin, the drummer was playing the drums and the singer was singing – all the kids in the room were a bunch of kids making music. Because it’s orchestral, the kids go on these weekend courses that are rites of passage experiences. Those kind of experiences for the kids were the same for the actors, because they’re all quite young and some of them weren’t, professional actors before this. So, once we got the kids into a room, the film started to become what we’d hoped it would be - a celebration of those kids doing that stuff for real.
Q: Are the school and characters based on reality?
A: Yeah, the school’s a comprehensive school, and I went to a comprehensive school, as did Jon Finn. We all have our little stories to tell. The challenge was making it an ensemble piece but I think the film explores all these little strands of stories, and I suppose what we wanted was an overview of how every final year at school is somebody’s entrance into the wider world and somebody’s exit from that world. We wanted to get that feeling across rather than make it a film which is about a single person’s journey.
So all the little story strands are based on real life I guess. They’re the kind you always have in high school movies, because people always fall in love with the wrong person, people struggle with their sexuality, people have rough times at home. It’s not a heavy film in that sense but it hints at these aspects.
There’s a line from The Tempest in the film: “Our little lives are rounded by a dream,” and there’s a sense of their little lives if you like, through the music. So it’s in some ways a very simple premise, but a difficult one, because the balance on an ensemble piece is always tricky to keep all the stories going”.
Q: Is Minnie Driver’s character Viv based on anyone?
A: Minnie Driver’s character Viv is based on a kind of teacher from that era, rather than being a specific human being. I think there’s a kind of teacher that probably came out of the 60s and was still around in the 70s, and maybe by the time the 80s had happened, they’d had the stuffing knocked out of them!
That kind of teacher was very inspirational, they would always want to switch the kids on to Shakespeare, but they wanted to do it their own way and Viv does it through rock music. They were the teachers who would break the rules and would inhabit a grey area that most of the time was a good thing and occasionally was a bad thing.
Minnie’s character is somebody who treads a fine line in terms of how she deals with the kids. There’s a moment of almost intimacy with one of the kids but teaching these days is much more regulated and contained. There were a lot of teachers who were basically a bit mad and inspirational in the 70s and we wanted to, to portray that! The other interesting element is that she’s staging a version of The Tempest, and The Tempest is the play in which you get to explore nature and nurture. There’s a kind philosophical battle between Minnie’s character, who believes in self-expression and bringing love into the equation in teaching, and Miss Valentine (played brilliantly by Hadyn Gwynn) who is much more from the opposite school of thought - the three Rs, discipline, exams and that school is a machine to get you through and equip you to go out into the world.
Q: How did Minnie come on board and what does she bring to the character?
A: We sent Minnie the script, and we knew that her big love was music, and that she is a musician as well as being an actress. What we didn’t know was that her dad actually came from Swansea! We also knew she was great at accents, but you know, but the Welsh accent is historically one of the trickier ones but she nailed it, she really did. Matthew Rhys lives in LA, and when she said she’d do the film, the first person she hooked up with was Matthew Rhys, and she used to go round to his house and have Welsh lessons every week!
She also worked very closely with a dialogue coach called William Conacher, who Jon Finn knew from Billy Elliot, because he taught the kids Geordie accents. So we knew she would crack the accent and we were confident about her musical ability, so I suppose the mystery element was how she would interact with all those kids! When you’re in a school hall with sixty kids you have to take control of that situation, as well as concentrating on your acting, but that’s where she was just amazing.
There’s a scene in the film where they perform “The Man Who Sold The World” and there’s a big dance sequence in it. We’d worked out the music, we’d got everything ready, but I’m no choreographer, and she said, “Oh don’t worry, I’ll sort that out” and she did... she just led the kids into that dance and it was all very organic. The extra thing Minnie brought to the table was this ability to relate to the kids and to lead them as a really great teacher does and I think that comes through in the film.
Q: How did you cast the young roles?
A: We were very lucky, we had a very good casting person called Jessica Ronane, who did all the casting on Billy Elliot, so we inherited a lot of the know-how from Jon Finn’s experience on Billy. You have to get on the road and you have to just see a lot of kids but we had to make a decision to concentrate on Wales because it’s a Welsh story. We went to schools, colleges, youth clubs and had open auditions. As it happens, the Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff is a good place at the moment, there are a lot of good kids coming through there, and Aneurin and Danielle were both in their last year at that particular college when we first met them, and were both at school together.
They’re two kids from Bridgend who were in college, so they, they were an easy fit for the film. It took us a while to get the film together and in the meantime Aneurin went off, did Spring Awakening, and won an Olivier award, so it just proved that we were right all along about him! We carried on casting the other roles and Tom Harries also came from that college, although he’s younger than Aneurin and Danielle. But a lot of the other kids came from totally different backgrounds, one works in a bank, one works in a restaurant, some of them are trying to get into college and some of them are still at school.
To a certain extent, if you create the right atmosphere and you get those kids into a room, they do the rest for you, because it’s an adventure for them. They all love singing and playing and they understood what a great opportunity it was. Once we got them together they started to gel as a group and they had a great party too! I don’t want to single anyone out, but know Tom Harries is gonna be big. I know ours is small film and films come and go but I do feel with with Aneurin and Tom we’ve got two very extraordinary boys here.
Q: When it came to selecting the music, was there a personal reason why you chose particular tracks?
A: I think we wanted the film musically to inhabit that world which I remember very strongly from the 70s and David Bowie’s the best example of this. He’s the kind of artists that allow teenagers to dream and to imagine themselves in situations outside of everyday life. If you listen to the words of Starman and it’s about somebody listening to an alien on the radio and when you’re a teenager, you are an alien, because you haven’t worked yourself out yet. You’re in some sort of film in your head. Bowie and bands like Roxy Music and ELO to a certain extent, created these dreamscape and that was a thing we wanted to tap into. All the interesting girls in my art class were into Bowie and Bowie is the guy who inspired otherwise fairly ordinary working-class boys to put slap on their faces! The idea was to have Viv the drama teacher let the kids pick the songs they loved and then they’d make them work within The Tempest’s sensibility.
We also wanted to use songs that when you heard them, you thought you knew them, but they weren’t so well-known. There were certain tracks there was no point covering them because they were too well-known so that’s why Queen’s not in there and the same goes for Elton John. Having such big well-known tracks would make it sound almost karaoke. With some of Bowie’s stuff, like “Life on Mars” we use the harps and it becomes something else. I suppose the most obscure song we use, is Nick Drake’s “Cello Song”, which Tom Harries sings. It’s funny, when you listen to the Nick Drake version, there’s a sort of knowingness about it, and when you have Tom singing it, with his innocence, it’s a different song altogether. I think we’ve done that with all the songs and that the thing I’m most proud of - the care we’ve put into that. The songs feel different to the originals, familiar and yet strange, and I think that’s what we were aiming for.
We were less interested in the happy clappy, “let’s put on a show right here in the barn” sort of music, we were more interested in the songs that maybe the kids would have chosen because they spoke to them personally.
Q: Hunky Dory is the title of David Bowie’s fourth album. Did he give his blessing to the film?
A: We didn’t speak to Bowie personally, but he gave us permission and his blessing to use two songs. We’d love for him to see the film because it’s such a hymn to him, in a way. If you have to pick one artist who inspired the film it would be David Bowie. Not just David Bowie’s music, but the world that he inspired and the inspiration he was to teenagers, including myself during that period.
Q: The school hall burns down just before they’re about to do the show. Is that based on any real incident?
A: The gym burned down in our school, and I think a lot of schools in the 70s had their gym burned down – there seemed to be a lot of arson around at that time!
We put it out as a plot device, but it’s the kind of thing that used to happen. There were other things that happened during that time that we thought about using. There was a scene that we cut, based on a bunch of kids in our school who used to go and visit a blind old-age pensioner, they’d get her shopping and stuff, then would sit round her house smoking spliff. For anyone who grew up at that time, in a similar environment, there was a was a kind of roughness and madness to school life in the 70s that would occasionally have repercussions, but mostly it was just a looser world where there would be less parental supervision, school gyms used to burn down, kids used to bunk off, but on the other hand, there was less fear, I think, about abduction or pedophilia. It was a free, loose, kind of messier world and we wanted to capture that in the film.
Q: Tell us about the locations and the challenges of the shoot.
A: Weather and doing a period piece are two terrible things to deal with on a low budget film. Especially as most of our money was really spent on the music and getting that right.
So, the reality was, we were a low-budget film shooting the hottest summer of all time in Wales! We were shooting during the summer of 2010 and in September, I kept thinking to myself, ‘we do tend to have Indian summers down here in September’, but it just didn’t really happen!
The school we used is actually Bishop’s Gore School in Swansea, which used to be Swansea Boys’ Grammar. It was a school that Dylan Thomas attended, it was a school that Russell T. Davies of Doctor Who fame attended too, so it’s got this tradition of sorts and it has a reputation for being a good school. It’s also the school they shot Submarine in. It’s a school that’s been visited a few times, and remembered for all sorts of things, and it’s just got a really great feel. It’s got the parquet-floored hall, it’s got those corridors that are so reminiscent of every school you ever saw in the 70s. So it definitely brought something to the table, that school. It had its own atmosphere, its own history.
During the shoot, we were continually rescheduling to try and chase the weather, and I think we shot every sunny moment there was to hand, that was available to us in that short period of time. In terms of locations for the period, we picked Port Talbot, next to Swansea because it has a big steelworks in the middle of it, and it’s still a working town, and my memory of South Wales in the 70s, was that there were still coal mines, there were still steelworks, and people worked. So there was poverty, but a different kind of poverty, it wasn’t like the poverty of unemployment. So we picked Swansea and Port Talbot because they’re coastal and there’s this sort of feeling of them turning into a bit of a surf town in the summer.
We had great locations. With the houses, we looked for ones that little old ladies lived in that hadn’t changed anything since 1976 more or less. I think we managed to find 1976, but by the skin of our teeth, both weather-wise and period-wise!
Q: Was it emotional for you going back to South Wales to shoot this film?
A: I think the good thing about having lived it, is that it just smelt real to me. I’m not sure how emotional it was, because you’re so busy trying to shoot it that you don’t have much time to think about that, but it definitely had huge resonances. It brought back huge memories. My affection for the film is based on that. The film is real in that sense. It’s authentic to my memory of what the 70s was like, and what being in school in the 70s was like.
Q: What’s the appeal of this film?
A: The worst part about making a film is then trying to ask retrospectively who it’s for, because you make it for yourself in a funny sort of way. I suppose the film is for people like me out there who remember the 70s and have the sort of affection for that music and that sort of chunk of pop culture. But inevitably it’s for kids. I think there’s definitely a sense of contemplation on youth in it. I think you definitely get a sense of that idea about youth being wasted on the young.
When you’re 17 you don’t know who you are and you don’t know what you’ve got, and you cannot possibly realise that that golden period of your life will never come again. Because when you’re in it, it just feels complicated and unknowable, but when you look back on it, you can’t help but have a huge nostalgia for being that age, because your life’s ahead of you.
I hope it speaks to everybody who’s been to school, because for better, for worse, your schooldays just stay with you forever. That feeling of that period of your life not coming again, is very strong, and I think it’s what fuels all these sort of high school reunions and there’s a massive nostalgia for that.
BOOKS BY JO MAZELIS JO MAZELIS INTERVIEW
Charlotte had the advantage of a free right hand, while Georgina had to either struggle with her left hand, or use her right, but first she had to wriggle to free it from the press of her sister’s body which ruined the effect of their unusual appearance. This was how their mother had instructed them to do everyday things; as if they were a single entity with only two arms, but four legs and two heads. They had also been trained to speak as one, saying in perfect chorus, ‘Hello, how do you do? I do believe that the weather is improving, don’t you think?’ In order to make these seemingly spontaneous and simultaneous speeches they had rehearsed multiple variations along with a series of subtle gestures that communicated which phrase should be uttered. It was Georgina who usually took the lead in these transactions with the world, but Charlotte could at times be singular in transmitting different choices that made for bizarre conversation. For example, only days before the leader of the local town’s council chamber had asked the girls if they enjoyed the rolling hills and lush pastures of that part of Wales, Georgiana twirling a finger through a glossy ringlet, signalled that they should say, ‘Why, thank you kind sir, everything has pleased us greatly!’ But Charlotte had petulantly (as much as sneezing can be petulant) sneezed three times, which was the code for, ‘Our dear mother wept bitterly over it and cannot be consoled!’ Georgina sensing the comedy in this answer took a deep breath before they spoke the words in unison together. The council leader was taken aback, ‘Is she an invalid?’ he asked. To which the girls replied, somewhat mysteriously, ‘It is said there are two ways to milk a cow.’ After that they took their leave with haste as both were stifling a great fit of the giggles as the poor man tried on such a variety of expressions in quick succession in his confusion and grew redder and redder in the face until they thought he might suffer an apoplexy.
"Novelist, poet, photographer, essayist and short story writer, Jo Mazelis was born in the middle of a summer storm on the edge of the Gower Peninsula. She grew up in Swansea, later living in Aberystwyth and London for over 14 years before returning to her hometown.
She has won a prize in the Rhys Davies Short story award five times, was longlisted for the Asham Award and her first collection of short stories Diving Girls was shortlisted for both Wales Book of the Year and Commonwealth Best First Book. Her work has appeared in New Welsh Review, Spare Rib, Poetry Wales, Raconteur, Cambrensis, Nth Position, the Big Issue, Corridor, The Ottawa Citizen, Everywoman, Tears in the Fence and Lampeter Review amongst others. Several of her stories have also been broadcast on BBC Radio 4."... Read more here
AmeriCymru spoke to Jo about her writing and her new novel Significance
...
Jo has also contributed a short story, 'Mechanics' for the forthcoming edition of eto. For an excerpt click here
Jo Mazelis: It’s hard to explain in a nutshell – on the surface it seems to be a book about crime and its detection, but it isn’t - not in the traditional sense. The title ‘Significance’ draws attention to the way a reader looks for and finds significance in plot and character which is how all novels function. When there is a crime involved in a story these signs or clues seem to point to a solution and thus narrative resolution. In the real world when a crime has happened, especially a serious crime like murder, those closest to it begin to review past events differently, they restructure their thinking, their plans, their judgement of other people and their surroundings, and crucially even when the culprit is caught people remain haunted and altered by the crime.
I began writing ‘Significance’ in 2007 at a very unhappy moment in my life and I think that is why the book is so much about running away and escape – escape from external factors but also from the self. At times I had to imagine I was an entirely different person when I was writing it; a more confident person who was not afflicted by the self doubt and self hate and depression I was suffering.
I think if the book had to be categorised it would be a novel of ideas rather than thriller or detective genre. I spend a lot of time explaining what it is not and as I said find it difficult to summarise what it actually is. My aim was however to produce a work which could be read at different levels and lent itself to multiple interpretations – sometimes I had in mind a giant riddle or perhaps a maze, but what the answer to the riddle is I prefer not to say. In a similar way I very much wanted the narrative to be open ended. Not so that I could write a sequel (though at times that crossed my mind) but because I wanted readers to make up their own minds about it.
AmeriCymru: When did you decide to start writing and why have you concentrated on short stories until now?
I think there is a lot of confusion around short stories currently; people try to read them by ploughing on through a collection as if it were a novel. Each story needs to be read and savoured, then reflected on. Of course this demands a certain level of engagement on the part of the reader – or rather a different sort of relationship than a reader has with a novel. Further confusion seems to exist around word length – how short or how long should a story be?
Sadly in the UK there are few (if any) general interest magazines that regularly publish short stories – no equivalent to The New Yorker for example. I think it’s such a pity that newspapers like The Guardian or The Times don’t have regular short stories, not only from the point of view of opportunities for writers but as a means of familiarising ordinary readers with the form.
It struck me a few years ago that while Britain is meant to be the country of long tradition (to the point of rigid stodginess) while the US is that of innovation (think of that clichéd image of flashy newness) it is in the US where you find that a magazine like the New Yorker sticks to its menu of quality fiction and brilliant journalism on a wide range of topics from politics to science to culture. The New Yorker you might say – knows what it is – and doesn’t attempt to change itself somewhat hysterically every couple of years.
Despite the gloomy prospects it was a combination of a love affair with short stories and a lack of time that kept me glued to the form. Annie Proulx followed a similar pattern; publishing short stories in magazines for at least ten years before her book Heart Songs came out.
When my first collection of short stories Diving Girls was well received, being shortlisted for both Commonwealth Best First Book and Welsh Book of the Year, I discovered that what was expected of me next was a novel. This was perplexing as I had spent years working on the short story form with its particular demands of speedy elegance and brevity, and I felt I’d proved myself to some extent. But no, the attitude seemed to be that short stories were a lower form, done only as exercises in the run up to the real event, the novel. A case in point followed the untimely death of Raymond Carver, when some critics bemoaned the fact he hadn’t quite got around to writing that novel and therefore his true status was open to debate.
It’s no coincidence that the great age of the novel was the nineteenth century and that many of its most notable authors had swathes of time on their hands and few distractions. But for me, in the period after Diving Girls I was still a single parent, still working almost full time, still broke. I tried to write a novel but failed, and instead brought out a second collection of stories Circle Games. For some reason this book sunk without a trace and I, as its captain went down with it.
I began Significance in 2007 and had a first draft completed by 2010 or thereabouts. After the book had been rejected by the London publishers I had got to the point where I was planning on self-publishing, merely to have a few copies to distribute amongst friends, when someone suggested I approach Seren and thankfully they took the book.
AmeriCymru: Care to tell us a little about your two published anthologies, ''Diving Girls'' and ''Circle Games''?
It was another fourteen years before my first book was published. When I look back at my writing career I think anyone with an ounce of sense would have given up long ago. I suppose every so often something or someone along the way reaffirmed the idea that I had some talent to go along with my staying power.
Recently on a short story forum someone asked if a collection should have a theme or not? It struck me then that a lot of new writers especially those doing creative writing degrees were constructing collections of short stories in a far more formal way than I ever did. My stories came one at a time, each changing according to what was happening in my life at that moment; what I was reading, or remembering or experiencing.
For example Too Perfect was informed by several sources; a news story about supposedly documentary photographs of lovers embracing on the streets of Paris. Someone had come forward to claim that the images had been posed by models. As documentary photographs get much of their power from the idea that they represent truth this was shocking. A year or so before I learned that a woman student at college with me was having an affair with one of our lecturers and then I read The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism by Katie Roiphe. I think I also saw David Mamet’s play Oleanna about this time. So essentially all these informed my story, in particular the questionable view that a photograph represents a moment of truth and secondly the idea that a woman (if she is over 21) does not act under her own volition. I wanted to make the man and woman in the story equally culpable, equally reckless, equally regretful afterwards. This description makes that story sound like a dull thing built purely on theory, but when I created it I was hardly aware of everything I’ve just described. It was only with hindsight that I was able to see the subconscious mechanism behind the creative process.
Too Perfect as a phrase is tautological and I used it for that reason - calling attention to a thing which cannot in reality exist. The story is about surfaces; how people judge things by their appearance only, so this motif recurs more than once in the story and is at its heart.
AmeriCymru: Is there any one of your stories that you are particularly proud of or that you would like to especially recommend?
Jo Mazelis: I think I am always most enamoured by whatever the last thing I produced was – maybe because new work makes me feel more alive and active and hopeful. I was recently commissioned to create a story that reinterprets a classic Welsh story by Arthur Machen and it was such a pleasure to write that it is still buzzing about in my head. Buzzing so loudly that I wonder if I shouldn’t try to develop it further and create a novella.
There isn’t a lot of my work available online but I have a story called Atlantic Exchange which can be found in The Lampeter Review. It’s a magic realist story about Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath meeting in New York and is quite different from much of my other work. Also online is a non-fiction piece called Haunted Landscape available in Wales Arts Review’s nature issue.
AmeriCymru: I''d like to ask you about your writing process. Do you have some kind of creative routine or do you write as and when inspiration occurs?
Jo Mazelis: You can’t sit around waiting for inspiration; you have to actively summon it. Sometimes that means writing even when it feels flat and mostly worthless, but doing this means that you acquire the habit of writing. I always use a pen and notebook in the first instance as this seems to allow me to find a sort of natural flow. My words are somehow more tangible on paper and rather childishly I like to look back on page after page of my handwritten text. Strangely I’ve noticed how my handwriting improves when things are going well and deteriorates when I’m struggling.
AmeriCymru: Are there any writers that you draw inspiration from or especially admire?
Jo Mazelis: There are so many it’s hard to know where to begin. Lately I haven’t been reading so much fiction, but among non-fiction I love Joan Didion. I first read her in the seventies and more lately she’s produced two powerful memoirs, The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights. I loved Graham Swift’s 1983 novel Waterland and Ian McEwan’s collection of stories First Love, Last Rites. After reading Jane Eyre when fairly young, Wuthering Heights just left me reeling with its claustrophobic weirdness. I read everything by Richard Brautigan from In Watermelon Sugar to Sombrero Fallout to So the Wind Won’t Blow it All Away. Everything by Edna O’Brien too. I adored Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies, in particular the story A Temporary Matter.
A huge influence on me when I was young were the stories of Hans Christian Anderson and also an unexpurgated copy of the Brothers Grimm that I found in my grandmother’s house – in these books little girls get their feet cut off or freeze to death and false princesses are put in barrels filled with spikes, princes are blinded by thorns and wander through the world helpless, children are abandoned in the forest and cloaks are woven from stinging nettles. These stories still take my breath away.
AmeriCymru: What are you working on at the moment?
Jo Mazelis: I’m hoping to bring out a third collection of stories – these will be a mixture of stories that have been published in magazines and unpublished work new and old. Because there is an excess of material – I’ve got around 125 stories of which 36 appear in my first and second books leaving around 90 potential stories. I just don’t know how to decide which to choose. Some form parts of my attempts to create linked stories for example there are several stories set around the early 20th Century in an invented village called Cwm Bach, another group are set in 1969 in a large Welsh comprehensive school. Other stories might be linked because they are ghostly or gothic or dystopian.
I think the most important thing for me now is to complete a second novel. I’ve got several in different stages of development and they are all very different from each other and different from Significance. As with the period when I was writing Significance I may have to stop writing any new short stories or anything else at all and immerse myself totally in the new novel, but what that book will be is very uncertain at present.
AmeriCymru: Hi Evonne and croeso i AmeriCymru. If I may quote you:- "...walking on the beach to the sound of the waves and the gulls....and plotting murder." Could you tell us a little more about your creative process? Which part of the Welsh coast do you most favour or frequent
Evonne: For me, producing a book is as much about the thinking process as it is about writing. At least, that is my excuse for staring into space, sitting in the garden, walking on the beach … There is quite a long gestation period before I begin drafting, when I test out ideas, do research, collect background material and absorb atmosphere. Once the book is begun there are always points where it ties itself into knots, or where your characters run off and do something that you did not expect, leaving you to deal with the mess! Then you need some space, to sort it out. I was born and brought up by the sea, in Barry, although I spent a long time living in London, so for me the word “walk” always means “beach”. I now live about ten minutes from the Barry Island section of the Wales Coastal Path and my feet go towards the sea automatically. I also have very good memories of childhood holidays in Pembrokeshire. In that case it was beaches and castles.
AmeriCymru: How would you describe your work? "Romantic fiction with a dark edge"?
Evonne: I write romantic thrillers – what are known in the States as romantic suspense. There is always a strong love story and I adhere firmly to the principle of a happy ending, although it is not achieved without a struggle, and some characters do not make it to the end of the book. I blame the thriller elements of my work on my addiction to the theatre, especially early exposure to Shakespeare and the Jacobean dramatists, as in those plays betrayal, murder and mayhem are always mixed with love, beauty and poetry.
Evonne: Out of Sight, Out of Mind is a paranormal romantic suspense, with a hero and heroine who read minds. It was my first excursion into writing romantic thrillers and was a finalist in several contests on both sides of the Atlantic, but the biggest was the American Title contest, which was run by Romantic Times Magazine (Now RT BookReviews) and Dorchester Publishing. American Title was a reality writing contest. Parts of the novel were printed in the magazine, and readers voted for their favourites, over the Internet. I didn’t win, but I had a fabulous time and travelled to Pittsburgh for the RT Booklovers Convention where the award was presented. The following year I entered the contest again, and was again chosen for the final – the only person ever to have done it twice. I didn’t win that time, either, but had a lot of fun. And that book was Never Coming Home .
Evonne: Kaz Elmore, the heroine of the book, has lost her young daughter in a fatal car crash while she was on holiday in the United States with her father, Kaz’s ex husband. Six months later, in London, Kaz has a visit from a stranger, who has a very different version of the crash from the one Kaz received from her ex. Naturally she needs to know what happened to her daughter, and she hires the stranger, Devlin, to help her find out. The search for answers takes them across Europe and uncovers a complex web of plots and conspiracies. Something very nasty from Devlin’s past comes back to threaten him, people start dying and Kaz and Devlin fall for each other. This is a particular problem for Devlin, as he considers he is not capable of love, because of things he has done in the past.
It has been an incredibly exciting journey to see the book published. The excitement was compounded in May this year, when Never Coming Home won the Joan Hessayan New Writers’ Award from the Romantic Novelists’ Association, here in the UK.
AmeriCymru: We learn from your website that you have many unpublished manuscripts including one particular favourite - ''The Time We Have Left''. Are there any plans for publication? Please tell us more about the book?
Evonne: The Time We Have Left is the book that ran away with itself. It’s meant to be the first part of a trilogy, and is over 140,000 words - which is a very fat book. It’s a regional family saga, set in the South Wales coal ports of Barry and Cardiff during World War Two, charting the lives and loves of a family of three sisters. It was written a number of years ago and is nothing like what I write now, but it was a major part of my learning curve as a writer, when I was experimenting to find my style and favourite genre. Although it is an early manuscript it has received good feedback from experts and I have a very soft spot for it, as I spent a long while writing it - 140,000 words do not happen overnight. I did a considerable amount of archive research for it and it also owes a lot to family members and friends, who gave me first hand background material on what it was like to live through those times. It also records and celebrates things about Cardiff and Barry, particularly buildings, that have disappeared or been substantially changed - landmarks and lifestyles that no longer exist. It would be lovely to work on it with an editor, to find out if it could be brought up to publication standard, but I don’t see it happening in the near future. A retirement project, perhaps?
AmeriCymru: What do you read for pleasure and what are you reading at the moment? Any recommendations?
Evonne: I’m a compulsive reader in all sorts of genres. In my own genre of romantic suspense, Karen Rose, Nora Roberts and Jayne Anne Krentz are favourites. I also read historicals and I enjoy the golden age detective stories, as well as contemporary police procedurals and thrillers. I’ve recently finished Season of Storms from Canadian writer Susanna Kearsley.
For anyone interested in sampling a wide variety of women’s fiction from the UK, they might like to take a look at what is on offer from my publishers, Choc-lit, who are small independent publishers. The Choc-lit authors have a number of award winners amongst them and we all write in different genres – paranormal, historical, fantasy, romantic comedy, thrillers, contemporary romance …
Choc-lit are currently looking to recruit two new authors, one from Australia and one from the U.S., and are running competitions for unpublished writers. They also have a tasting panel, made up of readers, who comment on submissions and recommend them for publication. Choc-lit are recruiting from America and Australia for that also. Details of the writing contest, the tasting panel and the Choc-lit catalogue are all available on the Choc-lit website. All the authors blog there too,on a regular basis.
AmeriCymru: What''s next for Evonne Wareham? Any forthcoming publications or projects in the works?
Evonne: Never Coming Home , my debut published novel, was the finalist from my second American Title contest. Choc-lit have also contracted for Out of Sight, Out of Mind and that will be out in the UK in March next year. So – both my American Title books will be published, but in reverse order. I’m hoping to make it over to the States next year to attend the RT Booklovers Convention. Fingers crossed on that one. I’d also love to attend some of the crime and thriller conventions such as Bouchercon and Thrillerfest, but I think that will have to wait for a while.
AmeriCymru: Any final message for the members and readers of AmeriCymru?
Evonne: I like to include at least one scene set in Wales in all my books, so if Americymru members and readers are persuaded to try one of them, I hope they will enjoy the connection to Wales. In Never Coming Home the scene is a short but crucial one, near the end of the book, which takes place in and around Cardiff station. In Out of Sight, Out of Mind , Wales has a much larger role, as a chunk of the action takes place in Pembrokeshire.
I’ve really enjoyed talking to Americymru and would like to thank Ceri for some interesting questions. If I’ve tempted you to read my work, I do hope you enjoy it.
Lorraine: I suppose that I have always enjoyed it and I liked the idea of being a writer, long before I actually started writing! I wrote a book when I was about 30, but knew as I was writing it that it was pretty hopeless, but I persisted for the practice. I started writing my first published novel, Chocolate Mousse and Two Spoons when I was about 32.
AmeriCymru: We learn from your bio that your official writing career started one Sunday morning when you had a hangover. Care to tell us more?
Lorraine: Yes, it was a bit of a killer! I was living in Builth Wells and had a difficult job and was working all hours. I also had a fantastic social life and was never able to refuse an offer to nip out for a pint or to head to the hills at weekend with friends to go walking or mountain biking. I wanted to be a writer and had the story in my head, but never seemed to have the chance to sit down and write it all down.
On that Sunday when I had my hangover, I also had a day out with friends planned and some work to do for a meeting the next morning, and I realised that I would have to put off the writing for another day – yet again. That’s when I had one of those moments in life and thought That’s It! Something has to change – so, I gave myself six months to change everything and I did! I was single at the time, so I just quit my job, rented out my house and bought myself a round-the-world ticket to give myself time to actually write – and I was very lucky as, bar a few adventures, it all worked out in the end!
AmeriCymru: You are originally from Lyme Regis in the south of England. What prompted you to make the move to Mid-Wales? Tell us a little about your background.
Lorraine: I had a great time growing up in rural south west England with my three brothers and two sisters and then went to University in Cardiff to study Town Planning. When I was there I met a Welshman…
I moved to Builth Wells for a job in 1994 intending to stay for a year or so, but had such a good time, I stayed!
AmeriCymru: Your first novel "Chocolate Mousse and Two Spoons" was written while back-packing in South America. What can you tell us about your experiences there and how did you come to write a novel during your trip?
Lorraine: The trip was following my moment of clarity mentioned earlier. I decided to go to Patagonia first as I’d been learning Welsh and had this plan of working in a Welsh tea shop, practicing my Welsh, learning some Spanish, getting a bit of sun and writing my book.
Once in Beunos Aires, I wasn’t in a rush so I decided to walk to Patagonia (yeah, now I know it was a bit foolish!) so I would walk from town to town across the Pampas desert, hiding my tent behind a bush at night and trying to forget that there were still wild things out there.
In that little tent that I shared with mice, bugs and once a fox, I wrote my book. I eventually got to Patagonia, by which time my Welsh had merged with my Spanish and I’d become rubbish at both, so I drunk loads of proper tea, ate piles of Welsh cakes and then carried on walking. Eight months later, and after many adventures including a fight with a man with a knife (it’s OK, I won!) I had finished my novel and so I headed home.
AmeriCymru: Your second novel ''Eating Blackbirds'', set in the fictional Welsh village of Cysgod Y Ffynon, has been described as a ''feel-good'' novel. How would you describe the novel for our readers?
Lorraine: It’s about a man who works for the Council and is waiting for early retirement. He is a bit of a tight-fisted git who pinches tea-bags etcetera to save himself money. Through his work, he meets a lady who has a second home and he slowly moves into the empty house, trying to avoid his young niece who has turned up on his doorstep with a baby. However, the woman comes back to the house when he is there and things don’t go quite to plan…
I used to work for the Council and so this is my expose!
AmeriCymru: Your third novel "Cold Enough to Freeze Cows" is set in rural Mid-Wales. What for you is the most interesting or significant feature of the local agricultural lifestyle?
Lorraine: For me, it’s the hard continual work that people have to do day in, day out. It’s the slog that I think that people don’t appreciate when they think of a “rural idyll”. I live in a farming area and there are a number of women farmers (as the women tend to do the animal side of the farming around here) who come to collect their children from school and they are always covered in some sludge or other, depending on what time of year it is! But it’s also so down to earth – it’s hard for people to be pretentious when they have afterbirth on their foot.
AmeriCymru: You have been quoted as saying, ""I don''t write traditional Chicklit - my characters tend not to be chicks, but wellywearing, ruddy-cheeked folks who have adventures!" Care to elaborate?
Lorraine: As an author, I’ve found it difficult trying to tell people why they should buy my book over someone else’s (apart from parading my children in rags). People assume because they are written by a woman and are about “life things” that they are therefore Chicklit – but to me, the Chicklit I’ve read, tends to be about women who spend / want to spend lots of money on shoes and fancy Guy in Accounts, and that’s just not my world. I’m not saying that there is anything wrong about fancying Guy in Accounts, but my books are about farmers wearing three acrylic jumpers to keep out the cold, and 60 year old men who cook supernoodles in thermos flasks. I think that there is a difference, and I am just trying to distinguish between them.
AmeriCymru: Is there such a thing as "chicklit? If so, how would you define it?
Lorraine: I must admit, I do struggle a bit with “Chicklit”, as it does have a slightly dismissive tang. (This isn’t helped by authors shouting, “I don’t mind if people call my books chicklit!” – it reeks a bit of protesting too hard, and if people didn’t mind, they probably wouldn’t feel the need to mention it!) Female authors who write contemporary or commercial fiction are tagged with this dismissive category, whereas male commercial writers aren’t tagged with a dismissive category.
Saying that, it’s a fabulously successful brand, and those that are at the top of it, do really well! I haven’t quite worked out what I think of it: it’s like wanting to be the leader of a gang that you don’t like.
My work was described recently as being a cross between Tom Sharpe and The Vicar of Dibley, and I’m much happier with this description…
AmeriCymru: What''s next for Lorraine Jenkin?
Lorraine: I’m trying very hard to win The People’s Book Prize - the X Factor of the book world as it is decided by the public’s votes. The next round of voting is in June, so I might be back with a small post to ask for help… Other than that, I want to teach our three young girls to pick up their socks, and to clear out our garage which went to the dogs last summer.
Also, I’m part way through my fourth novel and my plan is for it to go global…
AmeriCymru: Any final message for the readers and members of AmeriCymru?
Lorraine: My trip to the Americas had a big impact on my life – not just the adventures, but the lovely people I met there. Now I am self-employed and a mother of three young girls I look back on my time there as a complete luxury in terms of the time I had to myself. I would sit, alone, out in the wilds watching the sun go down over Tierra del Fuego whereas now I read Cinderella seven times a week and scrape at Weetabix that has been welded to the floor. Life is good, but it is very different!
Also, I would like to thank the people of AmeriCymru for their warm welcome to me on the site – it’s been really nice to receive such messages from strangers!
Rachel Trezise studied at the University of Glamorgan in Wales and University of Limerick in Ireland. Her first novel, In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl , released in 2002 received broad critical acclaim. In October 2006, Trezise won the inaugural Dylan Thomas Prize for her book of short stories, Fresh Apples , describing life in the mining valleys in South Wales. In 2007, Parthian Books published Dial M for Merthyr , an account of her time spent on tour with Welsh rock band Midasuno. Her latest novel is Sixteen Shades of Crazy . Americymru spoke to Rachel about her work and her current literary plans.
Americymru: Care to tell us a little about your latest book ‘Sixteen Shades of Crazy’?
Rachel: ‘Sixteen Shades of Crazy’ is a story about three women, Ellie, Siân and Rhiannon, girlfriends and wives of Welsh punk band The Boobs, whose lives are turned upside down by the unexpected arrival of Johnny, a handsome and mysterious Englishman, a rare occurrence in tiny close-knit Aberalaw where very few people leave and even people fewer arrive. I always intended this novel to be an antidote to How Green Was My Valley , about what happened after the mine shafts were filled and the chapels had been converted to nightclubs and Indian restaurants. In it I am writing about a unique environment, the south Wales valleys, which are neither urban nor rural but an intriguing and complicated fusion of both. Since industrialisation the area has suffered an identity crisis; it is predominantly English speaking, yet it is not English. I am fascinated by this paradox and Johnny represents England and the way some Welsh people regard it, at once despicable and exotic. Also it is my paean to the place where I grew up and still live.
Americymru: The book is dedicated to Gwyn Thomas who wrote extensively about life in the Rhondda Valleys in the 1930’s. Do you see any parallels between life in the valleys then and now?
Rachel: The Rhondda Valleys have changed in many ways over the years. Globalisation, technology and economics have had the same consequences in Welsh communities as they have all over the world. The valleys appear less close-knit and have in some ways become suburbs of the city of Cardiff. But one remaining facet is the poverty that the area continues to endure. In the 1930s there was work but it was dangerous and low paid. Now there’s a significant problem with unemployment. The people of the south Wales valleys are the perennial losers in the relentless march of capitalism, but hardship breeds creativity and gall. Gwyn Thomas said that watching real life in the Rhondda Valley was like watching some kind of tragic-comic theatre production and that’s still true. I never have to look far for a good story or character.
Americymru: Your first book ‘In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl’ is largely autobiographical. How difficult was it to write?
Rachel: ‘In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl’ wasn’t difficult to write at all. I’d had a hard time growing up with an alcoholic mother and an abusive step-father. By the time I came to write the book those experiences were burning up inside me, ready to be spewed out somehow. Anger can go one of two ways, inwards or outwards. Luckily mine came out in an artistic way rather than in violence or something negative like that. Writing it all down was quick and cathartic and I felt calm and renewed afterward. The result is really dark though. I have trouble reading that book now.
Americymru: Your first short story collection ‘Fresh Apples’ won the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2006. How important a milestone was that in your literary career and do you have any plans for further anthologies?
Rachel: ‘Fresh Apples’ was a huge milestone in my writing career because it was my first work of fiction; because ‘In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl’ was autobiographical I had no idea how to plan or embark on a fictional story. I didn’t really know what a full and rounded story was. I started three novels and gave up after the first chapter of each. Then I started getting commissions for short stories and started looking for story ideas. They were my fictional baby steps, my first attempts at playing with characters and voices and scenarios, so I was absolutely stunned when they won the Dylan Thomas Prize. I’ve been busy writing novels for the past five years but I’ve written a few short stories between drafts and I’m hoping to put a second collection together in the not too distant future.
Americymru: Your third book ‘Dial M for Merthyr’ which follows a Welsh band on tour was the inaugural winner of the Max Boyce Prize. How did you research the book and how important is music in your life?
Rachel: I researched ‘Dial M for Merthyr’ simply by going on tour with the band, a young unsigned rock band from Merthyr called Midasuno. Initially the book was going to be about the LostProphets. What I actually wanted to write about was their journey from obscurity in Pontypridd to becoming worldwide household names in a matter of a few months, and that’s the story that my publishing company commissioned. But we just couldn’t get the band on board. As it turned out Midasuno were candid and willing hosts. They let me follow them wherever they went and sleep on their tour bus. I think the book tells a universal truth about what it’s like for all young bands starting out. Music is hugely important, both for me generally, and for my work. Since I finished ‘Dial M for Merthyr,’ I haven’t been all that interested in live music or in rock music actually. You’re more likely to find me listening to Leonard Cohen or Regina Spektor on my ipod. I hope it’s a time issue rather than an age issue, and that the music bug comes back at some point.
Americymru: You have also written for theatre. (I Sing of A Maiden, Lemon Meringue Pie). Any plans for further theatrical works?
Rachel: I never planned to write for theatre when I started out; I came to it by accident. ‘I Sing of A Maiden,’ was a favour to a friend, the folk musician and writer Charlotte Greig. She asked me to write some monologues about teenage pregnancy to punctuate her songs on the same theme for a multi media theatre production, which I did. And from there a producer from Radio 4 asked me to write a radio play, ‘Lemon Meringue Pie’, which was broadcast in 2008. I’m hoping to begin writing my first full length theatre play, a valleys family saga, in January 2011. It’s a good way to keep writing about Wales while I move onto other areas in my fiction.
Americymru: What’s next for Rachel Trezise? Any plans to visit America?
Rachel: The novel I’m working on at the moment is set in America, in North Carolina and New York. It’s a love story about an unlikely couple, a Hasidic Jew from Williamsburg and a former prostitute from the South who becomes a madam in New York City. It sounds controversial at worst and kooky at best but it’s actually quite a tender tale about love being able to conquer the tribulations thrown up by dysfunctional upbringings. I’ve spent a bit of time in New York and was writer of residence at Texas University in 2007, so it hasn’t been too difficult to write a book set entirely in America at a desk in the Rhondda Valley. But there is a bit of research still left to do so I’m hoping to be back in New York for a few weeks in 2011.
