#TRAVEL TO WALES IN AUTHOR JUDY HOGAN'S PENNY WEAVER MYSTERY SERIES

Gower Peninsula near Swansea, Wales

Judy Hogan has published nine Penny Weaver mysteries, seven volumes of poetry, and three prose works. She edits creative writers and offers workshops. Learn more about her at her website and her Postmenopausalzest blog.

The Sands of Gower, my first mystery of the Penny Weaver series, was set on the Gower Peninsula near Swansea in Wales. I myself had visited Gower often from 1981. I could walk to many different historical places along footpaths: to a cave going back to before the ice age, to remnants of Norman castles, to cairns and graves going back 4000+ years. The Vikings had been there and left their names: Swansea (Swann’s Eye), Worm’s Head (dragon head), Archeologists are still learning what happened in earlier centuries on Gower.

I had sprained my ankle on a long walk at the end of the peninsula near Worm’s Head in the summer of 1990, and so couldn’t range around Gower as I had always done. My B&B landlady suggested I write a “murder,” and I began to plot The Sands of Gower then. I wrote it in 1991, but it wasn’t published until 2015.

After my novel Farm Fresh and Fatal (originally published in 2013), I took Penny and Kenneth back to Wales with their dear friends Sammie and Derek. Kenneth and Derek worked together in the Shagbark County Sheriff’s Dept. It occurred to me that I had never seen anyone black on Gower. I loved it there, the sea always close, the greens from all their rain, their beautiful flowers and so many footpaths to explore. But for Sammie and Derek, it meant racial discrimination and xenophobia.

Sammie, always so confident and cheerful, was soon depressed, and then Derek was falsely arrested, and Kenneth, who worked for the CID out of Swansea, could do nothing to help. When I realized that my black characters would suffer in a way Penny had never imagined, I explored that. Who did kill the pushy woman they shared time with in the B&B? Penny eventually gets Sammie to help her solve the crime.

The Sands of Gower

A Penny Weaver Mystery, Book 1

Poet Penny Weaver and her Welsh policeman husband Kenneth Morgan persuade their close friends Sammie and Derek Hargrave to accompany them to their beloved Gower peninsula in Wales, where they spend several months a year away from their home in Riverdell, a central North Carolina village. 

Even before they arrive at Kenneth’s sister Gwyn’s B&B in the village of Pwll du, Sammie panics at how her lively colors and exotic clothing is causing even the proper British to stare at her.  There are few African Americans on Gower. 

The next day the visit turns into a nightmare when an obnoxious woman guest dies after falling down the stairs. Derek, who was the only one awake in the house, is accused of pushing her and soon arrested.  Kenneth normally works for the Swansea CID when he and Penny are in Wales, but his chief is on holiday, and xenophobic substitute Chief Investigator Williams wants to pin the death on the visiting African American cop.  

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#TRAVEL TO #WALES WITH AUTHOR JUDY HOGAN

Worm's Head on the Gower Peninsula, Wales  (photo by John Ewing)

Author Judy Hogan takes us on a visit to Wales today, setting for her Penny Weaver Mysteries. Learn more about Judy and her books at her website.

The Gower! Gwyr in Welsh. How happy I always was to see the sign in English and Welsh as the bus took the road to the little peninsula near Swansea. My first visit had been in 1981 for one weekend. Then I’d been back for several weeks at a time in 1985, ‘88, ‘90, ‘95 and ‘96.

I loved the diversity of the landscape: chalk cliffs, the sea rolling in to wash against them, with tide pools and, on the cliffs themselves, wild flowers including orchids. I could walk in woods, explore ancient caves back to the Ice Age, see remnants of all the invasions into the land of the Britons, from the Romans, the Vikings, the Norman conquest of the French, and the present day tourists, though most of the “visitors,” as the British call them, came from the UK back in those days.

Today you’d find more Americans as well as more bed and breakfast accommodations, self-catering cottages, and the standby caravan parks and hotels. The landscape remains in some way pristine, and it’s an ideal place to explore if you have no car and like to walk as I did. There are footpaths everywhere and a bus runs along the peninsula.

Mrs. Merrett provided a single room and also gave me an evening meal for a little more per day. She and I became friends, and it was in 1990, when I suffered a minor injury and couldn’t follow my usual pattern of ranging the cliffs and seeking a spot out of the wind to write a poem, that she said, “Judy, you should write a murder.”

Edith Merrett knew I spent my evenings tucked up reading mysteries from the local library. I did begin plotting The Sands of Gower that visit, though I didn’t write it until the following summer. Poetry had been my creative writing focus until then. I tried that mystery for fun, but I enjoyed it for a different reason. Poetry has always helped me express my deep feelings, sometimes ones I scarcely knew I had. Writing fiction made it possible to articulate knowledge I had acquired through relationships, which was only partly conscious, about myself and other people.

I’ve always liked reading about the relationships of the characters, and I enjoy, more than plotting, getting at what people are like when they come into conflict with one another. I’ve had a lot of experience on the black/white line and find few books that explore that. So that became a major theme as my series advanced.

In The Sands of Gower Penny’s black friend Cathy is writing to her. In the second novel we meet Cathy in person, and also the lead detective in the village of Riverdell, Derek Hargrave. By the third book many more black characters appear, and I also began to take up community issues I’d learned about as I worked here in my own village of Moncure for safer nuclear storage, against air pollution, and in local politics. I’ve written sixteen books now and plan to publish them all over the next five years.

Most of the books take place in Riverdell, a central North Carolina village, but two more return to Gower. Penny’s husband is a Welsh detective inspector, whom she meets in The Sands of Gower, and once married, they normally spend part of each year on Gower.

The Sands of Gower

Penny begins a new and lively stage of life, her children raised, with a powerful erotic attraction, and the freedom to cross lines that usually hold people apart. The book is set in a bed & breakfast on the Gower peninsula near Swansea, Wales.

Penny Weaver, luxuriating in her two-month vacation, is disturbed by the murder of a German guest. Penny’s independent, outspoken American lifestyle contrasts with the more conservative ways of the village’s pensioners. In the process of solving the crime, Penny and Detective Inspector Kenneth Morgan are powerfully attracted. This, plus the British post-World War II continuing distrust of the Germans, complicates their investigation.

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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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TRAVEL WITH SERENA--GUEST AUTHOR KATHLEEN HEADY

Parliament and the Thames River

Kathleen Heady is a native of rural Illinois, but has lived and traveled in many places, including numerous trips to Great Britain. Additionally she lived in Costa Rica for seven years. Her second novel, Lydia's Story, was released in 2012. Her first novel, The Gate House, was a finalist for an EPIC award in 2011. Learn more about Kathleen at her website/blog.--AP  

Since I was a little girl, I have been fascinated by Great Britain and its history, probably at first because it was a country with a real queen and princesses. Later my interest developed into a desire to learn more about the history, and I read as much as I could.

I first visited Britain with my parents in 1985, and was awestruck by everything I saw. I was overwhelmed when visiting the Shambles in York, formerly a street of butcher shops, which was renovated in the 1400s! I pressed my hand against the stones in Conwy Castle in Wales, thinking of all the men and women who had passed through those passageways over the centuries. What were their dreams, desires, fears?

Monument to Women of World War II

But the most poignant experience occurred during our visit to St. Paul's Cathedral in London. Behind the main altar in this magnificent edifice is a small alcove dedicated to the men and women of the U.S. Armed Services who fought for the defense of Britain during World War II. My dad had tears in his eyes. He had been there and he had returned. Not everyone did.

I visited the Churchill War Rooms, the vast underground complex in London from which Prime Minister Winston Churchill directed operations during the years that Britain fought against Germany. I crossed the Thames to the Imperial War Museum, housed in the former Bethlem Royal Hospital, London's first hospital for the mentally ill, and the origin of the word "bedlam" meaning "chaos" or "madness." This museum brings alive the suffering and heroism of victims of wars since World War I. One exhibit in particular always brings a tear to my eye. In an unassuming spot on the main floor is a small wooden fishing boat, the smallest boat to cross the Channel in the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940.

Ruins of Coventry Cathedral

In Coventry, I visited the ruins of Coventry Cathedral, bombed by the Germans in 1940. Since that terrible night, the cathedral has become a symbol of peace and reconciliation.

Eventually, I decided to write Lydia's Story, in which I recreated the connection between a young woman and her ancestor, in this case her great-grandmother, who worked in her own way to defend her country during World War II.

Whether visiting historical sites or relaxing in one of London's many parks, I always travel with my eyes open. I always remember that I am a guest in someone else's culture, and that we have more in common than differences. I have returned to Great Britain several times after my initial visit with my parents, and my love for the country and culture has not faded.

Lydia’s Story

A simple box of mementos, hidden in a farmhouse in Wales for nearly seventy years, is enough to set Nara Blake on a search for the truth about her great-grandparents, and to put her own life in danger. Even as she begins to read her great-grandmother's diaries, a French brother and sister, whose family lost everything in World War II, blame Nara's family for their lost wealth, which includes a priceless Cézanne painting. As both families learn the truth of their ancestors' activities during the war, they are put on a collision course that can only end in the destruction of long-held beliefs, and ultimately one must pay the price for the losses of the past.  

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