Christopher Westlake has won many prizes for his short fiction in competitions around the world. Brought up in the Vale of Glamorgan, south Wales Chris always ensures that his writing has a ''Welsh link or Welsh setting.

His first novel ''Just A Bit Of Banter, Like'' revolves around the adventures and misadventures of Nick Evans:-

".... a young city-slicker with a trophy-girlfriend on his arm. Fast-forward just a day and he''s caught his girlfriend in an uncompromising position with his friend, accidentally sent a rude email to his boss - and he''s on his way home to South Wales with his tail firmly between his legs. Unemployed and single, life seems oh-so simple for Nick back in Southerndown, a coastal village where sheep vastly outnumber people."

AmeriCymru spoke to Chris about Just A Bit Of Banter, Like and his plans for the future.

AmeriCymru: You have won prizes in many international short story competitions. Care to tell us a little about these? What was your proudest moment?

Christopher: Winning the Global Short Stories Award will always have a special place for me because it was my first competition win. It gave me such a massive confidence boost. I''d enrolled on an online writing course a few months before and began small by writing letters to women''s magazines (yes, I am male). A few got published, I earned a bit of cash and, most importantly, my name was in print! I then entered a few short story competitions.

The Global Short Stories Award was the third competition I entered and coming first was just amazing. I recycled the setting for my short story, Welsh Lessons, in my first novel, Just a Bit of Banter, Like.

After winning the September Global Short Stories Award I entered quite a few competitions and didn''t come anywhere. Zilch. Writing can be quite isolated. You send off a lot of work and sometimes it disappears into a black hole when you get little or no response back.

The Stringybark Stories Awards has served me well. This is an Australian competition but they welcome overseas contestants. It is a great set-up because all short-listed applicants get published in their anthologies. I came first in the Erotic Fiction Award (the first overseas winner) and that felt great because the anthology was named after my short story, The Heatwave of 76. This was the first story that I had published in paperback. Holding a book in your hand that you contributed to was such a thrill!

AmeriCymru: Are your short stories available anywhere in print?

Christopher: My short stories are included in the Heatwave of 76, The Road Home and Fight or Flight anthologies and can be purchased in Kindle or paperback from the Stringybark Stories website. I also have a short story included in the Past Pleasures anthology, available from Amazon and Waterstones.

AmeriCymru: What real life events inspired you to write your first novel, ''Just A Bit Of Banter Like''?

Christopher: This is quite a difficult one! I don''t really think real life events inspired me to write the novel as such, but quite a few of the funnier scenes have definitely been inspired by real life!

I think it was time to write a novel and I concentrated on getting the basics right. I focussed on making the characters involving, the storylines intriguing and the book an enjoyable, interesting and funny read. The characters were a cocktail of people I''ve met along the way. My Nan and Gramps had dementia and this was definitely an inspiration for the deteriorating mental health of Nan in the novel. I grew up in rural Wales and moved to London (but I haven''t yet moved back to Wales!) and this inspired the two central settings. When I moved from London to Birmingham it was a difficult time as I left a decent job and then struggled as a temp. Nick has a massive fall from grace and struggles to rebuild his life. Like Nick, I''ve also examined what is important to me in life. That said, I am a chronic over-thinker and so I''ve examined pretty much everything in my mind over the years!

AmeriCymru: How would you describe the book?

Christopher: It started off as a light-hearted comedy but I realised that I wanted to explore deeper subjects such as dementia, drug abuse and missing people, which didn''t naturally fit in with the ''light-hearted'' category! Getting the balance between the humour and the darker subjects was one of the most difficult aspects. With most descriptions as I have cunningly used the term ''dark comedy'' but I am still searching for something that sounds a little more impressive, if you have any suggestions!

It is a story of family, friendship and discovering what is really important to you. The characters are central to everything. if the reader does not care for them then the overlapping storylines and the element of mystery are irrelevant.

AmeriCymru: The book is set in Ogmore and Southerndown. Can you describe the area a little for our American readers?

Christopher: Ogmore and Southerndown are neighbouring villages on the South Wales coastline. It is were I grew up, but like most things, I only started appreciating its beauty when I moved away. The weather in Wales can best be described as mild in the summer and freezing in the winter, and so the long stretch of beach is more suitable for leisurely walks with the dog than for sunbathing. The residents of each village are in the hundred. The sheep number thousands and they stroll around the greenery and often wander on to the road. The mouth of the river in Ogmore is bordered by pebbles and rocks on one side and sand dunes on the other. You can cross the stepping stones to the other side and a little further down river lies the old castle.

I have many happy childhood memories of both Ogmore and Southerndown.

AmeriCymru: What do you read for pleasure? Any recommendations?

Christopher: I love reading autobiographies because people fascinate me and learning about lives gives me inspiration for my characters. I enjoy gritty contemporary drama by novelists such as Irvine Welsh and John King. I''ve also become fascinated by Welsh literature, such as Ash on a Young Man''s Sleeve by Danny Abse.

AmeriCymru: What are you working on at the moment? Any new titles in the pipeline?

Christopher: I''ve started planning and researching my second novel. It is going to continue the welsh theme, this time focussing on the towns Merthyr and Porthcawl. I love researching welsh history and this novel will be a journey through the last few decades. It is going to be darker and grittier than Just a Bit of Banter, Like and a much bigger project.

My aim is to make each book better in some way than the last. In my mind, it makes sense that my very best work won''t be for at least another few books, but who knows?

AmeriCymru: Any final message for the readers and members of AmeriCymru and the Welsh American Bookstore?

Christopher: I''ve only just discovered the site but it has been so welcoming I wish I had done so earlier. It seems like a dream combination for me. Obviously I love Wales but I also have family in Boston who we visited a few years ago and I had a fantastic time, and so America is close to my heart, too.

I am going to be roaming through books myself as I am sure there are titles that will grab my attention!

If you choose to read Just a Bit of Banter, Like, which naturally I hope you do (!) I would love you to provide me with feedback.

From the product description:- " Tolkien and Welsh provides an overview of J.R.R.Tolkien's use of Welsh in his Legendarium , ranging from the obvious ( Gwynfa —the Welsh word for Paradise ), to the apparent ( Took —a Welsh surname), to the veiled ( Gerontius —the Latinizaton of a royal Welsh name), to the hidden ( Goldberry —the English calque of a Welsh theonym). Though it is a book by a linguist, it was written for the non-linguist with the goal of making the topic accessible. The unavoidable jargon is explained in a glossary, and the narrative presents an overview of how Welsh influenced Tolkien's story line, as well as his synthetic languages Quenya and Sindarin."

Mark:   Thank you for inviting me. It’s my honor to do an interview for AmeriCymru.

AmeriCymru:  In your book Tolkien is quoted as saying re: The Lord of the Rings , that the Welsh elements of his tale are what has "given perhaps more pleasure to more readers than anything else in it". How true do you think this is?

Mark:   Tolkien’s assertion that the Welsh elements in his tale have given more pleasure to more readers than anything else in it, might be an overstatement.

On the one extreme, there is Edward Crankshaw’s infamous critique of Tolkien’s work in which he said that he “disliked its eye-splitting Celtic names.” On the other hand, there are people like me, who write books about Tolkien’s use of Welsh. I think the truth lies somewhere in between.

Crankshaw continued that Tolkien’s work “has something of that mad, bright-eyed beauty that perplexes all Anglo-Saxons in face of Celtic art,” and I think that is where the problem lies. Very few people understand the true beauty of Celtic art, and even fewer understand the beauty of Celtic linguistics.

I, like Tolkien, am a linguist, and when I first read Tolkien’s statement about the Welsh elements in The Lord of the Rings , my immediate impulse was to rush off to learn Welsh. It took a while before I was able to turn that impulse into action, but finally, in 2000, I found a hole in my schedule for the Cwrs Cymraeg Y Mileniwm in Carmarthen. This course run by Cymdeithas Madog gave me the basis I needed to come to grips with Tolkien’s use of Welsh and Welsh folklore. The location of the course was great, because it meant that I could try and speak Welsh with native speakers when I went downtown after class to shop and explore the city. I was really pleased with the course.

You might, therefore, say that my book was twelve years in the making, but I enjoyed every minute of it. I hope it makes it possible for more people to appreciate how big a part of Tolkien’s work is based on Welsh, by showing them how to find the Welsh elements in his work.

My examination of Tolkien’s work through a Welsh lens produces a “myopic” vision of it, but that is intentional, because as Jane Chance said in an interview, “the northern European influence seems more important than the Celtic, from what I have been able to tell. Perhaps that is because so much of the work done on Tolkien’s medievalism thus far has focused on the northern European influence.” Tolkien and Welsh is intended to remedy this imbalance.

AmeriCymru:  Can you tell us a little more about Tolkien’s definition of 'Welsh'?

Mark:  The “Welsh” that Tolkien knew best was not exactly what people think of when they say “Welsh” today. Tolkien’s academic specialty was historical linguistics, so the “Welsh” that he was most familiar with was the Celtic language known as “Welsh,” before it split into Cornish, Breton, and Modern Welsh. J.S. Ryan, who heard Tolkien deliver the lecture “English and Welsh,” remarks that “Tolkien’s use of the word Welsh would seem to be that found in Old English texts,” where it meant “foreign, or non Germanic.”

Max Förster, an eminent German linguist with whose work Tolkien was familiar, observes that between the fifth and the seventh centuries, the language of the Celtic peoples of Wales and Cornwall would have been little different than the Brittonic from which it stemmed. Even in the period of the ninth and eleventh centuries, remarks Förster, the phonetic differences between Breton, Cornish and Welsh would have been so slight as to be “barely noticeable” for the purposes of his study.

Tolkien’s awareness of this undifferentiated use of Welsh to name the language of modern Wales and present-day Cornwall is perhaps best demonstrated in Tolkien’s tale of Ælfwine (English: Elf Friend ), in which Tolkien wrote “the Welsh language is not strange to him [Ælfwine] … His wife was of Cornwall.”

My wife is “of Holland,” which is why I speak Dutch. The logical conclusion is that the Englishman Ælfwine understood Welsh , because that is what his wife spoke, and she came from Cornwall.

Tolkien’s knowledge of Breton can scarcely be in doubt. He has a note on Breton morphological change in “English and Welsh” that only a linguist well-versed in Breton could make. His knowledge of Breton is further attested by the poem he wrote, entitled The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun . The “names” of the protagonists in the poem— Aotrou and Itroun —are in fact the Breton words for Lord and Lady .

In his Cambriae descriptio ( Description of Wales ), the twelfth century chronicler Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales) comments that Welsh, Cornish and Breton are mutually intelligible in almost all instances. The “Welsh,” therefore, of Tolkien’s primary academic interest was more, or less, a “catch-all name” for the ancestor of Cornish, Breton, and Modern Welsh.

Tolkien’s poems “Earendil Was a Mariner” and “Errantry” demonstrate a considerable resemblance to the Welsh medieval poetic technique known as cynghanedd, which is regarded as one of, if not the most sophisticated poetic system of sound-patterning used anywhere in the world. Tolkien certainly knew Welsh well, if he was able to replicate that pattern.

That is not to say that Tolkien did not know Modern Welsh. There are reports of conversations he had in Welsh with various people, and apparently he spoke it quite well.

AmeriCymru:  Tolkien is on record as saying that the names and places in The Lord of the Rings were developed on patterns deliberately modeled on Welsh sources, but not identical with them. How evident is this from the text? Care to quote a few examples?

Mark:  Unless your Welsh is very good and has a historical tint to it, it is hard to spot some of Tolkien’s “Welsh” names, because he deliberately changed elements in the name to make it harder to see them as such. Some are easy to spot, like Gwynfa ( Paradise ) from Tolkien’s children’s story Roverandom . All you have to do is open a Welsh dictionary to see this one.

Tolkien glossed the woman’s name Rhian  as crown-gift , while in Welsh Rhian means queen . All he has done is change the meaning just a little bit, while the name remains easily recognizable as Welsh, because the letter combination ‘Rh’ is so typically Welsh.

The Took Crest

Goldberry wife of Tom Bombadil

The name Took is harder to see, because Tolkien used the English spelling. You can only really see that Tolkien intended the Welsh name, when Tolkien spells it Tūca , using a bared ‘Ū’ instead of the Welsh ‘W’ for the vowel. The name was originally Twca (type of sword).

Similarly, Tolkien’s place name Henneth Annûn  looks a lot more Welsh, if it is spelled using Welsh orthography as Hennedd Annwn (the old abode in the Otherworld).

Tolkien glosses the place name Amon Lhaw  as Hill of the Ear , but if lhaw is converted to modern Welsh orthography, it would be read as Amon Llaw ( Amon of the Hand ).

This is not in the book—as I have only just seen it myself: Tolkien’s Elvish names for the months December and January are based on the Welsh rhew ( ice , frost ). January is Cathriw ( After the Frost ) and December is Ephriw ( Before the Frost ), modeled on the old Anglo-Saxon month names Ærra Jéola ( Before Yule ) | Æftera Jéola ( After Yule ).

It is hard to see, not only because Tolkien changed the vowel in rhew , and because mutation changes rhew to rew , but also because the prefixes before and after are Greek.

The hardest names to spot are the ones that are translated piece by piece into English. The enigmatic name Goldberry becomes much clearer when it is translated back into Welsh, where it becomes Rhos Maelan , the place to which Maelan, the youngest daughter of the Welsh Goddess Dôn, escaped when Caer Arianrhod was flooded.

AmeriCymru:  How do the linguistic boundaries in Tolkien’s work reflect those existing between the Germanic and Celtic languages in the British Isles?

Mark:  The map of the U.K. is like a patchwork quilt of names, where Celtic, Germanic, Latin and Norman-French elements dot the linguistic countryside, reflecting the history of the comings and goings of the peoples who spoke these languages. Stratford — ford (O.E.) on the stratum (L) or ‘Roman road’—is on the banks of the River Avon , a tautology (a bilingual place name that repeats its meaning in both of its languages), as avon   means river in Welsh . Bewdley —a hypercorrection of the Norman-French beau lieu —means beautiful spot . It is located on the banks of the River Severn (Celtic: Ys Hafren , Latin: Sabrina ). Pembridge (Herefordshire) is the End (W: pen ) of the Bridge (E). It is located just south of the River Arrow, which is Celtic in origin: Ar + gwy L> wy = Arwy  ( By the Water .)

Tolkien replicates this patchwork quilt in the names of Breeland. Bree was the principal town of Breeland, which consisted of the villages of Archet, Combe, and Staddle. It was built on Bree Hill.

The name Bree Hill is one of Tolkien’s philological jests, a joke only a linguist could love. It is another tautology. It is composed of the elements Bree (Celtic) + hill (English).

The same type of construction is seen in Tolkien’s name for the wood near Bree: Chetwood . In Old Celtic, chet means wood . On the real-world map, this tautological construction shows up in the names Chetwode (south-west of Buckingham) and the Chute Forest in Wiltshire.

The element chet also shows up in the name Archet . The prefix Ar - in the name Archet can be found in a number of Welsh place names, where it means nearby . Tolkien’s name, therefore, means near the woods , which is exactly where he placed Archet in his description of Bree-Land: “on the edge of the Chetwood.” (F.205) Compare: the Welsh place name Argoed  (literally: by a wood ).

The name Combe  is the Anglicization of the Old Celtic kumb , meaning valley (compare the modern Welsh: cwm , which means hollow ). It was used so extensively that it was adopted into Old English as cumb and has yielded numerous place names based on this root, such as Combe (Oxfordshire, and West Berkshire), Coomb (Cornwall, and Devon).

Linguistically, Staddle  is the odd-man-out in BreeLand. Archet , Bree  and Combe  share a certain Celtic ancestry, while Staddle has a Germanic origin. Tolkien’s names do exactly what place names on the real-world map do.

AmeriCymru:  Tolkiens work is rich in philological jests. In your book you point out that there are many place names which will amuse an etymologist both in the book and in modern day Britain. Care to expand on this theme a little?

Mark:  Tolkien was a man who liked a good linguistic jest, another of the traits that he shared with the Welsh as described by Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales), the twelfth century chronicler who authored the Cambriae descriptio ( Description of Wales ). Welsh courtiers, and even plain family men have “the reputation of being great wits,” says Giraldus. They are fond of “sarcastic remarks and libelous allusions, plays on words, sly references, ambiguities and equivocal statements.” The description fits Tolkien handily. Most of Tolkien’s puns, however, are the kind that only another linguist can laugh at without being told what the joke is. I try to explain some of them in Tolkien and Welsh .

Many of Tolkien’s jokes are what linguists call “Folk Etymologies,” that is an explanation of a name that makes the name comprehensible to a non-linguist. The Hobbits, for example, changed the Elvish name for the River Baranduin into the name Brandywine . This kind of thing happens all the time in the real world. A real-world example is Golden Valley in Herefordshire, which is the work of French monks who thought that the Welsh dwr ( water ) was the French d’or ( of gold ).

Tolkien says that some members of the Boffin family thought that the name Boffin might mean “one who laughs out loud.” The connection is obviously to the word boff , a bit of slang from the entertainment industry that means “a hearty or unrestrained laugh.” Boffin is in fact a Welsh name that was originally spelled Baughan .

The name Maggot is another linguistic joke of Tolkien’s. While English speakers are trying to figure out why Tolkien would name anyone Maggot , Welsh speakers of Tolkien’s ilk—and remember that means Welsh with a historical tint—know that King Magoth is one of the ancestors of King Arthur, and that the name changed to Baggot in Brittany, and came back to the U.K. in that form with William in 1066. This makes it just another in Tolkien’s nest of names that contain the element ‘bag,’ like Baggins of Bag End.

Orthanc is another of Tolkien’s puns. It has meaning in both Rohirric (Anglo-Saxon) and in Sindarin: In Rohirric, it means cunning mind , while in Sindarin, it means Mount Fang . Mordor yields both a Sindarin ( black land ) and an Old English ( murder < morðor ) gloss.

The pun in the Elvish name Cathriw hinges on the double meaning in the prefix. If you read the prefix as if it were Celtic instead of Greek, the prefix suggests the Irish cath ( battle ), the Welsh cad , the Old Welsh cat , and the Brittonic *kattā. Compare Taliesin’s Cad Goddeu ( The Battle of the Trees ), Cath Maige Tuired ( The Battle of the Plain of the Towers ) from the Irish mythology, and the Welsh name Cadwallawer ( Battle Ruler ) < cad - ( battle ) + gwaladr ( ruler ) L > waladr . A Celtic reading of Cathriw makes it mean Battle of the Frost , which has a certain resonance with Ragnarok, the battle between the Norse Gods and the Frost Giants (hrímþursar) at the end of the world.

AmeriCymru: Tolkien owed a great deal to his former tutor Sir John Rhys. Can you tell us a little more about him and the precise nature of the debt?

Mark:  Sir John Rhys (1840–1915) was a famous Welsh scholar, fellow of the British Academy, Celtic Specialist, and the first Professor of Celtic at Oxford University. Tolkien was one of his students. As any diligent student should know, when you take a course from someone who has written a book on the topic of the course, the book will be a part of the course, even if it is not on the required reading list, and Professor Rhys was a well-published author. Lectures on Welsh Philology (1877)

You can tell that Tolkien read Rhys’ books, because the only place that I’ve yet found the name Rhos Maelan attested is in Rhys’ book Celtic Folk-lore .

As I read Rhys’ works, I kept finding things that I recognized from Tolkien’s work. For example: Tolkien has a footnote to the song that Frodo sings at the Prancing Pony, in which Frodo calls the Sun “She.” The footnote says “Elves (and Hobbits) always refer to the Sun as She.” (F.218) Rhys has a very interesting paper in which he explains that the Celts worshipped a Sun Goddess, not a Sun God as is the case in Western tradition.

Books by Sir John Rhys

AmeriCymru:  In The Two Towers , the Welsh folk belief in "corpse candles" is alluded to. Are there other instances of Welsh folk beliefs cropping up in Tolkien’s work?

Mark:  In his book on Welsh folklore, Sikes remarks that although Keightley took Shakespeare to task in his Fairy Mythology for the inaccuracy of his use of “English fairy superstitions,” no such thing could be said of the Bard’s use of Welsh folklore. Shakespeare’s knowledge and use of Welsh fairy motifs and lore, notes Sikes, were “extensive and peculiarly faithful.” The same can be said of Tolkien.

Tolkien has a place named Long Lake that is the translation of the reasonably common Welsh name Llyn Hir . One of these “Long Lakes” is in Llanfair Caerneinion parish in Montgomeryshire. It is located on Mynydd y Drum in Powys. There is a legend about this mountain that has lots of elements in common with Tolkien’s tale of treasure in a mountain found in The Hobbit .

The legend is one from Rhys’ Celtic Folk-lore . It is a tale about a wizard (cwmshurwr) who lived in Ystradgynlais, near the mountain. The wizard had heard that there was a great treasure hidden in Mynydd y Drum, but he could not go get it alone. He needed the help of a “plucky fellow“ (dyn ysprydol).

These are the first resonances with Tolkien’s tale. Gandalf stops by Bag-End to recruit someone to go recover a treasure in a mountain, and convinces Bilbo to join in the expedition. Bilbo “plucks up his courage“ three times in The Hobbit : once in the face of the trolls (H.47), once when confronted by the spiders (H.158), and a third time when he talks to Smaug (H.214).

The wizard of Ystradgynlais found just such a man in the person of John Gethin (The Swarthy). John and the wizard climbed the mountain together, and when they got to the top, the wizard drew the symbol for infinity (∞) on the ground. The wizard stepped into one of the circles, and instructed John to enter the other. Under no circumstances, the wizard told him, was he to leave the circle. While the wizard was busy with his books, a monstrous bull appeared, bellowing threateningly, but the plucky John stood his ground, and the bull vanished.

The next stage of the story carries two more resonances with Tolkien’s tale. John is threatened by a “fly-wheel of fire“ that heads straight for him. This proves too much for John, and he steps out of the circle to avoid being hit by it. The wheel immediately turns into the devil, who grabs John to take him away. The wizard was only able to save John by trickery. He convinced the devil to let him keep John for as long as the piece of candle he had with him lasted. As soon as the devil agreed to his request, the wizard blew out the candle. This understandably made the devil quite cross, but he had given his word.

Without much imagination—a trait that Tolkien had in abundance—a “fly-wheel of fire” could be turned into a flying fire-breathing dragon. This is after all the man whose first name for Smaug was the simple Welsh compound Pryftan (literally: Worm of Fire ). The role of the devil seems to have been given to the Goblins who detain Thorin and Co. They are indeed quite cross when Gandalf rescues Bilbo and the Dwarves from their clutches.

John kept the candle stowed away in a cool place, never lighting it. Nevertheless, the candle wasted away. John was so frightened by this that he took to his bed. He and the candle wasted away together, and they both came to an end simultaneously. John simply vanished. For appearances’ sake, they put a lump of clay into the coffin they buried under John’s headstone.

John’s vanishing act recalls Gandalf’s explanation of what the Ring does to its owner. A mortal ringbearer, says Gandalf, “does not die, … he fades .” In the end, he becomes invisible forever, and is condemned to walk in the twilight, under the watchful eye of the Dark Lord who rules the Rings of power. (F.76, Tolkien’s emphasis )

You think that you know all the players in the sub-field of Welsh Tolkienistics, because there are not a lot of us, but when Tolkien and Welsh was published, I got an eMail from Wales from Steve Ponty who is working on a book entitled The Hobbit: Professor J.R.R. Tolkien's Magic Mirror Maps of Wales . In his book, he points out—much to my embarrassment, because I wish I had seen it—that when Gandalf introduces Thorin and Company to Beorn, he announces that they are on their way to the “land of their fathers.” (H.122) Ponty explains that if Thorin had introduced himself , he would have said that they were going to the *‘land of my fathers,’ which, as any specialist in things Welsh should know, is the common English translation of the title of the Welsh National Anthem: Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau .

What makes this idea so attractive is that before the reader can get to the next paragraph where Ponty makes it explicit, the suggestion of Welsh Dwarves triggers the thought that both the Dwarves and the Welsh are famous for their considerable ability as miners.

AmeriCymru:  In what way does the theme of matrilineal descent demonstrate a further Celtic influence in Tolkien’s work?

Mark:  Matrilineal descent is one of the key characteristics of the Welsh pantheon. Rhys discusses this aspect of Welsh culture at length in Chapter 1 (“The Ethnology of Ancient Wales”) of his book The Welsh People .

Matrilineal descent means that the family tree of the Welsh gods and goddesses is presented with reference to their mothers, rather than to their fathers. So, when Tolkien describes Goldberry as “the River Woman’s daughter,” he is giving her a matrilineal description. This means that Goldberry fits seamlessly in the type of hierarchy that is used for the children of the goddess Dôn, who form the great dynasty of Welsh mythology.
The majority of Tolkien’s characters are described in terms of patrilineal descent. There are, however, characters, whose descent is described in matrilineal terms. The descriptions of the lineage of the three Hobbit Ring Bearers all accent details of who their (grand)mothers were. This makes them stand out among all the patrilineal characters.

In The Hobbit , Tolkien’s narrator begins his introduction of Bilbo with “the mother of our particular hobbit … was the fabulous Belladonna Took, one of the three remarkable daughters of the Old Took.” (H.16) This is the only time that Tolkien uses the word mother in The Hobbit .

Frodo’s relationship to the Old Took is reckoned via one of Old Took’s daughters. Frodo is the son of the daughter of the youngest of the Old Took’s daughters (F.45), a description that is the essence of matrilineal descent. Bilbo’s selection of his mother’s sister’s daughter’s son as his heir and successor is equally in step with matrilineal descent.

Sméagol (Gollum) came from “a family of high repute” that “was ruled by a grandmother of the folk,” a matriarch. (F.84, F.89) She was a “great person” (F.89) who had the power to turn Sméagol out of the family and her hole. (F.85) She is the only ancestor of Sméagol’s who is mentioned, which is clearly another a matrilineal description of familial relationships.

AmeriCymru:  How do the landscapes in Tolkien resemble actual geographical areas in Wales? Care to give us an example or two?

Mark:  There are so many Welsh (Celtic) place names in Tolkien’s work, that it is hard to make a choice of two to give as examples, but I will give it a try.

In his notes, Tolkien said that Buckland is to The Shire as Wales is to England, so it was, therefore, “not wholly inappropriate” to use names of “a Celtic or specifically Welsh character” as the translations of “its many very peculiar names.”

Normally, Tolkien scholars say that the name Buckland came from Bookland , that is land owned by right of an entry in a book. They are generally unaware that there is a Buckland in Brecknockshire, in Wales that has a meaning that exactly matches the gloss that Tolkien gave for Buckland . He said that the names containing the element buck meant “the word ‘buck’ (animal): either Old English bucc ‘male deer’ (fallow or roe), or bucca ‘he-goat’.” The Brecknockshire Buckland was originally from the Welsh bwch ( buck ).

In The Hobbit , Bilbo and the Dwarves pass The Carrock . The word carrock  is strange enough that Bilbo has to ask what it means. Gandalf explains to Bilbo that carrock is the word that Beorn uses for what appears to be a common topographical feature, but Beorn considers this particular one The Carrock “because it is the only one near his home and he knows it well” (H.117).

The Welsh word carreg  ( stone, rock, escarpment ) matches Tolkien’s gloss for carrock , and his description sounds very much like Castell Carreg Cennen, located among the foothills of the Carmarthenshire Black Mountains, near Llandeilo. A reviewer of Tolkien and Welsh on Amazon said that he was “hoping to see mention of Carrickfergus ( Carraig Fhearghais )—the rock of Fergus (Fergus being Fergus Mór mac Eirc), but this is purely because [he] lived there for a time.” I’ve never been to Carrickfergus , but I have been to Castell Carreg Cennen, and it has a lot of things about it that fit Tolkien’s description of The Carrock .

In the Breton edition of The Hobbit , the translation of The Carrock is Ar Garreg (ar [the ] + karreg [ rock ]  garreg ), which demonstrates how clearly the Breton translator perceived the Celtic underpinnings of Carrock , despite Tolkien’s orthographic camouflage.

AmeriCymru:  Where can one go to purchase Tolkien And Welsh?

Mark:  “Tolkien and Welsh” is available from Amazon.com, from Amazon.co.uk, and from Amazon.de. Those who would like to support AmeriCymru, should, of course, click on the link in the AmeriCymru Bookstore, because Amazon pays AmeriCymru a “finder’s fee” for such sales. Signed copies will be available at the AmeriCymru stand at the Wordstock literary festival 3—6 October 2013 in Portland.

Buy from Amazon.com ( via AmeriCymru ) HERE

Buy from Amazon.co.uk HERE

Buy from Amazon.de HERE

Welsh poet Paul Steffan Jones won this year's (2012) West Coast Eisteddfod Online Poetry Competition with his entry  When You Smile You'll Be A Dog No More . Read the winning entry below. AmeriCymru spoke to Paul about his winning entry and about his work in general.

AmeriCymru: Congratulations/Llongyfarchiadau on winning the 2012 West Coast Eisteddfod Poetry Competition and many thanks for agreeing to talk to AmeriCymru. Your poem 'When You Smile You'll Be A Dog No More' was the winning entry. Care to tell us more about the poem?

Paul: Diolch. I am delighted to have won this competition. The poem is a reaction to the death of my mother in July 2011, the Gleision mining disaster later that same year and the 1938 murder of my Treherbert ancestor Thomas Picton by Spanish war criminals. It deals with grief and how it affects the personality and one's core beliefs.

AmeriCymru: How would you describe your relationship with words, with the raw matter of your craft?

Paul: My relationship with words has become more flexible, more trusting over the last two years. I am favouring a partly abstract approach to writing because I feel that what's going on at present in the UK doesn't make much sense and it's my job to reflect that feeling of nonsense to some degree in my work. It's good I feel to deconstruct a narrative so much that the narrative disappears leaving the naked and mad beauty of words that seem not to belong together but somehow work against the odds. I allude to this in When You Smile You'll Be a Dog No More. It is even more challenging when reading this type of poem to an audience. I believe it's important to try to find new ways of conveying messages, creating tension and provoking reaction.

AmeriCymru: Your blog features a number of original works. Will they be anthologised? How satisfactory/useful are digital media for poets?

Paul: Some of my blog writings have appeared in collections and others may do so in the future. I have found that having a blog has provided me with feedback that I would not otherwise have had. It provides additional encouragement in a fairly lonely genre.

AmeriCymru: Your first anthology Lull Of The Bull was published by Starborn Books. Where can readers obtain a copy?

Paul: A small number of copies of Lull of The Bull are available at www.starbornbooks.co.uk and a few book shops in West and South Wales.

AmeriCymru: What's next for Paul Steffan Jones?

Paul: My second collection, The Trigger-Happiness, will be published by Starborn Books in the next few weeks. A third collection, Junk Notation, has already been written, a reaction to relationship breakdown, poems punctuated by short stories. I am working at the moment on a potential book called Ministry of Loss which again deals with grief and also the massive population change in rural Wales since the 1960s. I look forward to taking The Trigger-Happiness to a wider audience. I hope that one of its poems will feature in an exhibition in Kyoto, Japan next month.

I will continue to fight the UK Coalition Government's austerity measures from within the ranks of the Trade Union movement.

AmeriCymru: Any final message for the members and readers of AmeriCymru?

Paul: There are a lot of good but unknown poets in West Wales who deserve to be heard. I'm sure that a similar situation exists in the U.S.A. I would like there to be closer links between lesser-known Welsh and American poets.

When You Smile You'll Be A Dog No More

I wake up

I wake up dead

I had been dreaming of cardboard

home made signs on unclassified roads

which directed me to 20,000 saints

or 20,000 whores

its hard to decide

everything is everything else

nothing is nothing

let me sleep

my bed my kingdom

Im sick of having to make sense

if theres still such a thing

the holes and the cracks

that await filling or recognition

our father gives us brown envelopes

containing our mothers careful accretion

we have all done loot

I will glory in her memory

decorate those who have managed

to live to retirement age

who have lived before death

I am overdue a bombweed and overgrown motte

Grand Tour

with a redundant cinema gravedigger hunchback

to disinter Nazis to kill them all over again

the art of leaning on a farm gate to view

wood lice jigs

the tail end of a hurricane

mould and its cousins

fungicide and its offspring

cry when miners die in the sides of hills

in the tombs of the underworld

in the caress of water

cry when they say your name

when the pain overpowers

when the clues expire

cry as men cry

faces to the wall

the tears of candles

the clowns of town down

the anti-condensation flotilla at full tilt

freelance apologists freely lancing

cwtsh into the huddle

taste her tears so near

impressing me as much

as I had expected

but not in the manner anticipated

women with bruised faces

the views from floors

fight for your smile

you know the one

and I will fight for the right to fail

and the secrets we think we are keeping

removing my shirt though its cool

nakedness of diaphragm

for what I am

the long arms of brambles through fencing

Impressionist paintings in river reflections

the source of the Nile

the source of fibre

persisting with bent nibs

everybody lies

everybody smells

everybody disappoints

this towns got much to answer for

eat what you are

food replaces sex

those poached brains

shopping as sport

lions as lambs

distance will bring us together

Paul Steffan Jones

Interview by Ceri Shaw

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It is always a pleasure to introduce a first rate historical fiction writer on the site. All the more so if her work happens to be set in Wales. In this interview AmeriCymru spoke to Jean Mead author of The Widow Makers , Strife - The Widow Makers and Freya 800AD about her work, future plans and passion for sailing. Be sure to check out Jean's' website for details of her past publications and future speaking engagements.

Jean has also contributed an original short story for publication on the site. Joe Standish - Boyhood 1823 is a prequel to 'The Widow Makers' and revolves around incidents from the boyhood of one of its main characters.

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AmeriCymru: What attracted you to writing?

Jean: My interest in writing historical fiction was formed at school where English and history were the only subjects I actually enjoyed.

The history teacher was brilliant, she would tell tales of the past and the ring of clashing swords, the cries of battle, the sobs of the soon to be beheaded held me enthralled.

The English teacher was appalling, and to save her the bother of a lesson, she would tell us to write a story. The other girls would groan, but for me this was heaven. Whilst writing I could forget I was actually in the classroom.

Perhaps its the bad teachers that shape a childs destiny! The pupil must exercise imagination to escape the dreariness of the classroom.

AmeriCymru: Care to tell us a little more about the Widow Makers.

Jean: On a perfect autumnal day, sunlit with the bite of the first frost in the air, quite by accident I came across Dorothea quarry an astoundingly beautiful and haunting place. Stepping over the rusty wire of a wrecked Blondin, the idea of The Widow Makers came to me.

The research required to write a historical trilogy, the story based in the quarry lands of North Wales, didnt occur to me until I attempted to write the first paragraph. But so in love with the place, I enjoyed learning about the history of the quarry.

The quarry in the trilogy is the Garddryn but many incidents that happen in the story actually occurred in Dorothea.

The Widow Makers 1842-1862 was published 2005 and republished 2012 and is a paperback and Kindle e-book.

The Welsh Books Council awarded a Literary Grant for the publication of The Widow Makers:Strife 1862-1874. The book was published in paperback in Wales 2012. There is one hardback copy which was made especially for the launch of the book. This is now in pride of place on the mantelshelf at home. Strife will also become a Kindle e-book very soon.

The Widow Makers:Roads End 1874-1884 is almost complete and will be published 2013.

The characters and locations are the same in all three books but each edition can be read independent of the others.

It is difficult to imagine a time when the characters will not be the centre of my day and the people I dream about at night. If they decide to stay, they no longer just inhabit my office but have free run of the house, I may have to continue the story.

AmeriCymru: What inspired you to choose a Viking heroine?

Jean: Freya 800 AD is my latest book and was published 2012.

Most Viking era books are male dominated with battle, skirmishes and gore. Others are mystical and fantastical.

My purpose was to portray a woman living more than a thousand years ago at the beginning of the Viking raids on Britain. To write about life as it really was at that time. How women coped when their husbands sailed across the Norse Sea to wreak havoc of the Picts of Northern Britain. With settlements deserted of able men the women were vulnerable from attack, and in the story, Knut, a man of the mountains crosses the threshold of Freyas longhouse with devastating consequences. Researching the longhouses, longships, the way people lived at this time has taken me to Viking sites, and museums, which has been fascinating. Though the dried-out remains of a Viking warrior does tend to prick the hairs at the back of my neck.

AmeriCymru: You have also written a great many short stories for magazines over the years. Can you tell us a little more about this aspect of your work?

Jean: Writing short stories is a bit of a hobby and I enjoy contemporary situations and characters. In short fictions I tend to write about the humorous side of life. Over the last few months Yours Magazine have published my stories. The editor is kind enough to do a little write-up about the author and the books, which helps readers get to know me and my day job.

AmeriCymru: You have generously contributed a short story for publication on AmeriCymru, could you introduce it for us?

Jean: Joe Standish - Boyhood is a short story about Joe, the main character in The Widow Makers historical trilogy. Writing about him for so long I naturally got to know every little quirk of his character. The short story I have contributed to Americymru is how I imagine Joe may have been in boyhood, long before the infamous Galloway pit, the immense Garddryn Quarry, and his desire to see a union for quarrymen, shaped him.

AmeriCymru: Your profile notes that you enjoy sailing, any sailing stories you'd like to share with us?

Jean: I met my husband through sailing. At that the time I was the Honorary Secretary of The Royal Welsh Yacht Club in Caernarfon, Tony was a visiting yachtsman. We married ten years ago. Our boat is Ruby, a Gibsea 372. The yacht got her name from the fictional quarry in The Widow Makers.

We sail locally with our club, the North Wales Cruising Club, this generally entails racing. Puffin Island, the Menai Strait, and the Great Orme of Llandudno are the usual sailing patch.

Independent of the club we enjoy sailing to the Isle of Man, Scotland and Ireland. As my family now live in Brittany, sailing across the channel has a double appeal, the family give us a great welcome and weather is better. Wales is a bit legendary for rainfall and gales. There are loads of sailing yarns I could share with you but most are x-rated.

AmeriCymru: Where can readers go online to purchase your books?

Jean: The books are available on Kindle and paperback.

Freya 800 AD and The Widow Makers are available in paperback or as Kindle e-books on Amazon. The Widow Makers:Strife which is available in paperback will also be available as an e-book very soon.

AmeriCymru: What's next for Jean Mead?

Jean: Next book to be published is No Goodbye a contemporary thriller. The Widow Makers:Roads End will follow. Next writing project is another Viking era book. I shall be asking the members of Americymru to help me come up with a good title.

AmeriCymru: Any final message for the members and readers of AmeriCymru?

Jean: I would like to thank Ceri Shaw for making my books available through Amazon/Americymru. If someone purchases a Kindle e-book or paperback I really hope you enjoy it. I am always available to answer questions from readers.

It really pleases me that the members of Americymru have such an interest in Wales and what is going on here. Diolch.

Philip Rowlands is a former Headteacher from the Rhondda in South Wales. He is now an author and editor of 'Kindle Authors', a website which offers :- 'Encouragement, practical 'how to' advice, and support for all aspiring and established Kindle authors.'

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AmeriCymru: Croeso i AmeriCymru Philip. Recently I have been admiring your work on Kindle Authors . How would you describe the site?

Philip: Thanks Ceri. Writing is essentially a solitary craft. Kindle Authors was established to create a supportive community of potential Indie authors who want to go down the self publishing route. Hopefully it provides helpful technical advice, promotional ideas, amusing posts but above all a healthy dose of encouragement. A blog is also a great way to discipline yourself to the daily task of actually getting some writing done. There must be lots of people including members of AmeriCymru who have a novel currently residing in their head but unless they impose some self discipline and start writing on a regular basis that’s where it will stay.

AmeriCymru: In addition to blogging you are also a writer who publishes electronically. How did you get started with that?

Philip: I have always loved writing. As a teacher I was very conscious of how drama could impact positively on children especially with regard to emotional literacy. Consequently I wrote many play scripts and entered children in various competitions. We achieved success nationally winning the Cardiff International Science and Drama Festival run by Professor John Beetlestone of UWIST, came runners up in another national finals sponsored by Savlon which were held at BAFTA and also were awarded a prize in the National Eisteddfod held at Builth Wells.

I decided to try and get some of the plays published back in the day when you sent your manuscripts to a publisher and waited several months for a rejection slip. When I retired I continued to write and with the advent of devices like Amazon’s Kindle I decided, like many established authors, to ignore the traditional route and publish directly with Amazon and Smashwords. The fact this option was available gave me the impetus to finish one of several projects I had started but abandoned. There is no excuse now because anyone can write and get published if they really want to.

AmeriCymru: You have published 'G+ Explosion'. Can you tell us more about this title?

Philip: Writing a book about social media marketing was the furthest thing from my mind if I am honest. I was always actively involved on the internet even when it was new and computers were alien beings that sat in the corner of a classroom making strange beeping noises like a disgruntled R2D2 and whose sole purpose seemed to be to intimidate nervous teachers.

It was obvious to me that here was a possible outlet for the play scripts and educational programs (see http://www.helpyourchildsucceed.com ) I had written. Down the years I have sort of become a social media marketing expert by default. Please don’t ever call me a guru! Having then begun to self publish my work I soon realised that was just the first stage of the self publishing author’s task. The next is to promote your book. Nobody is going to do it for you and there are now so many books published on Amazon every month that it is easy to become lost in the digital crowd. When Google+ arrived I took a close look and immediately glimpsed its immense potential. Here was an opportunity to establish a presence while Google+ was still a new kid on the social media block. Having already established Kindle Authors I viewed Google+ eXplosion as a natural extension of providing information and help on a social network that can provide authors with a powerful promotional platform. In order to get Google+ eXplosion written I took time off from my current project, as time is of the essence when opportunities presented by the likes of Google+ arrive.

AmeriCymru: The inevitable G+ question. In your opinion will it ever catch up with or be a viable competitor to Facebook?

Philip: In my humble opinion, most definitely. Google have already failed with one project, failure is not an option this time. They are totally committed to Google+ and as soon as apps linking them to other social media networks like Twitter become available momentum will build exponentially. One feature that is particularly effective is the way you can group people into Circles. This allows you to set up sub groups within your account. For example I have groups for various genres like Fantasy, Science Fiction etc and only post what is relevant to that group. This facility is lacking on Facebook. Google+ is still evolving. When Google+ first introduced their Pages the maximum number you were allowed was just 20. I now have 28 pages and there has been no warning from Google that I am anywhere near my limit. They are adding new features all the time and the latest is the Local Tab that allows you to search a local area within a given postcode for restaurants etc. Google+ will become a massive presence in the social media universe and now is the time to get a foothold.

AmeriCymru: You have also published A Christmas Carol Revisited . Can you introduce the book for our readers?

Philip: Certainly. Charles Dickens is one of my favourite authors and ‘A Christmas Carol’, my favourite story. Although Dickens was not Welsh he shares with us one very common trait which is evident in all his works. Dickens possessed a well defined social conscience and his novels frequently illuminate the dark corners of Victorian society where social injustice and abuse of children were commonplace. I often wondered what issues Dickens would have written about today and that was the intial motivation for ‘A Christmas Carol Revisited’. I realised it might appear an act of arrogance to try and follow in the footsteps of the great man but I reasoned if the Muppets could do it, why not me?

I have been asked why the story was set in New York not London. When Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol Britain presided over a vast empire at the height of it’s powers. During the 20th century that mantle fell upon America and she has since been at the centre of many of the significant events that have shaped and changed our world. New York seemed the obvious setting for Ebenezer Clinton Scrooge III, very much a self made man of his times. There were two other aspects of Dickens work I hoped to reflect in some small measure. First was his love of words and descriptive powers and second was the fact that he always wrote darned good stories. In this age of CGI movies the art of story telling often takes a back seat.

Thankfully A Christmas Carol Revisited has been well received by everyone who has read it. I was fortunate to secure an hour long interview and review with Roy Noble and Nigel Crowle on BBC Radio Wales and they were extremely supportive. Hopefully readers will find it an uplifting experience.( Access the interview from here )

AmeriCymru: Care to tell us more about your latest title 'Billy: Family Secrets' ?

Philip: 'Billy:Family Secrets' is written for children with adults very much in mind. Billy is a nine year old boy who lives in the South Wales Valleys. His beloved Nan resides in a local nursing home run by ‘The Matron’ whom Billy is convinced is a vampire. A family crisis leads to the discovery of the family album. The secrets Billy unearths within its pages will change his life forever. Nothing will ever be the same again, in fact nothing is really what it seems.

“For a long moment Billy sat very still as it lay on the table before him like an ancient doorway beckoning him to pass through if he dare. It smelt of mould and decay and Billy hesitated to reach out and touch it. He wondered from what creature the leather had been obtained. Probably dragon's underbelly he guessed. “Are you going to open it or are we going to sit here all night?” Mum was getting impatient so Billy took a deep breath and reached out.”

AmeriCymru: What's next for Philip Rowlands? What are you currently working on?

Philip: Tough question Ceri! I tend to work on several projects at once. Currently my main focus is finishing Billy. You may also have noticed the animations I posted. They are taken from a sitcom series called Jack’s High that I submitted to the BBC. Although the BBC have asked me to provide more sample scripts they do not intend to commission Jack’s High. Problem is I have such a great affection for the characters who inhabit Jack’s High that I can’t let go – hence the animations. I may make the series the basis for a couple of books.

I have also started an historical novel set in the dark ages and a science fiction novel set in a post apocalyptic world – not a result of a nuclear Armageddon but the total collapse of global financial institutions and the ensuing chaos and emergence of a new Dark Age.

There are also a few other projects buzzing around in my head including an attempt at a screenplay or, more accurately, a rewrite of my first draft. The more projects I have lined up the more chance the Grim Reaper will have the good grace to wait until I finish. Can that be considered a perverse statement of faith or just a sort of spiritual crossed fingers?

AmeriCymru: Any final message for the members and readers of AmeriCymru?

Philip: Thanks for having me and especially you Ceri for the vision and energy to get this marvellous AmeriCymru project off the ground. Hopefully I will not offend too many people and may even be able to help some. If any of you would like me to feature your book on Kindle Authors please email me at philiprowlands@ymail.com and I will be happy to include you. One thing, if you have always wanted to write that novel get started today, it’s never too late until it’s too late.

Interview by Ceri Shaw

New from Y Lolfa "The amazing adventures of Margaret Jones (1842-1902), a lady from Rhosllannerchrugog, north Wales, who became famous in the nineteenth century as "The Welsh Lady from Canaan". She travelled extensively and spent time living in Paris, Jerusalem, Morocco, the United States and Australia. She published two books of her observations, "Llythyrau Cymraes o Wlad Canaan [The Letters of a Welsh Lady from Canaan] (1869) and "Morocco, a'r hyn a welais yno" [Morocco, and what I saw there] (1883). Her letters appear here alongside an account of her life and travels." Buy it HERE ,. ..

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Author Eirian Jones with Bronwen Hall, the great-niece of Margaret Jones, the Welsh Lady from Canaan. Also in the photograph are Bronwens children, David and Susan. They are looking at the Australian diary of Margaret Jones which is kept at the John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland in Brisbane.

AmeriCymru: Hi Eirian and many thanks for agreeing to be interviewed by AmeriCymru. When did you first become aware of Margaret Jones and what made you decide to record her life and adventures?

I was browsing through the Cydymaith i Lenyddiaeth Cymru [Companion to Welsh Literature] one day looking for some information about poets born in Ceredigion, when I came across a couple of paragraphs about this Margaret Jones who had written a few books, but, more interestingly, had lived in Paris, Jerusalem, Morocco and travelled around the United States before spending the last ten years of her life in Australia. Shed done all this in the second half of the nineteenth century which I thought was remarkable. A few months later I visited Margarets home village of Rhosllannerchrugog in north-east Wales and went into the library to see if they had any more information about her. Theyd never heard of her! So that was it I was hooked by her life story and wanted to find out more. Since Im also an author and love travelling, I had quite an affinity with the story of Margaret Jones.

AmeriCymru: Margaret was an exceptionally lucky and above all courageous woman. What in particular strikes you about her bravery and dedication?

She was extraordinarily brave and courageous at a time when women were only expected to raise a family and werent supposed to do much else. Margaret was born in 1842, in poor and unfortunate circumstances and she only received three weeks of formal schooling. There were no ambitious female role models to follow in her home village of Rhos, so her expectations in life must have been pretty low. But, her lucky break in taking a position as a maid with a family in Llangollen and then being asked to work as a maid for another member of the same family in Birmingham (a missionary with the London Jews Society) opened up wonderful opportunities for global travel to her. Margaret was evidently an outgoing personality from her upbringing in Rhos. When she lived in Paris and Jerusalem she could have just worked as a maid and kept herself very much to herself. But no, she wanted to fully experience living in these places: she learnt the languages, visited the important sites and related all her findings back to her parents in letters. In Jerusalem she told her parents about cholera outbreaks, plagues of locusts descending on the city, death threats to Christians from the Sultan etc. And in Jerusalem also, her time was particularly difficult personally, because she suffered from a badly twisted knee. Shed hoped to stay in Jerusalem for ten years, and it was only after being hospitalized due to the condition of her knee that she was persuaded to return home to Wales to receive treatment. So she showed particularly brave and dedicated attributes to her character at this time.

AmeriCymru: In Part IV ('The Length And Breadth of Wales') of the book we are treated to a fascinating account of the chapel lecture circuit in late 19th century Wales.. How much prejudice existed against women lecturers and how difficult was it for them to gain acceptance?

It was very difficult. According to the vast majority of people in those days a womans place was in the home and certainly not speaking publically from the pulpit! To some extent Margaret agreed with this, but she also argued that she had a very good reason to travel the land lecturing from pulpits about Canaan, because she was trying to raise money for the Palestine Missionary Fund so that enlightened information could be given to the people living there. Some commentators in newspapers and magazines were very rude about the handful of travelling female lecturers, saying that the world had come to an end when they saw a female lecturer in the pulpit, or that these ladies didnt belong to one gender or the other! These commentators were largely ignored and, to be honest, these lady lecturers were so very popular (in particular with female audiences), that it was a case of men being envious of their success rather than anything else.

AmeriCymru: Again in Part IV we are introduced to another female lecturer, Cranogwen. Can you tell us a little more about her?

Cranogwen was a fascinating lady too, and spent time travelling around the United States also. She was raised in the old county of Cardiganshire and during her lifetime she was a sea captain, a poet, a musician, a preacher, a temperance movement leader, a school mistress and the editor of a Welsh womens magazine. Shed been sent away by her mother at the age of fifteen to learn to be a seamstress. She hated the work so much that she ran away to sea, and enjoyed life as a sailor for two years. In time she would gain her master of the seas certificate. At 21 years of age, she decided to live on dry land for a while. She took charge of the school in her local village, Pontgarreg, near Llangrannog. She was headmistress for six years, before succumbing to itchy feet once more. She was a promising public speaker, and so she joined the expanding popular lecture circuit and started visiting chapels around Wales. She travelled the land for three years, lecturing and preaching on subjects such as Wales, her religion and education, Money and Time, The Home, Things that go wrong and the female Welsh hymnist Ann Griffiths. Cranogwen became more and more well known the length and breadth of the country, and one rather envious poet quipped that she was the two sovereign, difficult Goddess. Cranogwen was paid two sovereigns for each of her lectures. It seems that the male poet wished to ridicule her popularity. She was yet to turn 30 years of age. And to celebrate that birthday, she went on a voyage to the United States in 1869. There she spent several months lecturing to Welsh audiences in states bordering New York City. She then ventured west to the Rocky Mountains. This was not an easy journey to undertake; it would have been even more fraught for a foreign single lady travelling on her own.

AmeriCymru: There is some speculation in the book about the reasons for Margaret's failure to record her experiences in America in the mid 1880s. Any further thoughts on that?

It saddens me a great deal that I havent been able to find more information about Margarets two-year stay in the United States. Several papers record her arrival in New York City in 1883 and the fact she spoke at several Welsh chapels in the city before moving on to Utica. But after that initial piece of information, theres nothing recorded in newspapers at all. For a lady who wrote so many letters and kept a detailed diary, its very strange that there is no more information about her time in the US. It makes me then wonder if her trip to the US actually lasted as long as two years. After all, she was largely on her own there; she didnt have any constant company with her and if she was moving from place to place, it could have been quite lonely for this gregarious lady. Perhaps, after a few months, she decided to go home.

AmeriCymru: Is it possible to obtain copies of Margaret's books?

I used copies held at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth during my research. Margarets two books Llythyrau Cymraes o Wlad Canaan and Morocco ar hyn a welais yno are both digitalized as Google eBooks.

AmeriCymru: What's next for Eirian Jones?

In conjunction with Blaenpennal History Society Im writing and editing a bilingual book about the history of Mynydd Bach in the old county of Cardiganshire (where I was raised) and hopefully this will be published either late this year or early 2013. The book may be of interest to Welsh descendants who live in the Gallia and Jackson areas of Ohio, as nearly three-quarters of the residents of Mynydd Bach emigrated to Ohio in the 1860s.

Author Eirian Jones at the grave of Margaret Jones, The Welsh Lady from Canaan, in Ipswich, Queensland.

Interview by Ceri Shaw

Cynan Jones lives near Aberaeron in West Wales. His first book, 'The Long Dry 'was published in June 2006. The novel , which won a Betty Trask Award in 2007 is set on a Mid Wales farm. His second book 'Everything I Found on The beach' is also set in West and North Wales. AmeriCymru spoke to Cynan recently about his novels and his plans for the future.

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C ynan : I find it difficult to be around good things without wanting to try and do something good myself. If I eat amazing food, I want to learn to cook. Reading amazing books probably made me want to write, way back. But in terms of inspiration, I think the question is mostly asked the wrong way round. I didn't get 'inspired to be a writer.' A person is inspired, and they find an outlet for that. Be it chefing, or excellence in sport, or writing. It's driven by a great love of a thing and the consequent desire to want to do it well.

AmeriCymru: Your first book 'After The Factory' is somewhat difficult to find. Care to tell us a little more about it and whether it will become more easily obtainable in the future?

Cynan: 'After the Factory' tells the story of Joseph Napoleon, a factory worker who comes home every night to his basement flat and, while trying to sleep, imagines the characters behind the footsteps that echo across the square outside his room.

It's a short work, but one that readers seem to like very much. It's very different from the two 'Welsh' novels. I'm hoping there will be some news on the 'After the Factory' front soon. I'll keep you posted.

AmeriCymru: In both your subsequent books:- 'Everything I Found on The Beach' and 'The Long Dry' the central characters life and circumstances are revealed through an intimate connection with their surroundings. How important is a sense of 'place' in your writing?

Cynan: A good story should work even when it's lifted out of its setting - I'm talking about the key themes, the big motors of the thing. This is how great 'universal' tales are built, even when they are humble like 'The Old Man and the Sea'. But creating a sense of place is akin to setting the spell, making a world for a reader. It happens that the main characters are very linked to their environments in both these stories so the sense of place is vital. It's the environment I grew up in and am very close to. While I haven't written that intimacy in deliberately, its picked up majorly by readers.

AmeriCymru: You live in West Wales and your books reveal a strong familiarity with the rural lifestyle. What is your background? What did you do before you became a writer?

Cynan: I grew up in West Wales and returned to live here at twenty eight after a stint in Glasgow working as a freelance copywriter. I grew up very close to my grandparents' farm, so spent most of my time there. The farm was small, sixty acres or so. But it had woods, fields and scrubland, and ran right down to a beach. It had an incredible range of places to play. I don't think I ever outgrew that. All I'm doing now really is playing made up games like I did when I was a kid. Just I'm writing things down rather than running round playing them.

Before now I've been a substitute teacher, mentored in a behavioural unit, worked on building sites and as a wine presenter. I've worked in aquariums, and in a kitchen. All sorts. I've done whatever it took to get by without getting tied up in a contract which wouldn't let me drop out to work on a book when I needed to.

AmeriCymru: Care to tell us a little more about The Long Dry . What can readers expect to find? How would you describe the book?

Cynan: The Long Dry is the story of a bad day that gets worse. A calving cow goes missing, and the farmer has to try and find it. He is meanwhile beset by doubts and questions.

I wrote it very quickly (in ten days) and immediately knew it was the strongest thing I was capable of at the time. That was back in 2005. It was accepted for publication relatively soon after I wrote it. It went on to win a Society of Authors first novel award, and has been translated into French, Arabic and Italian. It is ostensibly a very simple thing, but people say it's very strong.

AmeriCymru: Everything I Found on The Beach paints a grim picture of life in rural West Wales. How has the area been affected by the current economic hard times?

Cynan: In some ways there hasn't been a major 'boom' here, so we're not as badly affected as those places that grew and swelled with the prior injection of affluence. Statistically, people here earn considerably less than the average wage, and house prices are higher than near anywhere in the UK as compared to earnings, (because of the huge second home market). In terms of jobs, there's not much to do. There's farming, but on small family run farms that are increasingly unfeasible. There's some factory work in relatively small factories. There's a university and hospital in Aberystwyth and lots of seasonal work in tourism related industries. The local authority is a major employer. But the quality of life if good. If you use and appreciate this area, it pays back. You don't need vast amounts to exist. The grim element perhaps comes from the limited choices here.

AmeriCymru: How difficult is it for Welsh writers to get published and to succeed these days?

Cynan: It is simply difficult to get published, Welsh or not. (You could even argue it's easier when you're Welsh, particularly writing in Welsh, because of the funding that makes that process possible).

When I decided to write I said to myself: write as strongly as you can, everything else is a side effect. I've stuck by that. However, the key thing now is visibility. Breaking through the London-dominated media wall is difficult, and perhaps they don't take Welsh publishers as seriously as they should. In France and Italy my work had big reviews in major newspapers, with some extraordinary critical acclaim. The next step, as well as continuing to write strongly, is to get that attention on my own turf.

AmeriCymru: What do you read for pleasure? Any recommendations?

Cynan: I read massive amounts. Writers like Steinbeck, McCarthy, Carver and so on are on a different level. Brink, Coetze. Graham Greene, Orwell. The great writers. When you write yourself, the quality of the writing has to be very very high. For something more recent, try 'The Solitude of Thomas Cave' by Georgina Harding.

AmeriCymru: What's next for Cynan Jones? What are you working on currently?

Cynan: There's a new novel on the desk right now. Come the end of January, I'll start work on the final draft. It's called 'Traces of People.'

AmeriCymru: Any final message for the readers and members of AmeriCymru?

Cynan: Keep reading! When you read something you like, tell everyone!

Interview by Ceri Shaw Google+ Email

SNOW is the codename assigned to Arthur Owens, one of the most important British spies of the Second World War. Described by MI5 as a typical 'Welsh underfed type' he became the first of the great double-cross agents who were to play a major part in Britain's victory over the Germans. AmeriCymru spoke to author Madoc Roberts about this fascinating and little known character.

Buy 'Snow'  HERE ( Kindle edition available )

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AmeriCymru:- Hi Madoc and many thanks for agreeing to be interviewed by AmeriCymru. When did you first become aware of 'Snow'? What piqued your interest?

Madoc:- I have my own television production company called Barkingmad tv and amongst other things we traced Hitler’s relatives to Long Island in New York. This involved getting hold of files from both the American and British Governments. Around the same time I noticed files about a Welsh spy called Snow were being released. I started researching him in case there might be a television programme in the story and that was the start of a six year search which ended up as my first book. This involved reading hundreds of secret Mi5 files and tracing his family. I have discovered a son in Ireland and a Hollywood branch of the family.

Snow’s real name was Arthur Owens and he was born in Pontardawe and later moved to Canada where he invented an improvement to batteries which he hoped would make his fortune but nobody wanted it so he came back to Europe . One day he walked into the German embassy in Belgium and came out as Germany’s master spy in Britain with the codename Johnny O’Brien. Every German spy sent to Britain was told to contact Johnny. What the German’s didn’t know was that he was already working for the British security services and he handed all these agents over to Mi5. That is how this little Welshman became the most important British double agent during the early years of WWII

AmeriCymru:- How easy was it to access the MI5 files necessary for your research? How much work was involved?

Madoc:- The files were all kept at the National archives in Kew where the staff are very helpful. The problem is that the system is not easy to follow so you have to be very persistent to get what you want. There were hundreds of pages on Snow (his real name was never mentioned) so I photographed them all, took them home and started reading this amazing story which had never been told. In many cases you are the first person looking at these files that were written over sixty years ago, so it is a thrilling experience.

AmeriCymru:- How valuable was Owens work to the allied cause?

Madoc:- The pattern that Arthur Owens set as Mi5’s first wartime double agent was followed by all those who followed. By the end of the war Mi5 controlled every single agent that Germany had sent to Britain and they also took their expenses which means that the Germans were paying for Mi5s operation. The greatest success of the double cross system was the D-Day deceptions which saved thousands of allied lives. It has been described as the greatest military deception since a large wooden horse was discovered one morning outside the city of Troy. On top of all this Arthur Owens messages which were sent to his handlers in Hamburg were used to make the first British breakthrough in the German Enigma code. He also went on may exciting missions involving early infra-red systems, trying to capture senior German spies and he brought back information regarding German plans to poison British reservoirs. I would say he was vital to the allied cause.

AmeriCymru:- OK I have to ask...which side was he on? Or was he playing both sides to his own advantage? The trip to Lisbon and the spell in Dartmoor are as confusing as they are intriguing.

Madoc:- Arthur Owens has always had bad press and his role as the founder of the double cross system has largely been ignored. The reason for this is because most of the books that bother to mention him rely on German sources for their information but of course these sources were based on false information that Mi5 were sending to the Germans in order to send them on the wrong path. Mi5s problem with him was that unlike most of their other agents who were ex criminals, Arthur Owens was a volunteer. His initial motive may well have been money but he had something of worth and in 1935 when he started spying for the British security services we were not at war with Germany. The public school boys and ex-military types of Mi5 described him as a “typical underfed Cardiff type” and he is often categorised as a fervent Welsh nationalist who sang folk songs to entertain the Germans but his son denies that he could sing a note. The information he gave to the Germans was all cleared by Mi5 and the formation he brought back from his exciting missions was invaluable.

After his final mission to Lisbon Mi5 decided that they couldn’t trust Snow anymore and chose to believe the ex-criminals they had watching him. The problem with the double game was that it was hard to know when an agent was tricking them or just playing their part as a Nazi spy. One false move and an agent could find themselves being put up against the wall and shot by either side. Arthur Owens liked a drink and everyone at his local pub seemed to know that he was a spy so when Mi5 had him detained in Dartmoor it was probably his saving grace. It is typical of Arthur Owens that even when he was in Dartmoor he took it upon himself to spy on his fellow inmates and he brought out some of the first information about the German V2 rockets.

AmeriCymru:- Why do you think the Heath government blocked rehabilitation of Owen's name?

Madoc:- In the 1970s several books were published about the double cross system and this was the first time that their existence was acknowledged publicly. These books painted a very unflattering picture of Arthur Owens who was portrayed as an untrustworthy, duplicitous, womaniser. Upon reading these accounts his eldest son Robert wrote to the Prime Minister asking to be allowed to tell his side of his father’s story. However Ted Heath used the official secrets act to block Robert’s right of reply. Robert probably had a rose tinted view of his father’s activities and by the strict letter of the law none of the books should have been published either. In fact the authors had to go America to find publishers. After the war Arthur Owens used his skills as a master spy to change his identity and vanish because he feared that someone he had double crossed might catch up with him. This not only made it a very difficult task to find him, it also left a vacuum which was filled by myths and half-truths. He didn’t want to be rehabilitated he just wanted to start a new family and forget about his war time activities.

AmeriCymru:- There is a Hollywood connection to this story. Care to tell us what it is and how you discovered it?

Madoc:- The Mi5 files mentioned that Snow had a daughter who they called Pat. I knew from her age that she would have been born in Canada but finding Canadian citizens is not easy as only family can apply for certificates. The only Patricia Owens I could find in Canada was a Hollywood film star who was the star of the original version of The Fly so I dismissed her as a mere coincidence. There were many people looking for Arthur Owens on the internet but by this time I knew that most of the books were wrong when they gave his middle name as George. I had discovered the patent for the battery invention which gave his middle name as Graham. So when someone replied to one of my requests for information saying that his father might be Snow’s son and that his name was Graham I got in touch with him. We compared notes and it became obvious that I was talking to a son of agent Snow from his second family which he started in Ireland. The Graham told me that as a boy he had been taken to the pictures to see The Fly and his mother told him that the leading lady on the screen was his sister. Patricia Owens had a glittering career appearing in over thirty films alongside the likes of Marlon Brando, James mason and Vincent Price. However she lost touch with her father and lived in fear that the public portrayal of him that emerged of him as a Nazi spy would become public and her career would be over.

AmeriCymru:- Do you think there is more to be discovered about this devious and fascinating character?

Madoc:- Snow is buried in an unmarked grave in Ireland because his son can’t quite work out what to put on his stone. I do find it a bit of a coincidence that he died only a few days after a newspaper article was published about his activities as a spy. At the time he was living in Ireland where he attended nationalist meetings and clapped loudly at the end of speeches although he couldn’t understand a word of Irish. If he had been sent to Ireland to infiltrate Sinn Fein then his time in Dartmoor would have given him the perfect cover but as with all things in Snow’s story you never know if things are true or whether it is all part of the double cross game. I may have to make another visit to the National archives to see if I can uncover even more.

AmeriCymru:- Where can our readers go to buy the book online?

Madoc:- Snow: the double life of a world war II spy is available through Amazon here

It has also just been released in the USA and can be purchased here

If people want to read more about Snow they can go to the codenamesnow site Where there is more information, a video interview with Snow’s son which features clips of Patricia with Marlon Brando in the Oscar winning Sayonara. The site also has a BBC Wales news item about him and a BBC Radio Wales interview I did on Jammie Owen’s show.

There are also lots more pictures including previously unseen family photos on my Facebook site

AmeriCymru:- What's next for Madoc Roberts?

Madoc:- I have just finished editing an interesting episode of the channel four archaeology series Time Team which went in search of Shakespeare’s house in Stratford upon Avon. I am also hoping that we might get a chance to make a follow up feature film to “Flick” which we made a few years ago and starred Faye Dunaway as a one armed cop in search of a killer zombie! Also an American record label has re-released my bands single from the seventies. We were called the Tunnelrunners and we were a punk band which played in the Swansea area. One of the original singles sold on eBay recently for $1,000 and a re-release of four other songs will come out soon. On the book front I am looking at a Nazi plot to kidnap the Duke of Windsor which I am provisionally calling Operation Willi and the Nazi Queen. It is a great story but a bit of a minefield when it comes to the research so we will have to see how it goes.

AmeriCymru:- Any final message for the members and readers of AmeriCymru?

Madoc:- Nadolig Llawen a blwyddyn Newydd dda I chi gyd and if you are looking for a gift with a seasonal title then let’s all hope that we get Snow for Christmas. (Geddit? Sorry.)

Interview by Ceri Shaw Email

" Dave Lewis is a writer and poet based in Pontypridd, south Wales. He also lectures IT & Photography, designs web sites and is a keen photographer. He has always lived in Wales except for a short spell in Kenya in 1993-94 and enjoys travelling to different parts of the world. He writes content for and still maintains many web sites, was web producer for the BBC Wales Scrum V fanzine, has run four hugely successful rugby sites with Rivals.net and used to write a newspaper column for the Pontypridd Observer." AmeriCymru spoke to Dave about 'Ctrl-Alt-Delete' and other literary projects.

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AmeriCymru: Hi Dave and many thanks for agreeing to this interview. Your first novel 'Ctrl-Alt-Delete' is currently available on Kindle. Care to tell us a little more about the novel and what inspired it?

Dave: I guess it's a crime thriller. A Facebook, cyber-stalking, murder mystery, love story with some good old fashioned sex and violence thrown in for good measure. 

I've always wanted to follow in the footsteps of someone like James Patterson and be a successful commercial writer, if only to allow myself time out from the day job to develop my writing skills more. 

Having worked in IT for 17 years I am always amazed at how innocent to the dangers of the web people can be and whilst I had the idea of linking a number of very different local characters together in a very fast, filmic novel, I imagine my computer knowledge helped inspire the main thrust of the book. 

One of the reviews says: ‘Could do for Wales what Stieg Larsson did for Sweden!’ which is a great compliment and hopefully true.

Amazon link - Ctrl+Alt+Delete

From Amazon.co.uk:

When beautiful Jenny Morris uses Facebook to get her ex-boyfriend Hal Griffiths to stalk her she has no idea what a dangerous game she is playing - for someone else is watching from the murky shadows of cyberspace. 

And when an horrific murder in a sleepy Welsh village stirs a seasoned reporter, a conceited detective and an overweight IT expert into action, they too always seem to be one step behind the mysterious killer - Hagar. 

Against the backdrop of a tangled web of deviant sexual practices Hal must rescue his lover before the killer strikes again. In the wilds of the Brecon Beacons National Park an electrifying climax is played out when Hal is forced to confront his deadly rival. 

Social and political commentary within a close-knit community has never been so honest. Pornography morphs into technology and we are forced to ask ourselves the question - will man’s lust for instant gratification ultimately be his undoing? 

A full-throttle thriller effortlessly blending violence, eroticism and suspense, Ctrl-Alt-Delete is both a modern love story and a prophetic tale of intrigue in our ever-distracting machine driven world. A truly gripping debut novel by Dave Lewis.

AmeriCymru: How intrusive and how dangerous do you think modern social media/networks are? Can technology go too far? 

Dave: Very dangerous (just read the book). I'm sure that we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg at the moment and things will get much worse before people wake up. I read one study last year that some young people spend five times more time 'socialising' online than they do in the real world - this is very sad when there is a great big beautiful world out there to explore.

There are security/identity issues with online use, health issues and outright dangers, especially when you delve into the world of internet dating and pornography. 

Technology is neutral I guess and will just continue to develop to enable more people to participate and therefore consume, it's a capitalist world and the masses of India, Africa and China are not even in the game yet - it's Christmas for sellers! 

AmeriCymru: Are you planning a sequel to 'Crtl-Alt-Delete' 

Yep! I can't say too much but it's half written in my head and whilst the first book is set almost entirely in Wales, the second will be in Kenya and... Nah, that would be telling.

AmeriCymru: What are the advantages of publishing digital editions? How easy (or difficult) is it to publish on Kindle? 

Dave: Hopefully, budding writers can by-pass the traditional and outdated agent/publisher route and just get on with it. It's about 2-3 years quicker, very easy if you have a few computer skills and some very basic html knowledge. You also get to control commissions etc. I used the least commission / hopefully more sales option, e.g. my novel is just 86p or 99cents and already in less than 2 weeks I've sold nearly 100 copies (in UK).

AmeriCymru: You have also published three anthologies of poems and short stories. Your third collection Sawing Fallen Logs For Ladybird Houses is accompanied by photographs on your website. How do the two media work together? 

Dave: Yeh, the poetry is always a constant and I'm sure I'll continue to publish poetry for many years to come. Sawing Fallen Logs... was a concept I had a few years back. I applied for a bursary from 'Literature Wales' to enable me to get a publisher in Wales but as they only seem to give money to the same old faces... I do what I always do if they are not willing to support grass roots art of this kind - I just do it anyway. To publish full-colour images alongside the poetry as was envisaged would have been better but in the end was just too expensive to do. Luckily the poems stand alone anyway, but for those that have bought the book and given me feedback they don't see it as such a drawback having to have the images open on a laptop or iPad. 

AmeriCymru: You were a runner up in the Rhys Davies Short Story Competition 2009 with your short story 'Onions'. Can you tell us more about the story? Do you plan to write more short stories? 

Dave: 'Onions' was a challenge to the politically correct mainstream literary world and they seemed to fall for it hook, line and sinker! Very satisfying. Many thought it highlighted the racism within a working class valleys culture but actually all it shows is that there is good and bad everywhere and that people just get too hung up on clichés, stereotypes and jumping on the BBC bandwagon of over-the-top political correctness. 

The story is set in a south Wales valleys curryhouse and I take the stresses and strains we all face to extremes when an Al-Qaeda recruit (a pubescent, confused young lad who is neither one thing nor the other) blows up a restaurant. The story highlights culture within culture by means of jumping between tables in the room and from the waiters’ point of view rather than the customers.

I've got two more stories in Urban Birdsong and have a couple of others ready for a future book. 

AmeriCymru: In addition to writing you have also organised the Welsh Poetry Competition for the past five years. How has the competition grown and developed since 2007? 

Dave: It's been fantastic! We went from a few hundred entries mostly from within Wales in the first year to becoming truly international a couple of years later and get entries from all over the world now. I think the success has been down to our great judges, John Evans , Mike Jenkins and Sally Spedding and the fact that the competition is judged fairly, unlike many I won't mention.

AmeriCymru: Who is the judge this year? 

Dave: It's a secret, but OK then, John Evans.

AmeriCymru: What are you reading at the moment? Any recommendations? 

Dave: My favourite book of all time is 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists' but at the moment I'm reading Gary Snyder - Turtle Island, a Patricia Cornwell book, a Sandy Denny biography and Crash by JG Ballard, plus anything else lying around...

AmeriCymru: Favourite pub in Ponty? 

Dave: Always was the Llanover Arms, but a new watering hole has emerged recently in the form of The Patriot - award-winning real ales, great landlord and always packed! The 'Llan' will always have a special place in all Ponty peoples' hearts of course, I've been drinking there myself since I was 15 or 16.

AmeriCymru: What's next for Dave Lewis? 

Dave: I've got a book of haiku half done plus bits and bobs, photography to catch up on, but I guess I really should start on a sequel to Ctrl-Alt-Delete and then the third... 

AmeriCymru: Any final message for the readers and members of AmeriCymru? 

Dave: Merry Christmas of course, does time fly as fast in America as it does here in Wales? Oh, and buy my book of course (is that allowed Ceri?)

AmeriCymru: Certainly is...BUY DAVE'S BOOK: Ed.

Interview by Ceri Shaw Email

Excerpt From Ctrl-Alt-Delete

Prologue

August 2010…

Jenny had drunk far too much white wine. It was an easy mistake to make and now she was going to die.

How long had she been unconscious? She had no idea. No concept of time. Struggling hard not to panic as she felt herself begin to hyperventilate Jenny instinctively knew she must absorb and assimilate every detail, something somewhere might save her. She also knew she must act immediately if she wanted to escape.

She struggled for breath and forced herself not to give in to the gagging reflex as her desert-dry mouth filled with burning bile. Jenny’s swollen eyes strained to become accustomed to the murky gloom. She tried to shake her long, curly brown hair away from her face but dried sweat held it tight as the cold metal of the handcuffs cut into her wrists. Her whole body was aching and her pulse throbbed relentlessly in her head.

Thinking back to earlier that evening she vaguely remembered her vision blurring and the muted sound of words slurring, like holding your head underwater in the bath. Then her stomach had tightened and warm flushes had begun to spread out all over her body. A distorted Daliesque clock face slowly slithered down the wall. As Jenny’s coordination flew off into the evening her knees buckled. She headed for the carpet in slow motion. A small, rough hand expertly plucked the free-falling wine glass from mid-air and delicately placed it on a low wicker table.

Terror can manifest itself in different ways but all Jenny could visualize at this moment was Hal’s grinning face staring back from the centre of a computer monitor. In the first brief seconds of consciousness she searched for reassurance. She tried to reason with herself, to tell herself it would be OK.

She tried to justify her actions, to make sense of it, to make it alright. It wasn’t her fault. What else could she have done? Stalkers don’t just stalk anybody do they? You have to give them a reason. You have got to make them want to do it.

Oh shit! What have I got myself into? The thought of being a lonely old spinster was suddenly very appealing… then unexpectedly, off to the side, a long penetrating torch beam flashed across her body and in a nanosecond she was catapulted back to the present. The harsh light settled on her pale face and blinded Jenny for a brief moment before an echoing click plunged her back into silence and darkness.

With her senses heightened by fear she could taste the damp, musty smells of straw, onions and potatoes. The odour of mouse droppings mingled with the stink of rotting, wet vegetables. She desperately searched the dim recesses of her prison. Her funeral-black pupils frantically scanned the darkness for hope.

Penetrating, probing. Looking for anything that could offer her a way out of this nightmare… and then she saw them.

Laid out purposefully in a neat line on the small wooden bench in the corner of the barn. Almost out of sight. Not placed in front of you – for effect. Not staring you in the face, not carefully arranged like pretty glass ornaments on a living room shelf. Not meant to shock or terrify. These had been put there for a purpose. Practical. To be used.

Jenny shivered, her big brown eyes grew to saucers, her face became china-white as the adrenaline kicked in and coursed through her blood. She tried to jerk free but the restraints held firm as she slowly traced the metallic shapes in perfect clarity. Her screams were muffled by the crimson scarf tied tight around her mouth, and an earthy taste of silk mixed with her briny tears as they streamed into her mouth.

Suddenly and without warning she felt warm liquid flow down her legs as her bladder opened involuntary. She stank of fear. She missed her daddy.

Then, slowly but surely, the same rough hand emerged from the shadows and reached for a shiny, clean scalpel that glinted sporadically in the half-light. It edged closer to her, leaving the rest of the knives, dissection instruments and power tools set out clinically in the dark.

One

April 1st 2010…

Hal Griffiths had been fast asleep. His head submerged deep in a pillow, Egyptian cotton sheets wrapped around his lean but muscular torso.

A thick winter duvet lay in a pile on the floor next to a pair of old Levi jeans and a faded blue Billabong tee shirt. Bridgedale light-weight walking socks and a pair of Merrell trail shoes were close by. Smiling to himself, semi-conscious now, he kept his eyes closed tight.

These were the precious minutes just before waking when your mind knew it was time to face another day but your body craved another hours rest, or was it the other way around? Either way he wasn’t going anywhere, the voluptuous super-model Elle McPherson was with him.

BUY CTRL+ALT+DELETE HERE

Aled Lewis Evans is a Welsh poet and writer in various media. Born in Machynlleth and now lives in Rhosllanerchrugog. His first volume of poetry was published by Barddas in 1989. He w

as a broadcaster on local radio (Sain y Gororau) from 19831993, then taught at Ysgol Morgan Llwyd, Wrexham. He has won prizes in the National Eisteddfod three times: in 1991 for his volume of poetry for young people, in 1998 for his monologue and in 1999 for his anthology of poetry for young people 12-14. His most recent volume of poetry, Dim Angen Creu Teledu Yma, was published in 2006. AmeriCymru spoke to Aled about his new book Driftwood.

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Americymru: Hi Aled, many thanks for agreeing to be interviewed by AmeriCymru. Care to tell us a little about your new book - Driftwood

Aled: Driftwood is a selection of stories from over 30 years of writing in the Welsh language which are available now in English also. They come from two Welsh collections published in 1991 and 2006. Its true to say that they are my favourites and mostly emerge from North East Wales life.

Americymru: In the course of a varied career you have taught Creative Writing, Welsh, English, French, Media and Drama. How has your teaching experience informed your writing?

Aled: Some of my poems in Welsh collections for Barddas feature a school or young people background. During the ten years teaching at a High School in Wrexham I particularly tuned into the world of young people, and wrote about it. This was good grounding for the creative work I now do in schools. Recently I have been conducting a Creative writing course in 20 schools in Denbighshire with harpist Einir Wyn Hughes, where the children were stimulated to write by music. Before the National Eisteddfod in Wrexham I will visit all 5 Welsh medium primary schools in the Wrexham area to write about parklands in the area Ty Mawr, Parc y Ponciau and Melin y Nant. Some children will then perform their work at the National Eisteddfod. Through writing now I get a chance to meet and teach all ages.

Americymru: You have also worked for BBC Radio Cymru and Marcher Sound. Can you tell us a little about your experiences as a broadcaster?

Aled: I was a Welsh and English broadcaster on the independent local radio in North East Wales when it started broadcasting in 1983. My association with Sain y Gororau / Marcher Sound continued for ten years. For 5 of those I was a full time producer and presenter of Clwyd am Chwech, Cadw Cwmni, Both Sides of the Border and Voice and Brass. These were in the good old days when local radio was local. This void has now been filled by community stations. But I enjoyed getting to know the area and its people in a very intimate way. My Welsh programmes were magazine programmes. I presented some of my interviews to the Archive Services of the time, as they were a fitting record of a particular period. Nowadays I contribute quite frequently to BBC Radio Cymru especially to Dweud ei Ddweud a Thought for the Day slot on the Breakfast programme, and also to Rhaglen Dei Tomos. With the advent of the National Eisteddfod to Wrexham it is nice that the area will receive more media coverage.

Americymru: Professor Meic Stephens has said of your writing that:- " Many of the people who appear in his work are from the north-east corner of Wales where the Welsh language culture rubs shoulders with that of Merseyside, a confrontation that he finds stimulating." Care to comment?

Aled: I agree with Meic Stephens, but I must admit that I have seen a great change in attitude and practice in North East Wales as regard to the Welsh language. There are 29,000 Welsh speakers in Wrexham County alone, and due to Welsh medium education it is on the increase. The Council and cultural events have promoted the Welsh language, and it is being normalised more in the everyday life of Wrexham. My poetry and literature actually mirror this change. Wrexham has always had its own identity, like a separate entity in borderland. Perhaps the non- Welsh speakers dont feel proper Welsh like the people of Bala, but they certainly dont associate themselves with Chester. Merseyside spills over more to Deeside and the North Wales coast perhaps, rather than Wrexham and these areas are also reflected in some poems and short stories.

I have written a great deal about Liverpool because of Liverpool in its own right. It is a very Celtic city and on the most part friendly. It is a place to escape to for a few hours from Wrexham, and over the years I have written a great deal about it especially its Cathedrals. There is a strong Welsh community in Liverpool and I have conducted services and meetings in Heathfield Road Chapel, Capel Bethel, and for the Literary Society of that church. Also I have been several times to Cymdeithas Cymry Lerpwl which meets in the city centre.

Americymru: Your story, 'Driftwood' focuses on a member of the 'Puget Sound Welsh Choir' whose life is in transition.. Have you visited the Pacific North West? What inspired this story?

Aled: I have very dear friends in Seattle, and have visted on three occasions first as the MC for Brymbo Male Voice Choir in a number of concerts in 1985. Then in 1994 and 2000 visiting Jennifer and Holt my friends there. The story Driftwood, orginally titled Bae y Broc Mr in Welsh, featured places we visited in the Pacific North West. Driftwood Bay was one of these and the photo on the front of Driftwood is actually one I took of the bay. The actual story is an elaboration on a real life decision that the main character had to make and the fact that she had to tell her son about it, because of the special bond between them.

Americymru: In 'The Border' you seem to take a rather pessimistic view of the Welsh language's chances of survival in this part of Wales. Would that be an accurate assessment of your opinion?

Aled: This early story was actually based on breaking down and asking for petrol at the farm. It happened as it says in the story and I hope it depicts the area near Oswestry and Arddlin where it happened. The only difference is that years later I did actually meet the lady who welcomed me that night at a service in Oswesty Welsh Chapel. So it was not a dream after all. But for years it seemed as if it was, and I still cant always locate the house!

The story of the Welsh language is in reality far more hopeful in the Wrexham area than that story suggests. In the future I think the key to making Wales a totally bilingual nation is in making every primary school in essence a Welsh school teaching Welsh and English effectively to all pupils as it should be in all schools in Wales. (Similar to current policy in Gwynedd). Two or even three windows on the world are better than one. Some of the Welsh learners in the Wrexham area are truly inspiring.

Americymru: The book closes with a dramatic adaptation of your first novel 'Y Caffi'. Care to tell us a little about the play? What unites the characters and what divides them? Are there currently any plans to stage 'The Cafe' ?

Aled: When my nofel Y Caffi was published in Welsh in 2003 it sold very well, and was somehow a mirror to the postmodern period of literature and the 80s and 90s in Wrexham. Its structure was a little disjointed, and the insular lives depicted in the book and this was deliberate.

The Cafe in the Library is the one thing that does unite these different characters. In the play the monologues present separate lives and indeed nothing much does unite them. The play was presented in 2006 in the Wrexham Festival and others have used various monologues for other presentations. However it would be great to have another production of the Cafe. Perhaps a good producer could suggest an unifying factor, something to bring them all together in the end.

Americymru: What's next for Aled Lewis Evans?

Aled: It has been a very busy two years preparing for the Natinal Eisteddfods visit to Wrexham and District. As Chairman of the Literature Committee we have devised the List of Subjects and then recently as a committee worked on filling eight days of events for the Pabell Ln (Literature Pavilion). I think we have a good mix of National and local topics in a variety of forms lined up fro visitors, and there is something for eveyone, and all ages are taking part.

At the Wrexham National Eisteddfod I publish my latest collection of Welsh language poems Amheus o Angylion (Wary of Angels). I am particularly excited about this coinciding with the Eisteddfod itself. Then after the Eisteddfod and after a break I hope to get back into my own writing in a big way. I have many projects one of which is producing a sister book to Driftwood a collection of some of my poetry from the last 30 years of writing in English.

Americymru: Any final message for the readers and members of AmeriCymru?

Aled: I hope you enjoy Driftwood, and if you visit the National Eisteddfod in Wrexham come and see me in the Pabell Len on the Field. I hope to visit America again in the future, and best wishes to Americymru.

" Aled Lewis Evans writes in both Welsh and English, and the pieces in this collection have all been adapted from the original Welsh, either by Martin Davis or by the author.

The collection opens with a series of stories about sad and sorry characters bored, ignored wife and mother of four, Sue, whose spirits and hair colour are temporarily lightened in response to the attentions of the local Casanova; homeless Harry, interminably snapping away with a camera that contains no film (we are pre-digital here); Gareth, the lonely radio presenter, wondering who will listen to him on Christmas day; and middle-aged Ruth throwing an attention-seeking tantrum that backfires on her. Is there anyone out there? Is anyone listening? Does anyone care? These are the questions that resound throughout, as Evanss characters convince themselves that they have either failed or been failed, and fall into the inevitable trap of anger and self-pity.

Other stories and monologues address questions of language and roots from various angles. In The Gulf, Melys Parry, exiled in Wolverhampton and married to Dave the gas-man, visits the Eisteddfod in her hometown of Mold. In Just a Few Seconds, sisters Rhiannon and Naomi are estranged because of the cultural divide that has opened up between them. And in The Border, an elderly couple expresses their pride that their sons went to prison fighting for the Welsh language, and their bewilderment that those same sons now live in England.

The back cover description of the short stories and monologues as driftwood from three decades of writing is apt: an assortment of treasures and trivia, of curiosities to enjoy or pass by, of pieces that have dated with the passing of the years and others that are very much of the now."

Suzy Ceulan Hughes A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.

Interview by Ceri Shaw Email