TRAVEL THURSDAY--THE GOWER PENINSULA IN WALES WITH GUEST AUTHOR JUDY HOGAN

Three Cliffs Bay
photo by John Ewing

Mystery author and poet Judy Hogan has been a reviewer, book distributor, publisher, teacher, writing consultant, and organizer of conferences, readings, and book signing events. Being a Malice Domestic contest novel finalist led to the sale of her first mystery and a subsequent sequel. Learn more about Judy and her books at her website. 

                                   

My Gower

I had no idea when I first visited the Gower Peninsula near Swansea in Wales in 1981, that ten years later I would write my first mystery novel and set it there.  I had begun reading traditional British mysteries after my eldest daughter went off to college and left me some time in the evening when I was too tired to work: Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, P.D. James, Josephine Tey. 

I enjoyed the food scenes, when the detectives would consult over scones with jam and cream, or eat digestive biscuits (what were they?)  I had $1500 extra and my kids could spend the summer with their dad. I decided to travel to the British Isles, whence most of my ancestors had come a few centuries earlier.

Three Cliffs Bay Rock Cleft 
photo by John Ewing

I checked out a library book on guesthouses in England, Scotland, and Wales.  Several recommended for their food, I wrote to, asking if I could work part-time for them and stay there for less money.  I had two replies.  A woman in Scotland recommended her mother-in-law in Wales on the Gower Peninsula, whose bed and breakfast cost was very reasonable, and I could get an evening meal at a nearby hotel.  A second guesthouse near Llandovery in central Wales offered to hire me for a month and cut my room and board in half.  I accepted this one, but I decided to go the weekend before to the Gower one. I found a cheap airline fare, contacted two English friends of friends who said I could stay a day or two, bought a Brit-Rail pass, and left for seven weeks.  I’d never been out of the country before.

England and Scotland satisfied my curiosity about places in English Literature and my Scottish ancestors.  When I entered Wales on the train, however, I immediately knew I would write poetry.  The beauty of Wales, wilder than England’s, assured that.  I didn’t see a mystery novel coming until 1990.

I liked Wales so much that I returned and spent longer periods in 1985, ’88, and ’90, with Mrs. Edith Merrett, who had a small B&B in the village of Southgate.  She provided an evening meal and gave me her single room.  I could walk or take the bus to explore a variety of historic sites: eleventh century castles; caves where human beings had survived through the Ice Age; Stone Age tombs, like Arthur’s Stone, where by legend he pulled out Excalibur; Overton Cliff where wild orchids grew; strange rock formations like Worm’s Head (named by the Vikings--it means dragon’s head); churches originally founded in the sixth century and their graveyards. 

Worm's Head 
photo by John Ewing

A nearby library had a good collection of mysteries and books on local lore; small stores provided me with snacks, pens, and composition books for writing poetry; and there were nearby pubs if I wanted a midday meal.  After a hearty British breakfast, I would head out for the day to walk along the cliffs or visit a spot where I’d not been yet, and I’d usually write a poem, tucked up away from the constant wind, before I returned for supper in the evening.

In 1990 I managed to sprain my ankle and was housebound for most of my stay.  Edith suggested I write a murder.  She knew I liked to read them.  I began plotting one set at a B&B very like Edith’s, though I didn’t write it until the next summer when I was back in North Carolina.  In The Sands of Gower my detective, Penny Weaver, loosely based on me, falls for a Welsh police detective, Kenneth Morgan.  I tried to publish it, even had a nice rejection letter from Ruth Cavin of St. Martin’s Press, and then in 1997 I wrote a second one, set in North Carolina but again involving Kenneth and Penny, so my series began.

Pennard Castlephoto by John Ewing

Every few years I’d write another one, but not until I joined Sisters in Crime in late 2007 did I work consistently at getting them published.  I’d also been entering each one in the Malice Domestic contest for the first best traditional mystery.  In 2011 I was a finalist, which led to my having that novel, my sixth, published in 2012.  In 2013 Farm Fesh and Fatal, the seventh novel in the series, was published.  The one I’d like to publish next is the first one, The Sands of Gower.  I’ve since revised and shortened it, also consulted a Gower policeman.  My readers have told me they’d like to read the story of how Penny and Kenneth got together.  Gower is almost a character in it, and certainly my fictional Evelyn and her B&B are modeled on Edith and the B&B where I spent many happy summers.

Farm Fresh and Fatal

When Penny Weaver joins the new Riverdell Farmers’ Market, things start out badly and get much worse. The county’s unpopular poultry agent is poisoned, apparently after drinking fruit punch provided by the abrasive and market manager, who claims innocence but is arrested. The state agricultural department threatens to close the market, so Penny and her friend Sammie rush to uncover the truth. What caused the agent’s death, and who put it in the punch?

"...vegetables turn out to be a lot more interesting than we'd ever guessed."--Mystery Scene Magazine

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