Blogs
ANNOUNCEMENT: WCE Online Poetry Competition Deadline Extended Till October 7th!
By Ceri Shaw, 2013-09-16
So there is still plenty of time to enter. Here is the Competition Group page on AmeriCymru:-
Read the rules and submit your entry for a chance to win a $200 cash prize AND publication in the prestigious Welsh American poetry journal Seventh Quarry
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Pob lwc/bext of luck to all our entrants!
Owain Glyndwr Day.
September 16th is the anniversary of the proclamation in 1400, of Owain Glyndwr as Prince of Wales and is now celebrated annually as Owain Glyndwr Day.
The revolt of Owain Glyndŵr began with dispute during 1399 and 1400, over a piece of land that Glyndwr claimed had been stolen by his neighbour, the Marcher Lord, Sir Reginald de Grey. When Glyndwr received no justice from King Henry IV and his repeated appeals were ignored, he felt that he was left with no option other than to rebel against the unjust and oppressive rule of the English.
Word of Glyndwr's stance struck a chord with other disaffected Welsh people and he became the symbolic leader of the resistance movement against the crown and the arrogant Marcher Lords. Glyndŵr raised his banner on the outskirts of Ruthin on 16th September 1400 and was proclaimed by his followers as Prince of Wales.
The men of Wales flocked in droves to Owain's banner as word of the revolt spread like wildfire throughout the country and many exiled Welsh people returned to join what had become a widespread national uprising. The first attack in 1400, was on Ruthin, followed by those on Rhuddlan, Flint, Holt, Oswestry and Welshpool. Glyndŵr held a Parliament at Machynlleth in 1404 and in 1406, wrote to King Charles VI of France, asking for his support in achieving Welsh independence, explaining his vision for establishing two Welsh universities and an independent Welsh Church.
However in 1409, Glyndwr had become besieged at Harlech Castle and this in effect was the end of the rebellion. He did make his escape and remained unbetrayed and uncaptured until his supposed death in 1416.
Born on this day 1958 in Llandudno
Neville Southall – former Wales soccer international goalkeeper and winner of the FWA Footballer of the Year award in 1985.
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Millicent Lilian "Peg" Entwistle was the Port Talbot-born stage and screen actress, who on 16th September 1932, gained notoriety by jumping to her death from the "H" of the Hollywoodland sign at age 24.
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On this day in 1918, the steamship Serula was torpedoed by a German U-Boat off Strumble Head, Pembrokeshire with the loss of 17 lives.
U-boat is the anglicised version of the German word U-Boot, a shortening of Unterseeboot, meaning undersea boat. At the start of World War I, Germany had twenty-nine U-boats, but by its end, this had increased to 360. They were most effectively used in an economic warfare role, with their primary targets being the merchant ships bringing supplies into Britain and to counteract their effectiveness, Britain introduced escorted convoys.
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The Llandudno Pier Pavilion opened on 16th September 1886.
The 2,000-seat theatre quickly became successful, with hundreds of top acts, such as George Formby, Petula Clark, Arthur Askey, the Beverley Sisters and Cliff Richard, appearing there over the years.
The theatre also hosted political conferences, which were attended by such political heavyweights as Lloyd George, Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain, Oswald Mosley, Winston Churchill and Edward Heath.
The basement of the Pier Pavilion housed what was then the largest indoor swimming pool in Britain, but it did not prove successful, as there were problems with the water quality.
The theatre closed in 1984 and was destroyed by fire in 1994.
The Vancouver Island Coal Strike began on 16th Sept 1912.
Many Welsh immigrant miners joined other miners at the Canadian Collieries, Dunsmuir Mines in Vancouver in declaring an unofficial holiday in protest to the sacking of Oscar Mottishaw, for reporting the presence of explosive gas in the mine.
The mine owners proceeded to lock them out and hire in strikebreakers. They then evicted the striking miners from their company houses, which forced them and their families to live in tents over winter, on what became known as "Striker's Beach" the beach
As a gesture of compassion, the provincial government sent supplies navy beans, to keep them alive, which later became known as "Big Strike Beans"
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AmeriCymru: Hi Llwyd and many thanks for agreeing to be interviewed by AmeriCymru. All your novels have been written and published in the Welsh language. How have they been received by Welsh readers?
Llywd: Very well, in general, although some people don’t like them, of course. But that goes hand in hand with the kind of close-to-the-bone fiction I write. I’m a reasonable enough person to realise that my novels aren’t for everyone. And all my novels have an ‘Indecent Language’ warning on their back covers, to ward off the faint hearted!
AmeriCymru: Do you think that your novels have ''broken the mould'' in Welsh language writing? Care to tell us a little about the Eisteddfod controversy?
Llywd: I don’t think they broke the mould as such (novelists such as Caradog Pritchard, Goronwy Jones, Twm Miall, Owain Meredith and Gruff Meredith have all produced highly controversial novels before me), although they do seem to have opened the door for some like-minded authors – for example Dewi Prysor and Alun Cob – to produce equally exciting novels for a new generation of readers.
There really isn’t much to tell about the so-called ‘Eisteddfod controversy’ (my debut novel was deemed to go “beyond normal and safe publishing boundaries”) except that I’m glad I did not win the 2005 Daniel Owen Memorial Prize because it gave me the opportunity to a) take my pick of publishers, and b) refine and rewrite parts of the novel before it was published in March 2006. That said, it did help ensure a lot of publicity for the novel upon its release.
AmeriCymru: OK I have to ask...do you have plans to translate the remaining four Welsh language novels into English? If so, which one first and when might we expect see it made available?
Llywd: I have no plans to translate the others at present, although I’m certain that it will happen sometime in the near future. I translated Faith Hope & Love so that my wife (a Welsh learner who struggled to get to grips with the Welsh versions of my books) could see what I was up to. And after it was so well received, I decided to translate The Last Hit during a break between writing new fiction. I challenged myself to translate a chapter a week and released the results on my website as a work in progress.
Ame 
Llywd: Personally, I wouldn’t call it a ‘feelgood novel’, but I can’t stop people labelling it whatever they want because, post-publishing, the novel belongs as much to each individual reader as it does to me. I see The Last Hit as a homage to my favourite genre of fiction, namely hard-boiled thrillers as perfected by some of my literary heroes, for example Elmore Leonard and George Pelecanos. It also tips its hat in many ways to my one of my favourite films, True Romance .
AmeriCymru: Faith, Hope & Love sold more copies in the States than in Britain. What do you think is the books'' major appeal in the US?
Llywd: I have no idea why Faith, Hope & Love sold more copies in the US than in Britain, although I’d have to say that the novel’s themes are very universal, so that anyone – from Aberdeen to Atlanta and Aberdare to Adelaide - could relate to them. For example, almost everyone has lost someone close to them; everyone has been betrayed at some point; most people have experienced a broken heart; and everyone has a family with its own unique dynamic. And that is what Faith, Hope & Love is fundamentally about – family and loss, love and betrayal.
Ame 
Llywd : As it happens, the time I spent living in a place called Mission Beach in tropical North Queensland at the turn of the century had a huge impact on The Last Hit. It was here that I met the original, the real-life Tubbs, who became the fictional main character of the novel.
One evening during my first week at Mission Beach, sat around the communal campfire in the company of my new friends and co-workers at what was essentially a hippy commune stroke backpacker hostel, I heard whispers that ‘Tubbs’ was on his way. I had no idea who Tubbs was, so I turned to Trev, sat slumped and smoked-out next to me, and asked him to fill me in. In hushed tones, he explained that Tubbs was a ‘big bloody Bandit’, before passing out. Soon, ‘Tubbs’ was amongst us. A giant. A beast of a man. Six foot six. Twenty stone. Mean looking. Sullen. Serious business. The kind of bloke who could grow a beard from scratch in less than ten minutes. He was there on behalf of the Cairns faction of the Bandidos biker gang in his capacity as a merchant of magic potions and special herbs. Just the man I wanted to see as it happens…
I was introduced to this behemoth, who went through the motions as he weighed up my order:
“Where you from?” He asked.
“Wales.” I replied, which made him turn his head to look at me, his eyes twinkling in the fire’s glow.
“ Where in Wales?”
“Cardiff.”
On hearing this his frown turned into a panoramic smile, before he uttered the words that cemented the foundations of our friendship for the coming months.
“Bloody hell, mate,” he bellowed. “I’m from Dinas Powys!”
The Welsh-connection thrust me directly to the top of the hippy food chain and I soon learnt that Tubbs was born in Llandough in the mid-sixties, although his family moved to Australia before he was one.
Our relationship was a very simple one, thanks mainly to his calling and my girlfriend’s address. Each week, Tubbs would leave the Bandidos HQ in Cairns with a boot-load of ‘product’ and drive to Brisbane and back, calling at several prearranged locations along the way. Every week, he’d call to see his chums at Mission Beach before I’d accompany him in his light grey VW Polo with tinted windows (his secret weapon in his never-ending efforts to avoid incarceration) to Cairns where he’d drop me off at said girlfriend’s house. Along the way he’d regale me with seemingly tall tales about his life as an outlaw, and although it was hard to tell what was true and what was fictional, I lapped it up and stored it all away.
We continued in this fashion for approximately three months, until the time came for me to leave. On my last night in Cairns, Tubbs took a few friends and I to the Bandidos HQ in an undisclosed address in the city, where we were met at the entrance by two guards armed with Kalashnikovs. Of course, bikers in general, and the Bandidos in particular, have a nasty reputation, but what I experienced that night was possibly the best night-club on earth. The place was full of characters, mostly hairy, heavily-tattooed, leather-clad grease merchants with amazing stories to tell; while the barmaids were completely naked. But by that time, nothing in Tubbs’s world could surprise me.
A few years later, now an established author with an award-winning tome to my name, I decided to revisit my time in north Queensland and the relationship I had with ‘Tubbs’. And although I’m not for one second suggesting that the original Tubbs was an assassin (like the fictional one in The Last Hit ), he was a very dodgy individual who supplied the kindling, the firewood, the matches and the petrol that exploded in my mind to create this epic character and the world he exists within.
AmeriCymru: You have been described in the past as "....Wales’s anwser to Irvine Welsh". How do you feel about this comparison?
Llywd: It’s great to be compared to one of your heroes, of course; although I’d exchange it in an instant if my novels would be read by just 10% of Mr Welsh’s readership!
AmeriCymru: Other writers, notably Niall Griffiths who cited ''So Long Hector Bebb'', have acknowledged a book or author who influenced their early reading and perhaps subsequent writing style. Is there an author and/or book that especially influenced you?
Llywd: Two authors in particular have had a huge influence on me and my writing, namely Lloyd Robson and John Williams. Both Robson’s Cardiff Cut and Williams’ Cardiff Trilogy inspired me to write Cardiff-based crime stories. Their books put the city at centre stage, and this is something I have tried to do in my novels as well. As a Cardiff boy, I am proud of the city – both its triumphs and follies – and feel geographically and spiritually entwined with her streets and people. I realise that sounds extremely wanky, but it’s also quite true!
AmeriCymru: What''s next for Llwyd Owen? Are you working on anything at the moment?
Llywd: I am currently working on a new novel about an unhappy and bitter author called… ‘Llwyd Owen’.
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'The Last Hit' by Llwyd Owen - A Review
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"Not everyone deserves a happy ending."
Try as I might to avoid writing ''fanzine'' style reviews for this site it is difficult to avoid playing the role of ''cheerleader'' where Llwyd Owen is concerned. This is the second of his six Welsh language novels published by Y Lolfa to be translated into English and one can only hope that the other four will follow shortly. Whilst ''Faith, Hope & Love ( published in English translation in 2010 ) displayed all the hallmarks of a classic tragedy this book is much lighter in tone. ''The last Hit'' has been described as a feelgood novel and certainly there are happy endings though not everyone comes out of it well. In some ways it resembles a Welsh Western. Our hero Al Tubbs gets the girl and revenge against his evil stepfather in a final showdown in which he exacts ''moral'' retribution for the years of abuse and deceit he has suffered at his hands.
''The Last Hit'' boasts a full complement of sleazeball characters who would be at home in the pages of any Irvine Welch novel but it is not without humour. In fact it is intensely and darkly comedic throughout. Witness this brief exchange before Tubbs and his friend Boda visit Vexl, a Barry island pimp, to punish him for scarring his girlfriend.
"Be careful," Petra pleaded like the lead actress in a hammed-up Hollywood melodrama. "He''s off his ''ead and he doesn''t care about anythen."
"I f*****g hate nihilists," retorted Boda, while Tubbs turned to face her and looked down into her deep blue eyes.Earlier in the same chapter, shortly after meeting Petra for the first time we find Tubbs speculating that she might have been named after the famous Jordanian city and archaeological site. She responds:-
"Oh, Ok. I understand now," ......"But I dont think my pares eva went to Jordan. The people of the Gurnos dont get much furtha than Asda, down Murtha. Ponty at a a stretch. And anyway, I was named after the Blue Peter dog."
The many humorous touches enrich a narrative which moves at a breathless pace as it builds towards its grisly climax. A real page turner, this is a book that you''ll probably finish in a day and be left wanting more. An unreserved five star recommendation.
Llwyd Owen on Wikipedia :- "Llwyd Owen is an award-winning Welsh-language fiction author born in Cardiff in 1977. He lives in Cardiff with his wife and daughters and works as a translator when not writing fiction. As well as publishing 6 acclaimed Welsh language novels and one English language adaptation, he is also a published poet and photographer who presented his own television documentary on S4C on the Cardiff art scene in 2008.
His first novel, Ffawd, Cywilydd a Chelwyddau (Fate, Shame & Lies) was published by Y Lolfa in March 2006, and his second, Ffydd Gobaith Cariad (Faith Hope Love) in November 2006. Ffawd, Cywilydd a Chelwyddau was described by the judges of the National Eisteddfod of Wales'' Daniel Owen Memorial Prize as "close to genius" but was not awarded the prize. Critics have said that it goes "beyond normal and safe publishing boundaries" because of its disturbing content, swearing and slang, which is uncommon in Welsh-language literature. Publication of the book was delayed for a year due to its controversial nature." .... Read More
Chris: Portland is a wonderful, vibrant, hospitable city, full of life and colour and brilliant, creative people. I love downtown, and the river, and the size and scale of all that, and the detailed infill of bars and dance-halls between massive locations - iron bridges and docks, and steel and glass sky-scrapers, and then the suburbs, winding up into melancholy foothills, and freight-trains calling in the night; and the numbing vastness of the forest all around. I’m really looking forward to being back!
AmeriCymru: You are presenting a workshop at Wordstock titled 'Sex and the Serious Novel'. Can you tell us more? When and where will the workshop take place?
Chris: My workshop is on Saturday October 5th, at the Oregon Convention Centre, from 4.30 to 5.45 pm, followed, for me at least, by cocktails. The workshop will look at the role of the erotic in literary fiction: sometimes moving, sometimes embarrassing, sometimes unintentionally hilarious. Sex is a major part of life; why do so many good writers have so much trouble with it? We’ll look at examples from the sublime to the toe-curling, in a format that will be participatory, discursive and interactive. Or, as the Festival programme puts it: Let’s get seriously sexy!
AmeriCymru: You will also be giving a reading from your novel ''Flirting At The Funeral''. Will there be a Q&A session afterwards? When does this take place?
Chris: I’ll be on-stage with the fantastic Chelsea Cain from 2.00pm to 3.00pm at the Convention Centre. We’ll both be reading from our books, and there’ll be a Q&A session, and lots of black humour and serious fun. If you’ve got a ticket to the Festival, the event itself is free, so there is absolutely no excuse for not being there.
AmeriCymru: You are appearing at the AmeriCymru/Portland State University panel discussion on the subject:- 'Culture Wars, Should Welsh Writing in English be taught as a separate course or module in U.S. Universities?' What are your initial thoughts on this topic?
Chris: I’m looking forward to this: an interesting question, and excellent fellow-panelists. It seems to me there’s a real issue here: in the wide world, UK literature tends to get called ‘British’ literature, but there’s a tacit or out-loud recognition that writing from Scotland occupies a territory of its own; and of course Ireland has a distinct national cultural voice. This leaves Wales annexed to England, in a long and unhappy marriage that badly needs relationship-counselling.
Find AmeriCymru at stall 718 (see floor plan below, click to enlarge ).
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CULTURE WARS - OTHER VOICES IN BRITISH LITERATURE
Presented by AmeriCymru and the Portland Center for Public Humanities
Portland State University, Smith Memorial Student Union, Room 327/8
Fri Oct 4th 6.30-9.00 pm
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Profile
On October 4th, he will participate in the panel discussion " Culture Wars. Other Voices in British Literature: Should 'Welsh Writing in English' be taught as a separate course or module in U.S. Universities? " at the Portland Center for Public Humanities at Portland State University.
On Saturday 15 September 1984 a memorial stone was unveiled by a Prifardd (chaired or crowned bard) to mark the site in the churchyard at Talley where a deeply-rooted tradition asserts that the poet Dafydd ap Gwilym (c.1315 - c.1350) lies buried. However, for many centuries, the rival claims of Talley and Ystrad Fflur have been debated as his burial place. It is generally regarded that he was born at Brogynin, Penrhyn-coch (Llanbadarn Fawr parish), Ceredigion.
He is regarded as one of Wales' foremost poets and was responsible for popularising the metre known as the "cywydd". His main themes were love and nature, with his work full of his own feelings and experiences and the troubadour poetry of Provençal, seen as a significant influence on his work. Around one hundred and seventy poems of his have survived, although many later ones are attributed to him.
On 15th September 1939, the regular passenger service on the Ffestiniog railway ceased to operate.
The Ffestiniog Railway was opened as a horse-drawn tramway in 1836 to transport slate from the Blaenau Ffestiniog quarries to the harbour at Porthmadog. The increase in cargoes (100,000 tons by the 1890s) led to the introduction of steam locomotives from the middle of the 19th century. However the subsequent decline in the demand for slate saw the complete closure of the line. However, in 1954, a group of enthusiasts stepped in to reopen the line and with twisting turns, steep gradients and a complete spiral, the Ffestiniog is now regarded as one of the U.K's most spectacular narrow-gauge lines.
The Gleision Colliery mining accident occurred on 15 September 2011 at a drift mine in the Swansea Valley of South Wales.
The accident occurred while seven miners were working underground with explosives. An initial explosion caused the tunnel in which the miners were working to begin to fill with water. Three of the men managed to escape but the rescue operation to find the remaining four men found them dead the following day. This disaster was the worst to occur in Wales for three decades.
Edward Jeffrey Hamm (15 September 1915 – 4 May 1994) who was born in Ebbw Vale was a leading British Fascist and supporter of Oswald Mosley.
Born on 15th September 1846, William Jones from Pencnwr Farm at Dinas was a Welsh soldier in the American army. He emigrated to the United States in 1870, where he found work in Chicago as a coachman before joining the Cavalry and was killed fighting with General Custer at Little Big Horn in June 1876
Another Welshman escaped the same fate was Lord Dunraven of Dunraven Castle in Southerndown, near Bridgend. He had been hunting for elk with Buffalo Bill Cody when he was invited by Custer to join an expedition against the Native Indians. However, fortunately for him, he received the invitation too late.
Look Back in Anger, released on 15th September, is a 1959 film starring Richard Burton and Edith Evans and directed by Tony Richardson.
It is based on John Osborne's play of the same name about a love triangle involving an intelligent but disaffected young man, his upper-middle-class, impassive wife and her snooty best friend, with the Welsh lodger, attempting to keep the peace.
"Although Wales is where I was born, I feel such an affinity with Walthamstow, London, where I grew up, that the town features in most of my books."
AmeriCymru spoke to Jacqueline about her previous work and her current novel ''The Colours Of Corruption'' and about her future writing plans.
Buy The Colours Of Corrution here
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AmeriCymru: Hi Jacqueline and many thanks for agreeing to this interview. You currently live just outside London and were raised in Walthamstow. What is your original connection with Wales?
Jacqueline: I was born in Wales on a wild and snowy night in February. My father was an army instructor in Anglesey and he and my mother set up home on a pig-farm in Ty-Croes. I went back in my mid-forties to try and trace my roots and there they were: a hearth stone in the middle of a field! I still have relatives in Llantwit Major, Mumbles and Cowbridge.
AmeriCymru When did you first become interested in writing?
Jacqueline: I knew from a very early age that happiness lay in books. I was one of those very shy little girls, tucked behind my mother’s skirts or sat in a corner, sucking my fingers, watching and listening to the grownups’ chatter and storing it up for the future. Or I’d be reading ...
I could read at two-and-a-half and devoured stories of every sort. When I was ten or eleven I discovered the marvellous Louisa May Alcott and her book ‘Little Women,’ and identified immediately with Josephine March. I knew then I was going to be a writer. In fact, when the Beatles wrote ‘Paperback Writer,’ I thought they’d written it just for me! One of these days ...
But it wasn’t until my own children had grown up and left home, and my mother had died without fulfilling her own writing ambitions, that I finally decided that it was now or never. I joined a Creative Writing class and discovered that I could write short stories and articles and get paid for them. I even won competitions. The tutor said – ‘I don’t know what you’re doing now but give it up and write!’ Eventually, I did just that. I took early retirement from teaching and haven’t looked back.
AmeriCymru : We learn from your biography that most of your novels start as short stories and develop from there? Do you also write short stories and if so are any available in anthologies?
Jacqueline: I don’t write short stories now. I took a tip from Beryl Bainbridge who said she didn’t waste ideas on short stories when she could write novels. I need scenes where I can ‘act out’ the plot (I wanted to be an actress at one time), wallow in the words and show the development of the characters. By the end of any book the characters must have changed in some way and a short story doesn’t give them enough scope, in my view. I do have a story in Luminous and Forlorn , an anthology published by Honno Modern Fiction and in ‘ The Smell of the Day ’ (New Essex Writing) and in various small press publications that were around at the time (some 20 years ago, when I started my writing career.)
AmeriCymru : Your latest novel Colours of Corruption is set in Victorian Walthamstow. This was your first foray into the field of crime fiction. How did you enjoy the experience? Can you tell us a little about the book?
Jacqueline: A few years ago, I won a place on a writing scheme run by the Writers’ Centre, Norwich, called ‘Escalator’. The ten winners were awarded an Arts Council (East) grant which enabled us to have ‘writing time’, to do research and to have mentoring in a new fictional genre. My then agent had advised me to ‘go darker’ on the strength of two earlier novels (one still unpublished) so I decided on crime fiction. I have to say I didn’t read ‘crime’, though I loved watching it on TV with my husband, who is addicted to the genre. I didn’t want to write yet another formulaic book about ‘police procedurals’ or private detectives or forensics. There are other writers who do it better than I could, who have more experience of modern policing methods. I wanted to write from the point of view of ordinary law-abiding people caught up in criminal activities through no fault of their own. I love History and I love Art and I love Walthamstow so it was easy to combine the three in a story about a Victorian police artist, Archie Price.
This is Archie ( see gallery below ) – a photo by Julia Margaret Cameron. She called him ‘Iago’ but clearly he is Archie Price, an artist from the Valleys. If he hadn’t painted he’d have gone down the mines or followed his father into the butchery business.
Archie is quite taken with the looks of Mary Quinn. See above another photo taken by Julia Margaret Cameron:
Mary is a poor Irish cleaning woman, widowed and childless. After drawing, from her description, a man she claims to have seen near the scene of a vicious murder, Archie invites her to sit for him, thinking her an ideal subject for his new ‘realistic’ style. Reluctantly she complies but, in selling the finished portrait to a rich and portly ‘entrepreneur’ , Archie manages to involve them both in a web of intrigue, involving murderers, thieves and sexual predators and Mary is forced to flee for her life.
This is how ( see bove gallery ) I imagine Lizzie Kington, Archie’s first love, who chose instead, to marry Archie’s friend John, a tile-maker and the steadier of the two. Since receiving a head injury, however, from a couple of thieves, three years before in Epping Forest, John is now addicted to laudanum and making life miserable for his wife and their toddler, Clara. In trying to help the Kington family Archie inadvertently exposes them, too, to the gravest of dangers.
I certainly enjoyed writing the book, doing the research, exploring the characters, their secrets and failings, and plotting the story, deciding who was to live and who die, and bringing it all to a believable conclusion, helping Archie to solve the crime, in fact, with a little help from his friends.
AmeriCymru : Your first novel, Lottie was described by the New Welsh Review as being - "...something of an oddity, and all the better for it." How would you describe the book?
Jacqueline: They say a novelist’s first book tends to be autobiographical and ‘Lottie’ is just that. The characters are mostly people I knew at school and the story is based on a pact we made (and never kept) about meeting up in London every eleven years when the day, month and year were represented by the same numbers – 6/6/66, 7/7/77 and so on up to 9/9/99 and the new millennium. In the story the pact turns out to be cursed, and Fate (or the supernatural ‘Lottie’ named for the allotment where the blood-pact was made) makes serious trouble for any girl who fails to keep the appointment.
I tried to imagine the turns a woman’s life might take, given her personality, her ambitions, her loves, loyalties and superstitious fears. This story turned out to be a cross between a crime story and a fantasy, but ’incredibly prophetic’ according to one friend who recognised herself as one of the characters. The others aren’t speaking to me!
Yes, it is an oddity, not following the accepted format of any known genre. As such, booksellers found it hard to slot onto any particular shelf. And, though Beryl Bainbridge, Bernice Rubens and Ruth Rendall all liked its quirky character, had Honno not spotted its potential I doubt it would have been published.
AmeriCymru: Your 1997 novel Someone To Watch Over Me was a great success and led to a publishing deal with Piatkus for two sequels. Care to tell us more about this experience?
Jacqueline: I was thrilled to bits when Darley Anderson, the agent, agreed to represent me, on the strength of ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’ and got me a two deal with Piatkus. I couldn’t believe my luck having , a few months earlier, had Honno publish ‘Lottie.’ ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’ was the first (of three) books about the psychic Potter family and their experiences during and just after the Second World War in Walthamstow and in Newcastle-upon-Tyne where I did my degree and met my husband. I loved doing the research for these novels, learning such a lot about clairvoyants, psychic healers and mediums, and imagining the joys and pitfalls of being able to see ghosts and read people’s minds. In the last book about the Potter family, ‘A Lazy Eye’, I tried to put myself into the shoes of a little girl ‘with a third eye’ who finds it all so puzzling and upsetting.
Imagine my disappointment when the book-covers (in which I had very little say) reflected none of the trials and tribulations of being clairvoyant but showed sweet and pretty Mills and Boon girlie-girls. I felt I wasn’t being taken seriously at all. These covers were such a mistake, so misleading. People wanting Mills and Boon love stories would have been disappointed and people interested in psychic gifts would have passed the books over, thinking they were romances. Little wonder, then, that I went as dark as I could for the next book, so there could be no mistake about its subject.
AmeriCymru : Your 2004 novel Skin Deep is certainly a science fiction thriller with a difference. How did you become interested in cryogenics?
Jacqueline: There was a lot of interest at this time about freezing body parts for transplantation into bodies that needed, say, a new heart, a new lung, a kidney or even a face. I actually met a woman and her husband who have elected to be cryogenically frozen when they die in the hope of being resurrected when a cure is found for whatever killed them. It set me thinking about brain transplants. Who might benefit from them and who would have had the opportunity for such grisly experiments? Questions like these took me back to the war and the Nazi labour camps.
AmeriCymru : What are you working on at the moment? Can we expect another novel soon?
Jacqueline: I am writing a sequel to ‘The Colours of Corruption’ in which Archie confronts the combined problems of Victorian pornography and the miseries of being stalked. I also spotlight the question of euthanasia.
I do have, ‘in the bottom drawer’, so to speak, a contemporary crime story about a woman teaching art in prisons and her gifted student who has his own agenda. This is a finished novel but needs some work to make it publishable.
AmeriCymru : Any final message for the readers and members of AmeriCymru?
Jacqueline: I would urge any reader of AmeriCymru who is contemplating a writing career to get on with it. Don’t leave it, as I did, until you have more time. Make time. Put down your knitting and rug-making and write. Stop playing games on your Ipad. Write. Publishers like to invest in young authors. Experiment with the different genres early on, choose one and concentrate on that. Life is shorter than you think.
