Gaynor is the author of three, almost four, novels and hails from lovely London. She and I “met” on the Welsh-American site Americymru. I ordered her book The Carmarthen Underground from Amazon and simply could not put it down! While the suspense was intriguing, the humor kept it from being too stodgy. Below I have pasted the blurb about her book and following that is her interview that she was kind enough to do with me. This book is well worth the effort to get! I can’t wait to read the other two.
The Carmarthen Underground
Gaynor Madoc Leonard
The ancient town of Carmarthen appears to be little different from any other town, with its chain stores and market, but beneath its busy little streets and behind its respectable doorways, another Carmarthen exists. This “alternative Carmarthen” is a town riddled with secrets, vice and betrayal, but no secret escapes the attention of Carmarthen Intelligence; its brave agents display constant vigilance in the fight to keep Carmarthen and the rest of Wales free from its enemies. While the townspeople go about their business, beneath its very centre lies Carmarthen Intelligence HQ, where our heroes, along with their colleagues at the Welsh Bureau of Investigation in Swansea, take up arms against a sinister cabal. Could there be a traitor among them? Why does Myddfai have a sheriff? Does Betti Williams make the best breakfast this side of Llangollen?
Interview:
What fiction most influenced your childhood, and what effect did those stories have on your writing?
Like most British children of that period, I read Enid Blyton (The Famous Five, The Secret Seven etc.) and the Mallory Towers stories. It’s been fashionable to treat Blyton with something approaching contempt in recent years but she could tell a good story. Charles Dickens of course, The Secret Garden and Little Women. Also Rosemary Sutcliff’s Eagle of Ninth stories and Mary Stewart’s Merlin books.
I think the book I loved the most and which I still have on my shelf is John Masefield’s The Box of Delights; this magical book remains one of my favourites. I remember that when, some years ago, the BBC dramatised the novel, several of the actors said that they would have worked on it for nothing as they loved the story so much. It’s such an unusual tale that I can’t think of any other book to which I could compare it. Like so many other children’s books of my period of childhood, there’s an emphasis on the independence of children, and their ability to make plans and carry out strategies without the presence of adults; this is combined with magic and mystery in a gripping storyline and it’s quite sophisticated. Perhaps that has subconsciously affected my writing, at least in The Carmarthen Underground which has this mixture of reality and mystery.
As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?
I wanted to be a mixture of Vera Ellen, Ann Miller and Cyd Charisse! I really wanted to dance like them as I was absolutely crazy about the golden age of Hollywood musicals. And I wanted to be as beautiful as Ava Gardner. I failed miserably on all counts and will demand restitution in my next life.
To be serious, I did want to be an actress and eventually I went to drama school where I was a prize-winning student. Sadly, I didn’t have the staying power to deal with the rejection one inevitably receives in the profession, my health suffered and one had to make a living so, like so many others, I ended up working in an office.
Name one entity that you feel supported you outside of family members.
The person to whom I owe an enormous debt died almost 30 years ago. She wasn’t in any way related to me but was a friend of my parents and had no children of her own; her husband was a police officer and she was a housewife. When I was a very small child she would call up my mother and ask if she could come to sit with me; as both my parents worked in their own business, my mother was happy for her to come. Auntie Ivy (as I called her) would sit with me and read to me, following the words with her finger as she read out loud. I must have watched her hand as it moved across the page because I learned to read from her and was reading quite well at the age of 3, certainly well enough to start full-time at school before I was 4 years old. I don’t really remember a time when I didn’t read and I know that Auntie Ivy was instrumental in kick-starting this lifelong love of reading.
What is the hardest part of writing?
Probably it’s the part where you have to be absolutely honest with yourself about whether what you’ve written is truly readable or even any good!
On a practical level, I’m now finding out how difficult it is to follow through on an idea. The Carmarthen Underground was actually easy to write and the second in the series, A Meeting of Dragon, was also quite easy. The third book in the series was not so easy; I tried to be too clever to start with, got in rather a mess and had to strip out a large historical chunk and go for the simple route to make it into an effective story. The fourth (and final) book in the series is the most difficult, not least because it’s darker than the other books; I have several chapters written but they’re not necessarily consecutive and it will take quite a bit of work to bring it all together.
I’ve started on a completely different style of novel, set in north London where I live. This is proving the most difficult of all, surprisingly, even though it’s set somewhere so familiar. I’m not allowing any silliness, magic or myth into this story and will have to curb my natural need for humour. If nothing else, it will be a good disciplinary exercise!
What I’ve learned is that it’s really important to put aside what one’s written for a while and come back to it fresh, looking at it as though one’s never read it before. This invariably leads to some rewriting and editing and, hopefully, some improvement.
What gave you the idea for your novel?
I had bought a book called The Pan-Celtic Phrasebook by William Knox as I had plans to go to County Cork, Ireland, to do some ancestry research (one set of great, great grandparents came from Skibbereen). I thought it would be nice if I had a few words of Irish and I was, in any case, interested to see how other Celtic languages worked.
In the Welsh part of the book was a phrase “Is there an underground train in Carmarthen?” which really made me laugh. I mentioned it to a friend who used to live in Carmarthen and she suggested that it would be a good subject for a book, or a good title. I suppose that idea fixed itself in my mind and, a few months later, I sat down and started typing.
I still haven’t been to County Cork!
What inspired you to write?
I’ve always enjoyed writing letters and more than one friend said to me over the years that I should write stories. Apart from the fact that I was out at work for so much of the day, I really felt that the leap from letter-writing to story-writing was beyond my ability. Perhaps there was an element of cynicism there as I realised that far too many books published these days are not that well-written! Eventually I could see that one didn’t have to be a serious novelist to be published; there is a lot of light-hearted and well-written stuff out there and there’s a place for it.
What part of your novel did you enjoy writing the most?
I think the very first line of chapter 1; it made me laugh and I thought it would probably grab people’s attention and make them laugh too. I think (hope!) I was right; when I was at the Eisteddfod the year before last, I watched a woman pick up the book, read the first couple of lines and burst out laughing.
The characters in The Carmarthen Underground almost created themselves. I could visualise them, some being based on people I’ve known and worked with, and it was rather fun painting mental pictures of Mr Brynaman and the Sheriff of Myddfai, for example.
Which character was your favourite to write? What about the hardest to write?
By the way, just as an example of Word’s appalling spelling and grammar hints, the word “your” above was rejected in favour of “you’re”! Can you believe it?
I think that in the first novel of the series, no one was really difficult to portray but it’s become a little harder in the later novels in the series. The Sheriff of Myddfai was quite fun to write as was Dai Sluice; I envisioned the Sheriff looking something like the great (and late) actor, Ryan Davies. Mr Brynaman was based on someone I worked with back in the 1990s although I don’t think my co-worker had a particular preference for pic-n-mix! Hannibal is, of course, great fun to write about and is based on a cat that lived a few doors away from my parents; he adopted my parents and would call in every day to see them and spend time with them.
Can you share a little of your current work with us?
The second novel in the series is out as an e-book on Smashwords and I hope to bring out the third in the autumn, again on Smashwords. Naturally I would like both books to be published in paperback too but I’m pleased that they are at least out in the public domain and available.
The second novel, A Meeting of Dragons, sees Carmarthen Intelligence coming up against another superpower. The reader will learn more about The Battle for Wales, in which Rhian Jenkins played so important a part, and meet someone who also played a large role on the enemy’s side. There’s still a lot of humour and silliness but there’s also a darker edge to the story.
The third novel, Darkness at Dark Gate, which is now ready to be given the once-over by an editor, sees the return of someone we met in the first story; again there’s a bit of mystery and myth and plenty of silliness to go with that. A person I introduce in A Meeting of Dragons becomes a permanent member of the cast of characters.
I also have a book of short stories out on Smashwords, called (astonishingly) Other Stories. Last year was the first time I had ever written a short story and I had no faith that I would be able to as I believe it to be a difficult discipline. That story was entered in competition at the West Coast Eisteddfod and had some success; another story I wrote for the competition was also well-received. I was trawling through my documents one day and found the beginnings of a story that I’d started after seeing a woman on the train from Shrewsbury to London; she was wearing a red snood and that inspired another tale in the e-book. I still think short stories are far more difficult than novels though!
Are there any new authors that have grasped your interest and why?
I’ll take the word “new” to mean contemporary authors with whom I’ve recently caught up as well as the truly new.
It’s only relatively recently that I’ve broken out of my “classics” shell and started reading different genres, particularly crime novels. Once I started reading Lindsey Davis’s Falco novels, I had to read all of them. I’ve been interested in ancient history for much of my life and Davis’s mysteries, set in 1st century AD/CE Rome under Vespasian’s rule, are so cleverly written and such fun. Stephen Saylor’s Roma Sub Rosa novels, featuring Gordianus the Finder and set in 1st century BC/BCE Rome are also excellent. Donna Leon has become one of my favourites; her protagonist, Commissario Guido Brunetti, is a detective in Venice (where Leon lives) and I’ve learned a great deal about Italy and Venice in particular as well really enjoying the stories and the character of Brunetti. Barbara Nadel writes about a detective in Istanbul, Inspector Ikmen. He’s a delightful character, an atheist happily married to a devout Muslim and the father of nine children. These are all exceptionally well-written stories.
CJ Sansom’s Shardlake novels are something I really look forward to and SJ Parris’s novels featuring Giordano Bruno (a real-life character) are gripping. Susanna Gregory’s Matthew Bartholomew tales are also among my favourites; these are set in mediaeval Cambridge University, where Matthew is a physician and teacher.
What all of these books have in common is that they properly researched, very well-written and one can learn something from all of them while enjoying a very good story.
When asked, what’s the one question you always answer with a lie?
That’s one question I am not answering. Who knows when I’ll want to use the lie again?! Of course, I could be lying about lying.
If you could have written one book in history, what book would that be?
Oh, heavens! Two writers I really admire are Edith Wharton and Elizabeth Gaskell. What they have in common is a dry sense of humour, compassion and knowledge of the world (although Wharton would inevitably have been more sophisticated than Gaskell). If I could write even a fraction as well as these two, I would be happy. The House of Mirth is certainly a book that I would like to have written.
Favourite places to travel?
Leaving aside my lovely homeland of Wales, Italy is so beautiful and so full of fascinating history that I could never feel unhappy about going there. I also love Spain and would like to explore more of Greece and its islands. Scotland is just glorious too; Edinburgh is somewhere I could live very easily, with trips to the west coast every so often.
If you could be any mythology creature, what would you be?
Oo-er! There are people I would be very happy to turn into stone so being Medusa for a short time would be useful. Being Pegasus might be fun, a beautiful white horse with wings (the ability to fly always being tempting). Being one of the Furies might be a good thing – lots of tormenting guilty people and vengeance (and I expect they can fly too).
Where and when do you prefer to do your writing?
Actually, I don’t have much of a choice! I write in my home, at my dining table (now my desk), but I tend to carry a notebook around with me to jot down ideas and even whole chapters. When I was writing The Carmarthen Underground, I just stayed up as late as it took to get it all typed. As long as I’m enjoying writing and typing up whichever story it might be, I’ll carry on. I don’t have a set number of words per day or a set routine. While I have a responsibility to my parents (who live in Wales), my time is mostly my own. How writers such as yourself manage, with a family and a busy job to do, I don’t know and I’m full of admiration for your dedication.
Where can readers learn more about your writing or contact you?
I have two websites which I’ve been a little lax about updating recently but on carmarthenunderground.com people can read the first chapters of books 2 and 3 to get an idea of what they are like. Madocleonard.com also has some information and, if the mood takes anyone, I can be e-mailed at madocleonard@gmail.com (polite messages only please!).
