6Ws with Author Angela Wren

On occasion, I run a 6Ws feature to give fellow authors and their books a bit of promotion. Angela Wren is the next. (With a nod to my former life as a journalist, I opted for the 6Ws of the business: who, what, when, where, why and how, which counts as it ends in W.) I once shared a publisher with Angela, who is from the UK. I have enjoyed her cozy mysteries with private investigator Jacques Forêt solving crimes in France. She also writes short stories using the crime mystery genre. I will let her tell you about her latest.

Who is the author Angela Wren?

I write cosy crime mysteries set in France. My detective is Jacques Forêt, an ex-Paris police detective who moved to the Cévennes in south-central France to work as a private investigator.

I also write short stories in the crime genre too. There are number of my short stories in various anthologies but I would like to tell you about Summer Paths. This is the fourth in the Seasonal Paths series. My stories in these are also mystery-related. It seems I can’t stop myself putting some sort of puzzle in anything I write!

What is your latest?

My latest short story is entitled Alice. She’s an auctioneer and valuer with a company in London, where she lives. Her dad, Peter, is a property developer who lives in central France. Alice and Peter have avarious adventures in France whilst solving whatever mystery I can come up with at the time.

In my story my recently published story, Alice finds herself being treated to some time away on a cruise ship because she has broken up with her long-term, live-in boyfriend. And within not time at all she stumbles on a mystery that has to be resolved before the ship returns to Southampton.

When did you begin writing?

I’ve always loved stories from being a very small child. I’ve always loved telling stories and reading them. One of my earliest memories is of being taken by my parents to Foyles Bookshop in London to choose a book for myself. I’ve been hooked ever since. I think writing stories came as part of a natural progression from reading, to telling, and then writing my own pieces of fiction.

Where do you write?

I have a library at home with my computer in there and a fraction of my extensive book collection. If I said that the only place in my house that does NOT have books and bookshelves is the bathroom – would you get the picture? I spend a lot of time in my office. But I also have a laptop and a smartphone and I can frequently be found on trains, planes, trams, ferries, and busses writing on either of my portable devices. I also have a small notebook in every handbag I own just in case an idea strikes!

Why do you write?

Because I love it and because putting words and sentences together is just my normal. Even when I’m cleaning the bathroom or hoovering the carpets you can guarantee my mind is somewhere else – in the Cévennes with Jacques, or in the auction house with Alice, or in Beauregard with Alice and her Dad, or somewhere entirely new with a character I’m developing. It’s all just so fascinating to me!

How do you write?

I’m very much a plotter rather than a pantser. I have to know where I’m going with story before I sit down and write it. That’s probably the result of twenty-odd years working in project management and business change. But I don’t plan every minute detail, so my characters do sometimes surprise me – which I think is good. It makes me look at my planned story with a different eye, and I frequently do what my characters tell me they want to do. I hope it makes my stories better.

Links to books and social media

Buy links :

https://mybook.to/SummerPaths

https://mybook.to/SpringPaths

https://mybook.to/WinterPaths

https://viewbook.at/AutumnPaths

LinkTree : AngelaWren

Amazon : AngelaWren

Website : www.angelawren.co.uk

Blog : www.jamesetmoi.blogspot.com

Facebook : FacebookAngela Wren

Twitter : TwitterAngelaWren

Instagram : InstaAngelaWren

Threads : ThreadsAngelaWren

Bookbub : BookBubAngelaWren

Goodreads : GoodreadsAngela Wren

Experiences

Strange Encounters

One recent day, I was pumping gas in a nearby city when a big, shiny red pickup with New Hampshire plates pulled up behind my car. The driver, a man older than middle age, called out to me after he left his truck. “Hey, if I make you climax, would you pay to fill up my truck?” What? I thought of several things I could say, but given what’s happening these days, I chose instead to not respond. I ignored him.

Yes, that was one strange encounter.

Over the years I have had others. They range from humorous to uncomfortable. Surely, you have had your own.

And then there are the ones I create for my books.

First the humorous. I recall being at the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge when a man approached me in a friendly way. He called me by a name that wasn’t mine. He explained we had known each other well in a previous life. Sorry, I don’t remember.

Then there was the time a twenty-something clerk at a liquor store asked if I was famous after he read the name on my check. I was a journalist for a local newspaper but didn’t think I was a household name. He explained, “Yeah, you work with chimpanzees in the jungle.” He thought I was Jane Goodall. I told him politely that wasn’t me.

Now for the uncomfortable. Of course, hitchhiking, which I did when I was young and didn’t own a car, generated a few strange encounters. I recall hitching to a college friend’s house in a rural area when this old man stopped to give me a ride. I got nervous as he left the main drag for an unfamiliar road. He kept talking about how unsafe it was for a woman to be hitchhiking alone. Uh, yes, buddy you are making your point. I demanded he take me back to the main road and let me out of his car, which he did.

I will spare you what one driver was doing as I sat in the front seat of his car while hitchhiking in France. My then-boyfriend was in the back seat. We had been waiting over 24 hours on the side of a road for someone to give us a ride. Hence, I put up with the situation.

Certainly, I have heard from other people about their experiences getting picked up by strangers. By the way, I also had many good ones when people drove longer and even out of their way to help me reach my destination.

I had odd and sometimes uncomfortable encounters when I was a journalist. As a reporter covering small towns, including the one where I lived, I could find myself in a social situation or say shopping at the general store with someone who had appeared in one of my news story. And while I tried to write balanced stories, sometimes I had to report on sticky situations.

In New Mexico, I worked as editor-in-chief for The Taos News, where I was expected to write hard-hitting editorials criticizing the way local officials conducted the public’s business. There were occasions when a person I criticized would be at a public event I attended or even hosted. In those cases, I maintained a friendly but professional manner expected of my position. Secretly, I enjoyed it.

Then there were the times those officials were running for re-election. The Taos News did endorsements, so I would have the candidates come in for an interview with a reporter and myself before making our decision. Let’s say there were some rather awkward conversations.

Here’s one about the county official in law enforcement who was unhappy with an editorial I wrote. He told me at the end of a meeting, “I can forgive, but I can never forget.”

Now for the imagined. Naturally, I give Isabel Long, the protagonist of my mystery series, lots of strange encounters, which would seem appropriate for a private investigator. They typically happen when she is interviewing so-called persons of interest and even outright suspects. They can even be threatening. I like throwing danger at Isabel.

In Finding the Source, Isabel and her mother are approached by a homeless man who announces that his mother was murdered when he was a kid — he actually found her body — and the case was never solved. Yes, she decides to pursue it.

Isabel’s experience was inspired by my own encounter on the day of my mother’s funeral. Hank and I were taking a walk beforehand when a stranger rushed toward me and announced, “My grandmother was murdered 46 years ago, and her case was never solved.” I asked the man for details and later checked online.

Hank, a bit surprised, asked me, “How do you attract people like that?” In this case, I was lucky.

North Fairhaven Girl

North Fairhaven Girl: What’s in the Ocean

Bar-dum, bar-dum, bar-dum, bar-dum

Living in an ocean-front town, I spent much of my childhood summers at the beach. Every Saturday and Sunday, we hauled enough food and beach stuff that it took us a couple of trips to carry everything from the parking lot at West Island to its sandy shore. My mother made enough food, including clam fritters, so we could stay the entire afternoon.

Then there were the many hours my parents dug for clams and quahogs in the sandy beds during low tide. We kids found a way to entertain ourselves until they got their quota. Or we picked periwinkles from the rocks at West Island to eat later at home using safety pins to remove the cooked critters.

Spending that much time close to the ocean, I was well aware — long before the movie “Jaws” — that creatures lived in its waters. Certainly, I had seen prehistoric-looking horseshoe crabs, a giant sea turtle, jelly fish, and large fish like tuna. Sharks? No. They were out there, hopefully way out there although sometimes they come closer. I was safe because I never swam that far in waters over my head. No shark was going to grab me with its jaws like that woman in the movie poster above.

And, naturally, I had read Herman Melville’s “Mobi-Dick” and watched the movie version. Gregory Peck, who played Captain Ahab, made an appearance in New Bedford when it premiered.

Then there is “Jaws,” now celebrating its 50^th anniversary. I so enjoyed the comradery of the three main characters, police chief Martin Brody, marine biologist Matt Hooper and the crusty fisherman Quint, as they hunt for the great white shark that is having its way with people in the waters off fictional Amity Island.

The movie is based on Peter Benchley’s novel and directed by Steven Spielberg. Who can forget John William’s two-note theme song, “bar-dum, bar-dum, bar-dum, bar-dum,” that told you something bad was about to happen. Then there is that memorable line I’ve used a few times, “You’re going to need a bigger boat.”

I am going to move onto adulthood, and the summers we vacationed in Fairhaven. Our family was living in the sticks of Western Massachusetts, and I longed to be immersed in salty air and waters. My aunt and cousins generously allowed us to stay at their cottage on Wilbur’s Point.

One summer, Hank and I decided to take the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard, a place I hadn’t visited since I was a kid on a family field trip. Back then, you had to take the ferry from Falmouth. But now, it went out of New Bedford. My mother, Algerina Medeiros joined us. Three of our kids came along.

When we arrived on the island, my mother was interested in going on a van tour. I was game, well, we were tourists, and so was my son, Nate, which surprised me since he was in high school. That’s him in the photo. Hank and the other kids were going to walk around. Nate really wanted to come with his mother and grandmother on a tour?

But I soon found out why. Nate wanted to see where “Jaws” had been filmed.

(There were, of course, other interesting landmarks like the cemetery where John Belushi is buried and Chappaquiddick, the scene of a notorious accident.)

But as we rode around, the person at the mic pointed out where various scenes were shot since most of the movie was filmed on Martha’s Vineyard. That began in May 1974. Here is a memorable fact I recall: the scene in which people are in the ocean and come screaming across the beach was filmed when the weather and water were damn cold, so there was a good inspiration for their screaming. “Bar-dum, bar-dum….”

I have watched “Jaws” a few times and plan to do it again. I bet Nate will, too.

Hilltown Postcards

Hilltown Postcards: A Generous Gift

t’s been a while since I wrote a Hilltown Postcard, stories inspired by the many years we lived in Worthington Mass. Here is one about a surprise bequest.

A person I knew who worked in the Hampshire County Registry of Deeds called to say I should check out a will recently filed in Probate Court. According to the source, Marvis “Peg” Rolland, a Worthington resident, had left a great deal of money to the town and hilltown groups.

That was in 1989 when I was the hilltown reporter for the Daily Hampshire Gazette. I so enjoyed the beat, covering stories, big and small, for rural towns. Think populations around a thousand, give or take a couple of hundred. For that, I counted on my network of reliable sources like this person, who I will not name. Breaking news with a front page story was absolutely one of the best parts of that job.

Of course, I drove straight to Probate Court. This is what I found out.

Peg Rolland, who had died Aug. 13 at age 71, did indeed leave a huge amount of money — $1.7 million — to the town, hilltown organizationsand people close to her.

She designated $627,500 and the brick ranch home aka Brickhaven at Four Corners would go to the town. Of that sum, $100,000 was for planting maple trees along town roads; $25,000 for North Cemetery; $100,000 for the Worthington Historical Society; $100,000 for the Fire Department; and $100,000 for the Council on Aging.

Residents had to formally accept the conditions of the will at a Special Town Meeting, which they did. The Art and Peg Rolland Highway Fund was eventually created to buy equipment and machinery. A scholarship in their name was established for Worthington students.

Another $575,000 would go to hilltown groups, including the Worthington Health Association, Worthington Congregational Church and Huntington Lions Club.

Peg also left $515,00 to relatives and friends.

She and her husband, Arthur, who died a few months before her, did not have children. That’s a photo to the right of Peg and Arthur from the Worthington Historical Society’s Archives.

I didn’t know Peg, but those who did told me she lived a fugal and quiet life. She never spoke about her business affairs or the intentions in the will she had drawn up five years earlier.

For many years, she worked for Snyder’s Express, the transportation company owned by her father Henry Snyder. Henry was a genuine hilltown character, serving as a Worthington selectman for over 35 years and a shrewd business man. I’ve heard the stories. He certainly would make a great Hilltown Postcard.

Peg was also the office manager for Albert Farms, owned by Ben Albert, another mover and shaker in Worthington. Check out this Substack about his farm: A Potato Farm Goes Barren

She also served the town as tax collector for 20 years and was a member of local groups.

Of course, after the news broke, people had a lot to say about Peg’s generosity. Julia Sharon, who was on the Board of Selectmen when the news broke, said she fielded many phone calls about it, including from people as far away as the Midwest. Locally, some townspeople wondered if it meant they wouldn’t have to pay property taxes or the money could be used to fix up Route 143 in town. Sorry, no.

NOTE: The Hilltowns not only inspired me as a reporter and columnist, but as a novelist. Most of my books are set in the fictional hilltowns of Western Massachusetts. Here’s a link.

Uncategorized

Fathers in My Books

Sunday is Father’s Day in which we celebrate those who have taken a fatherly role in our lives. And as I did in a post for Mother’s Day, I will acknowledge the fathers who are characters in my books. Several have important roles in the situations I created. A couple are definitely not good people and likely don’t deserve a holiday named for them. They are simply characters who add to the story. Here’s a rundown.

ISABEL LONG MYSTERY SERIES

Isabel Long has run into a number of fathers while investigating her eight cases, thus far. There’s Andrew Snow, the first to pay Isabel to solve his missing daughter’s case in Chasing the Case. Isabel had decided to investigate the cold case on her own, but Andrew, a quiet man, felt she deserved to be paid for her efforts.

Another father linked to a case is Ben Pierce, one of the Old Farts, that group of gossipy men who meet in the backroom of the above-mentioned general store. The secret nickname Isabel gave him is the Bald Old Fart. In Following the Lead, Isabel investigates what happened to Ben’s daughter, who was abducted from the family’s front yard when she was a baby. Ben doesn’t hire her, but his son does.

In my latest, Finding the Source, Stephen McKenzie is the father of the homeless man who asks Isabel to solve his mother’s murder. He and his son, Tom, have an estranged relationship —both say they have disappointed the other. Stephen is on the serious side, no surprise given he owns a funeral home. He and Tom’s mother were divorced.

My favorite father from this series is one who’s dead — Chet Waters from Redneck’s Revenge. His feisty daughter, Annette Waters, hires Isabel. Chet was allegedly too drunk to get out of his shack of a house when it caught fire in his junkyard. He was a “mean son of a gun” who cheated playing poker and was a hotshot pool player. As it turns out, Chet had another side to him, but I will let you read the book and find out.

THE TWIN JINN SERIES

The Twin Jinn and the Alchemy Machine, published this spring, is the second in my middle grade series about a family of magical beings, genies, who live among humans. Elwin Jinn is the father of the above mentioned twins, Jute and Fina. A twin himself, Elwin is patient about teaching his children how to use the magical powers they have while not drawing attention to themselves. After all, Elwin helped the family escape an evil master.

THE SWEET SPOT

Edie St. Claire, a young widow, lives with her daughter on one side of duplex owned by her father, who runs the town dump. Well, somebody has to do that job. He’s one of those scratchy kind of guys and a bit of a drinker, but also a caring father . Edie says this about him: Pop may be a crusty so-and-so, but there was something true about him.

NORTHERN COMFORT

Four fathers are in Willi Miller’s life in this dark tale of haves and have nots in a small town following the accidental death of a child.

Junior Miller abandoned Willi and their young son, Cody, who was born brain-damaged. He doesn’t spend any time with his child or even pay child support. But without spoiling the story, he undergoes a change.

Pete Merritt is the kindly grandfather who takes in Willi and Cody after Junior became a deadbeat. After Pete, who Willi calls Pa, heard about her situation, he just showed up at her place and moved her and Cody right then and there. Here, a character, Dave, describes a time Pete played old-time country music at Town Hall. Willi walked her grandfather up the center aisle. The old man wore a cowboy hat and a bolo tie. She treated her grandfather like he was king of the Grand Ole Opry.” He shook his head. “Old Pete was so damned proud to be beside her.”

Her own father, a sad, sensitive man, died when he was too drunk to drive. I will let Willi share a time she remembers. After she and her sister went to bed, their father started plucking a lonely country ballad on his guitar.

She crept from her room and positioned herself behind an easy chair to spy on her father. A bottle and shot glass were on the end table, and between each tune, he’d take a sip. One night, Willi ran to Daddy, begging him to sing something happy for her. She squeezed between him and his guitar, so he set the instrument on the floor. He pulled her onto his lap and kissed the top of her head.

“Oh, sweetheart,” was all he said as he held her in his arms, but then after a long time, he whispered, “Now get down so I can play.”

Daddy started singing “I’m in the Jailhouse Now,” exaggerating his voice to make the tune sound funny. She stayed close, smiling so hard at Daddy he had to do the same with her.

Unfortunately, Joe, the man Willi’s mother married, was a horrible person who abused her. But there’s a reckoning.

THE SACRED DOG

Frank Hooker is a thoughtful man who assumes fatherhood of his wife’s daughter. (There’s a story there.) But he shows great love and attention to the little girl even when her mother moves to Florida. He would make the long trip there and is thrilled when she returns.

On the not so nice side of fatherhood, there is Al Kitchen’s grandfather who helped raise him after his own father died in an accident. Pops was a mean man who made the lives of his wife and Al miserable. How much so? When he was a boy, Al used to keep a blanket in one of the junked cars in their backyard where he hid when his grandfather went on a rage. The best thing he ever did for them was to die among the junks. That sounds harsh, but if you knew Pops you would agree.

That gives you a quick summary of many of the fathers in my books . Here’s the link to my books on Amazon. By the way, the flowering mountain laurel in the photo above grows in our yard along with others planted by the house’s previous owners a long time ago.

Joan Livingston

Author and editor