I met Cathy Ace in Bristol, England, when we were both attending Crimefest, a wonderful annual convention. Over a boozy dinner on a house boat (fun!), I found myself bonded with this Welsh-turned-Canadian author, and now I seek out her company – and her books! I bet you’ll love her too.

How does a book start for you?

In all honesty the answer to this question differs, depending on the series or book in question. For my Cait Morgan Mysteries it’s usually the idea of a method of murder, linked with a particular location; this series features middle-aged, Welsh-Canadian professor of criminal psychology Cait Morgan traveling the world with her “partner in crime” retired Canadian homicide detective Bud Anderson, so it’s natural for a country/area to come to mind alongside a particular type of murder.

However, I find that my WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries come to me in chunks; there is usually more than one case for the softly-boiled female four private eyes to be working on in each book, and I tend to find that the strands of the book have to be woven together across a timeline, from the original “story idea chunks” that I come up with.

My new book, The Wrong Boy, came to me in a very different way, and maybe that’s because – for me – it’s a very different type of book; it “began” with the ideas for the major twists and reversals, which I suppose is good because it’s a pretty twisty tale!

Cait Morgan features in traditional, closed-circle mysteries which are plot driven; the women of the WISE Enquiries Agency work on relatively cozy cases which are quintessentially British and are set in a stately home, and a nearby village, in bucolically rural Wales. Whilst both series are contemporary, they tend to focus on the bright spots in life, rather than the grisliest. This new book is somewhat darker, and has the structure of a suspenseful tale of past secrets impacting the lives of a family, and an entire village, in today’s world where social media impacts almost everyone.

Who in your latest book has surprised you most – and why?

The Wrong Boy is told from multiple points of view, three of whom are Nan, Helen and Sadie Jones – a grandmother, mother, and daughter of a family which has run The Dragon’s Head pub in the ancient hamlet of Rhosddraig in south Wales for generations. Nan is in her late seventies, and not the kindliest of characters; her daughter Helen is struggling to meet the demands of both her overbearing mother and her lively teenaged daughter; Sadie is just your average seventeen year old…desperate to reach the “magic” age of eighteen, and madly in love with a boy in the village who ends up being accused of murder. The three women of the Jones family were all firmly embedded in my mind’s eye at a very early stage – they are the main players in the book, and it’s the relationships between them, and the menfolk in their lives, which dominates the tale. As I was writing, I found myself seeing the world through their eyes (as I hope my readers do/will) and I think I was most surprised to be inside Helen’s skin. “The Sandwich Generation” is having a challenging time of it; their parents are living longer than their grandparents did, and that places huge emotional and physical demands upon them, while they are often also raising children later in their lives than previous generations have done – which put them under even more stress. Sometimes they find themselves stretched to a snapping point. It was an uncomfortable place to be, and I found I needed a bit of a break whenever I’d been inside Helen’s head.

When and where is your latest book set, and is there a story behind that setting?

The setting for The Wrong Boy was my first inspiration: Rhossili is a real village, perched on a staggeringly picturesque land formation on the Gower peninsular, near my home of Swansea in South Wales. It’s the sort of place local families go for a day out, or people travel to from around the world, it’s that well-known. I have spent a great deal of time there over the years, and it’s engrained within my soul. I always wanted to set a book there, and I’m thrilled I finally found the right story to “use” its unique characteristics. I’ve changed its name in the book, because I knew I wanted to examine how the secret lives of people behind net curtains could be upended by both local gossip, and the swirl of publicity that follows the use of social media in service of “a cause” – so it’s a tale about old vs modern methods of undermining an individual, past sins impacting new lives, and how a policeman struggles with his retirement…which all assailed me at once, and which I then had to craft into a story I hope readers feel was worth telling. By using a real setting, but changing its name, I hope I have protected the real residents, because they are much more delightful than the characters who populate my version of the village!

It is, as are all my books, a contemporary setting, but with a great deal of history and mythology woven through it – moreso than in my other books to date (of which there have been a total of twelve across two series). I am an enthusiastic and dedicated researcher of historical data, but I don’t think I’ll ever write a book where the entire setting is historical – I feel too connected to the modern world to be able to erase it from my writing, I fear, so weaving in threads of historical impact is – for me – the best way to go.

What are you working on now?

My immediate concern (in the run-up to December) is the final, final, final editing of The Wrong Boy, but, once that’s entered the production phase I will turn my attention to a collection of four novellas called Murder Knows No Season. Ironically it’s due to be published before The Wrong Boy(how strange the world of publishing is!) and should hit the shelves in December 2018, ahead of the release of The Wrong Boyin January 2019. It follows on the heels of my collection of twelve long and short stories, Murder Keeps No Calendar, which was published in November 2017. That volume features the “genesis” stories for Cait Morgan (be there when she first meets Bud Anderson) and the WISE women (be a fly on the wall when they decide to set up their PI agency), as well as introducing the character of DI Evan Glover, the police officer who gets caught up in the tense case in The Wrong Boy,despite the fact he’s at the point of retiring from the police service when the book opens. In Murder Knows No Season, there are four novellas, one for each season of the year, and Cait Morgan, the WISE Women, and DI Evan Glover all get one each – there’s also a standalone, set in my new home of Canada. I first published these novellas back in 2008, but now I have a chance to completely rewrite them, and to work with an editor who’s been with me for six books already; I’m enjoying knocking them into shape, and allowing for the way the characters I invented back then have developed through their own series of novels. There aren’t many times in life that we get a second chance, so I am taking this one and running with it.

Which question didn’t I ask you that I should have?

This is a trick question, right?

Is Cathy Ace my real name? Yes, it’s my birth name…though I believe Mum wanted to name me “Fern” for the bracken which grows above Rhossili on Cefn Bryn on the Gower Peninsular (which I believe means something special to her, but I don’t like to think about that!) – until Dad pointed out I’d then be named “Fern Ace” which they agreed wasn’t a good choice! I’m happy they went with Catherine.

Web: http://www.cathyace.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Cathy-Ace-Author-318388861616661/

Twitter: @AceCathy