KEEPING A SERIES FRESH: Guest Post by Cathy Ace

This month, the 8^th book in my WISE Enquiries Agency Mystery series will be published, and I already have a dozen deadly Cait Morgan Mysteries published too (the thirteenth will come out later this year), so I dare say that “keeping a series fresh” is something I grapple with on an almost daily basis.
 
Of course, my hope is that readers find that I do – in fact – manage to keep both series fresh (!) so I’m going to proceed on that basis (LOL). 
 
For the Cait Morgan Mysteries, the challenge is eased by the fact that each book has a totally different setting: Cait travels the world tripping over corpses (please suspend your disbelief for that aspect, dear readers…but be happy that you don’t have a boarding pass to the same destination!) so I’m able to use the location to frame the tale each time, and do my best to craft a story that’s quite specific to the place. I also get to introduce a whole new cast of characters in each book – with Cait Morgan (professor of criminal psychology) and her now-husband Bud Anderson (retired homicide detective, with a past that involves high levels of security clearance) always being there, of course. There are also a few other recurring characters (Cait’s sister is in the next book, and we haven’t seen her since Cait and Bud got married in book #5), but – in the main – each group is specific to each book, which allows for high stakes as far as they are concerned. This is really helpful, because readers expect Cait and Bud to emerge, if not unscathed, at least able to continue with their adventures when they’ve solved each closed-circle puzzling mystery. 

 

However, my WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries feature a quartet of soft-boiled female PIs who run their business out of a converted barn on the Estate of a Welsh stately home. Thus, in these books, the cast of characters from Chellingworth Hall and the village of Anwen-by-Wye, as well as our detectives themselves, are all featured each time (not forgetting Gertie and Rosie the Labrador pups, Bunty the calico cat, and McFli, the Jack Russell who is the dowager duchess Althea’s constant companion). These are quintessentially British mysteries, but told with a Welsh accent, because that’s where they’re all set. Wales is a beautiful country with a long and storied history, and I showcase different parts of it in each book, beyond the stunning Wye Valley, where Chellingworth Hall sits. However, to be honest, the challenge of bringing enough small and large crimes to the attention of a group of four female private eyes who live in bucolic surroundings keeps me on my toes.
 
To keep things bowling along, I like to weave several cases into the plot of each book: some might be “small” cases (like The Case of the Purloined Pickles, in The Case of the Disgraced Duke, for example) or they might be utterly devastating to certain people (like The Case of the Suspicious Sister, in the forthcoming The Case of The Uninvited Undertaker). I do my best to allow all my main characters to be fully involved in each book; while I hope that readers can suspend their disbelief about four women being able to make a living being private eyes in a Welsh village, I want to show how all of my detectives can apply their specific, and group, talents to non-paying cases by helping out folks they know, as well as successfully tackling cases which line their coffers…which often take them beyond the confines of the village to other parts of Wales, and the rest of the UK. 
 
Thus, each of my series presents a different challenge when “keeping things fresh”. To be honest, I believe that the main reason that readers keep coming back for more (and you do, thank you so much!) is because I enjoy writing both series, which appears to translate to readers enjoying them too. And, trust me, I know how very fortunate I am to have readers who follow my characters through thick and thin; you’re always on my mind as I write.

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"...a mingled yarn, good and ill together..." Guest Post by Cathy Ace

CATHY ACE: 

“…a mingled yarn, good and ill together…”  

(Source: All’s Well That Ends Well, Act 4, Scene 3, William Shakespeare) 

In The Corpse with the Granite Heart, the eleventh Cait Morgan Mystery (November 5th 2021, Four Tails Publishing Ltd.), Cait Morgan and her husband Bud Anderson are visiting London, England, for some pre-Christmas cheer, and to meet the new fiancée of their friend, John Silver. But – because this is a classic, closed-circle, mystery – things don’t go quite according to plan. Indeed, within hours of their arrival they’re not only grappling with the idea that they’re off to a dinner party to “celebrate” the life of a recently deceased Shakespeare aficionado, but they’re also confronted with a tragic, and puzzling, death. 

This book’s given me the chance to take Cait to her old stamping ground of London, and to force her to face some ghosts from her past. Being a bright woman, she expected as much, but – as is always the way for Cait, who’s not as judgmental about herself as she is about others – she hadn’t foreseen how very many ghosts there were, nor how they might pool their resources against her. 

Cait Morgan was “born” within a collection of short stories (in Murder Keeps No Calendar) and developed in a novella (in Murder Knows No Season), but most readers first met her in The Corpse with the Silver Tongue, the first novel in her own series, published in March 2012. That’s almost ten years ago (where did all that time go?) but – for Cait – the books she appears in have covered only about three and a half years of her life, so she’s just turned 50, whereas…well, let’s just say this author is no longer in her 50s, but had fun while she was, eh!? 

When I created her, Cait was about my age, and a professor of criminal psychology at a university in Vancouver that was a synthesis of the two universities in Vancouver where I was/had been teaching. Like me, she is short, overweight (damn those wretched Body Mass Index thingies!) and a bit bossy. I also gave her a Welsh birth and upbringing – like me – though she’d migrated to Canada by the time we met her. Who also did that, aged forty? Yep, me. So, yes, Cait’s a lot like me, and each of the books about her adventures have taken her to places where I’ve either lived, or worked. So, as you read the books, you’re also taking my life-journey with me. Possibly never moreso than in this book. It’s taken me a long time to face up to my ghosts – and I decided Cait could help me out. 

I lived in London for eighteen years, and miss many aspects of it to this day…for example, I sent Cait and Bud along to my favourite galleries to see some of the paintings with which I built a deep relationship over the years, which was great fun. I hope you like them. Also, writing this book has given me the chance to conjure old haunts of mine that no longer exist, share feelings I’ve experienced when realizing that change means memories are all we have of people and places, as well as creating new, absolutely fictional situations that gave me an opportunity to examine the nature of toxic, and – of course – deadly human relationships. 

I hope you enjoy all the Shakespearean quotes as chapter titles (yes, there’s a list of sources at the end of the book!), and maybe you’ll even spot the fact that I pinched the Great Bard’s classic five-act structure for this sweeping tragedy, which follows the House of Asimov as it teeters, and falls. With the highest body-count of any of the Cait Morgan Mysteries (to date), there’s also a Shakespearean swagger to the scale of the overall tale. 

If that sounds like your cup of tea – with a spoonful of Shakespearean allusions you’ll have fun spotting (I hope) throughout to sweeten the pot – then this could be the book for you to curl up with on a chilly evening, as you plan your seasonal decorating. 

Those who knew me during my “London years” might have a few surprises, but – if you didn’t know me back then – this book might give you an insight into some of the “mingled yarn” that was my life in those times.

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Cathy Ace is the author of the traditional Cait Morgan Mysteries, the cozy WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries, and the psychological suspense novel The Wrong Boy, Cathy was born and raised in Wales, but now lives in Canada. A Bony Blithe, IPPY, and IBA award winner, she’s also been shortlisted for an Arthur Ellis Award. Her Cait Morgan Mysteries, and The Wrong Boy, have been optioned for TV, and she’s currently working on editing the script (which, no, she didn’t write…not her skill set!) for the movie of The Corpse with the Silver Tongue. 

The Corpse with the Granite Heart is published on November 5th 2021 by Four Tails Publishing Ltd. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09D57VBZV https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/the-corpse-with-the-granite-heart ISBN paperback: 978-1-990550-00-3 ISBN digital: 978-1-9992230-9-0 

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