#BlogTour-Q&A with Alis Hawkins, author of the ‘Teifi Valley Coroner’ series

Today I am absolutely thrilled to be bringing you a FABULOUS Q & A with Alis hawkins as part of her blogtour for ‘In Two Minds’, the second of the ‘Teifi Valley Coroner’ series

Hi Rachel – thanks so much for having me on Rachel Read It – I hope you enjoyed the book as much as I enjoyed answering your questions!

1) Who would you choose to play Harry Probert-Lloyd in a tv series/film of ‘None So Blind’?

I get asked this a lot! I think Daniel Radcliff would be the perfect Harry. He’s the right height, he easily conveys Harry’s mixture of passion and innocence and I’ve followed his career with interest since the Harry Potter films. Of course he’d have to wear a blonde wig – Harry’s hair colour is a bit of a thing in the book.

2)How important was it to set ‘The Teifi Valley Coroner series’ in Wales and reflect the time you chose to write at (in the mid nineteenth century)?

Well, to be honest, the time and the place really chose me, because for many years, I’ve wanted to write a book about the Rebecca Riots* which took place in south west Wales during the early 1840s. I’d previously written books set during the medieval period (the first two books in my medieval trilogy will be published this year by a different publisher) and – naievely, I thought I’d just fast forward to nineteenth century west Wales for a year or two, research and write my Rebecca Riots book and then scurry back to the fourteenth century. But, like most of the best-laid plans, that’s not what happened.

Why? Because I fell in love. Not only with Harry and John – though I am besotted with the two of them – but with the mid-nineteenth century Teifi Valley.

The Teifi Valley is where I grew up so I thought I knew the area but doing the reasearch for None So Blind showed me how little I really knew. Both the research and writing the book gave me a new connection to my home and pushed my roots further back in time than a childhood spent there in the late sixties and seventies. The Welsh side of my family is originally from the Rhondda but, somehow, in finding out about mid-century west Wales, I felt that I staked a claim to that area, too.

So, instead of scurrying back to the fascinating fourteenth century, I now spend half my writing life in the 1850s with Harry and John. Not only is In Two Minds now available, but the next in the series – working title Those Who Can – is already completed in draft and, all being well, will be published next year.

3)What is your go-to writing snack?

Ah! I do love a writing snack – in between cups of tea which I tend to drink roughly every hour!

My go-to snack is either a mix of nuts and fruit which we make ourselves from supplies bought at our local wholefood shop (heavy on almonds, cashews and toffee-ish dried apricots) or, if I’m feeling less inclined to be healthy or more desperate, chocolate. Specifically Green and Black’s chocolate – either their milk chocolate with almonds or milk chocolate with butterscotch pieces. I’ve tried to like dark chocolate but it’s just not for me…

4)Do you listen to music whilst writing and how important is mood to you or can you write anywhere?

No, music is off when I’m writing – I just find it too distracting. But I don’t like complete silence either so I tend to work with the window open (or, if the weather allows, in the garden) or have a birdsong app running on my phone in the background.

As for whether I can write anywhere – fortunately, I’m pretty good at that. If I wasn’t it would significantly reduce my writing time. I write on buses and trains, while waiting to perform at literary events (where I always arrive ridiculously early as I’m paranoid about being late), in hotel rooms, in coffee shops… And, when I’m at home, if a scene isn’t going well or I feel things have got a bit stodgy, I might go and write in one of the local cafes just to jolt me into a different headspace. But, generally, I find that physical surroundings aren’t the most important thing. What’s important is being able to get into the world of my book and stay there with my characters; to see what they see, hear what they hear, experience the world around them as they do. As long as where I’m writing leaves me free to do that, I’m fine.

5)If you were to write a contemporary novel, which decade of the twentieth century would you set it in?

That’s a really great question! And the way you’ve asked it is interesting – equating ‘contemporary’ with ‘twentieth century’. Did you know that, under the Crime Writers’ Association rules, any novel set more than thirty years before the time when it’s being written is counted as historical? So, basically, any book set in or before 1988 is a  historical novel! Which is bonkers to me – I mean, how can any time I actually lived through and remember be history?!

 But, to answer your question, if it was going to be entirely modern-set, I think I’d choose the swinging sixties. Though I was only a small child then, I still remember it as a decade in which anything felt possible. My own parents, still in their twenties, gave up secure jobs in industrial South Wales to pursue their dream of farming in an area where they knew no-one and didn’t speak the language. So, in that decade, your characters might do anything.

And, because it was a time of social revolution, the people in your book would be able to display widely differing opinions and beliefs and, unlike other ‘historical’ periods, there’d be the freedom to live them out (especially after 1967 and the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality.) There was still a huge amount of sexism about, obviously, but – at least in theory – women were free of much of the oppression of previous decades and centuries. And it would be fun to set crime then as it was pre-internet, pre-mobile phones and pre-DNA profiling so there’d be a lot more scope for getting away with things both as a writer and as a fictional villain.

6)Issue of the day-Jaffa Cakes or Jammy Dodgers?

Oh, Jaffa cakes, every time. I mean, a Jammy Dodger is just another boring biscuit which (wrongly) thinks a bit of jam makes it interesting and different. Whereas a Jaffa cake, dismantled carefully, can be a whole 10 minutes’ worth of entertainment, all by itself. They’re the exception to my ‘I don’t like dark chocolate’ rule!

Thanks for having me on your blog, Rachel – I’ve loved answering your questions and I hope you enjoyed Harry and John’s antics in In Two Minds.

*If you want to know more about the Rebecca Riots, please click here.