Welsh Crime Writing Steps Into the Spotlight: Guest Post by Cathy Ace

Thanks for giving me the chance to reach those who follow you with some wonderful news. I suspect most folks who’ve met me know that I’m Welsh, and my WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries are all set in Wales. Also, my Cait Morgan Mysteries feature a Welshwoman living in Canada (just like me) who travels the world solving puzzling, Golden Age-shaped whodunits. So, yes, I certainly put my Welshness, and Wales, front and center in my books.  

I’m pleased to say that it’s finally becoming easier for lovers of crime fiction to “visit Wales” as a setting for their favorite type of book – whatever sub-genre they might prefer. However, when it comes to getting the word out about Welsh crime writers, we’ve a long way to go. Enter Crime Cymru, a cooperative of Welsh crime writers. If you’d like to find out more about crime writing by Welsh authors, or crime books set in Wales…or meet many other internationally renowned crime writers there’s a treat in store, now you have a great opportunity to do so.

 

From April 17-19 and April 22-24, 2024, Wales’s only dedicated crime fiction festival is returning for its fourth year of murder, mystery and mayhem, fully online and absolutely FREE. Tickets are required, but there’s no need to pay a penny! The full schedule is here: https://gwylcrimecymrufestival.co.uk/pif/

 

This year’s line-up showcases the cream of the crime writing world, including Elly Griffiths, Sam Blake, John Banville, Abir Mukherjee, Vaseem Kahn, Sarah Ward, Simon McCleave, and Alis Hawkins. I also have the honor of appearing on a panel. We’ll all be chatting about our work, with settings ranging from the heartlands of Wales to the canals of Venice; from the narrowboats of the UK to the rugged shores of Shetland; from the vast national parks of North America to a few imaginary worlds, with fascinating historical eras in between.

 

In addition to sessions on psychological thrillers, police procedurals, historical fiction, cozies, and much more, the festival program includes panels on true crime and writing crime for teenagers. 

 

All that being said, if you’re not able to join us online, you might enjoy “visiting Wales” with my four softly poached female PIs, in THE CASE OF THE BEREAVED BUTLER, which will be published on March 18^th. 

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You can find out more about Cathy Ace and her work here: http://www.cathyace.com/

Or you can stalk her on social media:

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Gŵyl CRIME CYMRU Festival 2022: April 27-29 and May 2-4: Free

Gŵyl CRIME CYMRU Festival 2022 will be online, free to viewers, and include well-known national and international crime writers as well as featuring Welsh authors to cater to a range of tastes.

At the festival, stars of the crime fiction firmament include Ann Cleeves, Lilja Sigurðardóttir, Mari Hannah, Vaseem Khan, Elly Griffiths, Chris Lloyd, B E Jones, Cathy Ace, Philip Gwynne Jones, Mark Billingham, and Abir Mukjerjee.

For true-crime fans, there's a rare opportunity to learn about one of the UK’s most notorious murders, the axe-killing of private investigator Daniel Morgan. Daniel’s brother Alastair and investigative journalist Peter Jukes will reveal all.

Events take place in two three-evening blocks: 27–29 of April and 2–4 of May 2022.

For those wondering, gŵyl is the Welsh word for festival, and one of the aims of the festival is to introduce more readers to the great fiction of Wales, historical and contemporary in English and in Welsh.  We are also proud to be able to provide events in Welsh as well as English.

The Crime Close Up program offers short readings prior to each panel and will introduce viewers to new Welsh talent.

The program offers something for everyone: www.GwylCrimeCymruFestival.co.uk

For the second year in a row, due to the generous support of Aberystwyth Town Council and Literature Wales, all tickets are free of charge.

Want to see the panels from last year?  They can be seen here: Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival You Tube Channel

The Gŵyl CRIME CYMRU Festival is the public face of Crime Cymru, the Welsh writers’ co-operative. Find out more and investigate some great fiction: Crime.Cymru.

WALES FIRST INTERNATIONAL CRIME WRITERS FESTIVAL: Gŵyl CRIME CYMRU Festival

Great news from Cathy Ace about WALES’ FIRST INTERNATIONAL CRIME WRITERS FESTIVAL

IT WILL BE ONLINE April 26th to May 3rd 2021. Fans of crime fiction around the world will be able to join international bestselling crime authors online, at no cost, thanks to the inaugural Gŵyl CRIME CYMRU Festival. 

Lee and Andrew Child, Yrsa Sigurđardottir, Ragnar Jonasson, Peter James, Elly Griffiths, Abir Mukherjee, Vaseem Khan, and Martin Edwards – amongst others – will discuss their work alongside Welsh crime writers who might not be as well-known, but are playing their part in bringing Welsh crime writing to the fore. There will also be a panel focusing on the great success Welsh crime fiction is enjoying on the small screen, featuring the team that created the globally popular Keeping Faith TV series. 

Fans will have a chance to view live panels and interviews, as well as catching up with recorded sessions later on. A full schedule is posted at the festival’s website at www.gwylcrimecymrufestival.co.uk where those who wish to ‘attend’ can do so by signing up for individual sessions, at no cost to them. 

‘It’s so exciting to be bringing Wales its first official crime fiction festival; there’s going to be something for everyone,’ says Alis Hawkins, one of Crime Cymru’s founder members and chair of the festival organizing group. 

‘It seems that crime fiction set in Wales is simply not as well known as its UK counterparts or Scandinavian neighbors, despite the fact that Wales is home to award-winning and bestselling authors like Clare Mackintosh, Belinda Bauer, and Amy Lloyd, who are sparking an appreciation of Wales-set crime and thrillers,’ says Matt Johnson, another member of the festival’s organizing committee. 

Next year, Aberystwyth will host the inaugural in-person Gŵyl CRIME CYMRU Festival, which will run from April 29th 2022. 

The Great Myth of Naturalistic Dialogue: Guest post by Gwen Parrott

Gwen Parrott has published several Welsh language crime novels and her first to be published in English. Dead White (Wyndham Media Ltd)) can now be found on Kindle. Set in the bitter winter of 1947 in a remote village in Pembrokeshire, West Wales, it features the newly arrived local school teacher, Della Arthur, who is caught in a snowstorm and makes a terrible discovery in a seemingly abandoned farmhouse. The second in the Della Arthur series will appear next year. As a professional translator, Gwen is in the unusual position of being able to translate her own novels and you can find out more about her at www.theincidentroom.net/gwen-parrott/

GWEN PARROTT:
THE GREAT MYTH OF NATURALISTIC DIALOGUE

I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but there really is no such thing as dialogue that truly reflects the spoken word. Making dialogue sound ‘natural’ is as much part of the craft of writing as structuring a plot or creating a convincing character. In fact, there is nothing ‘natural’ about it. It’s an illusion.

I learned this the hard way, firstly by writing plays for stage and radio, and secondly by transcribing videos and audio tapes. I found that when I read my stage and radio dialogue out loud, I couldn’t actually say it. It felt as if I was deliberately writing tongue-twisters, although it all looked fine on the page. This vague realisation that writing words that are meant to be read requires a different mind-set to writing words that are meant to be said only crystallized when, some years later, in my other job as a translator, I spent long hours transcribing audio tapes.

That wasn’t just an eye-opener, it was an ear-opener as well. Quite apart from feeling that I was being paid to eavesdrop, it was possibly the single most valuable thing I’ve done in terms of honing how I write dialogue. So as not to miss a single word, I had to listen over and over to how people actually speak, and frankly, it was disturbing. Honestly, people talk such a load of old rubbish. How anybody follows the thread of a conversation is a mystery. We start sentences that we don’t finish, we interrupt one another, we ‘um’ and we ‘ah’ constantly throughout, we make up words, we insert irrelevant non-sequiturs and veer off at a tangent. In all my transcriptions, the only people who made any sense on paper were those who knew that their words would be transcribed, because it was a regular part of their job. Oddly, the noticeable thing about their speech was that it sounded as if they were reading from a script, because they spoke in such unnaturally complete, measured sentences.

All writers struggle to make the spoken word easy on the reader’s eye, while retaining the flavour of speech. This is further complicated by the need to ensure that what a character says reflects their personality, education and background. They all need an unique, recognisable ‘voice’. The one advantage of a novel is that you can reinforce this by using a character’s inner voice within the narrative, which comments and analyses, but they still have to speak at some point. There are devices which help – using a phrase rather than a whole sentence, making dialogue snappier by leaving out ‘he said’ and ‘she said’ for a few lines, and suggesting interruption by very occasionally letting a character say half a sentence, before someone else butts in. Yet, whatever devices we use, it will be in the knowledge that we are basically trying to reconcile two polar opposites – spoken and written words.

It’s all smoke and mirrors, as I said.