Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Memento Mori? by Cathy Ace



Cathy Ace, Author of the Cait Morgan mysteries, joins us to tell us how she commerates ending a manuscript. 

Typing “The End” when I finish a manuscript is something I never do. I can never bring myself to type those words, because I’m aware that it’s the beginning of the story’s life, not the end of it. So what do I do when I’ve sent my work to the publisher to be read and pored over by editors? I try to find myself a little memento that will reside on the top of the bookshelf in my writing room and remind me of that particular tale. 
It all began when I received the contract for my first Cait Morgan Mystery. As you can imagine I was in a state of great excitement, yet it arrived on what would have been my late father’s birthday, so my happiness, and the tears of pride my Mum shed when I phoned her in Wales to tell her, were also tinged with sadness because he wasn’t able to share in the joy.
A day or two later I had to pick up a gift for a friend’s birthday and I spotted the wonderful “Chicken and Egg” piece in a store window. I couldn’t resist. It summed up my feelings about writing, becoming an author, the life that was to become Cait Morgan, and the way my parents had brought me up—to always give 100% whatever the outcome. 


It felt natural, therefore, to select the cast iron snail to remind me of that first book, THE CORPSE WITH THE SILVER TONGUE, which features the titular corpse’s deathly face-plant into a bowl of escargots in the first paragraph. I also had a wonderful table-runner I’d bought in the south of France, where the book is set, which features olives and cigale, or cicada. You might think that, whilst olives make sense, cigale are rather strange things to find on tableware. Not so. The arrival of the cigale coincides with the heat of summer in Provence and is bound up with memories of long summer days, sipping a glass or two of thirst-quenching rose wine. 


For my second Cait Morgan Mystery, THE CORPSE WITH THE GOLDEN NOSE, the setting was British Columbia’s wine country. Indeed, the titular corpse on this occasion is a vintner, so what better memento than a holder for a wine bottle? One of the characters in the book totters about on $1000 Christian Louboutin heels, so when I found this bottle cradle sporting the classic Louboutin red sole, I knew I’d found the perfect keepsake.


The third Cait Morgan Mystery, THE CORPSE WITH THE EMERALD THUMB, is set in the fictional municipality of Punta de las Rocas, near the very real, and beautiful, Bucerias and Puerto Vallarta on the Pacific coast of Mexico. Since I’m rather similar to my protagonist, in that I like my food and therefore serve, and eat, quite a lot of it, I like the idea of having a lot of tablecloths. This jolly one was purchased on one of my many trips to the area, but I also picked up the hand-blown (in Mexico) margarita glass, as it’s a bit easier to have on daily display. In this book the titular corpse’s name is Margarita, and a lot of the action takes place on a tequila-producing agave plantation, so a margarita glass was a bit of a no-brainer!


For Cait’s most recent outing, in THE CORPSE WITH THE PLATINUM HAIR, she’s in Las Vegas, so something utterly Vegas it had to be! A snow globe featuring a pink Cadillac and glitter “snow” screamed at me from a shelf in one of those “everything Vegas” stores on The Strip, but then I spotted the other snow globe. The fact that it contains the famous “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” which features on the book jacket, as well as its prominent display of the “Ace” cards meant I had to give in and buy this second little memento too. I forgave myself. 

They all keep me company as I write, sitting as they do amongst my grandmother’s china, keepsakes from my travels around the world, and above my red-jacketed collection of all of Agatha Christie’s works. In the next two Cait Morgan Mysteries she gets to visit Wales and the Hawaiian Islands…I’m already thinking hard about what those “gifts to myself” will be!

If you'd like to see how Cathy that beautiful margarita glass for THE CORPSE WITH THE EMERALD THUMB, all you have to do is click here

7 comments:

  1. Thanks for having me along today! I'm honoured to be featured on such a super site, to kick off a week of celebrations marking the official release day for THE CORPSE WITH THE PLATINUM HAIR.

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    1. What fun! Thank you for a great post. I loved THE CORPSE WITH THE PLATINUM HAIR, btw,

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    2. I am so glad you enjoyed it, Deborah - it means a great deal to know you did, because I know how many books you read! Thank you, and Cheers!

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  2. And I loved hearing about your mementos. They are all great and very tied to the mysteries you've written. We as readers pick up a book and read, without thinking about how much time and effort goes into writing the book and how much of the author's heart and soul goes in as well. I think this blog post reminds us of just that. With that said, it's time for a margarita.

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    1. Hi Kerry, I'm so glad you liked the post, and I did enjoy finding all the little items that keep me going at times like this, when everyone's in bed and I have several hours at the screen ahead of me, and a deadline to meet! Looking at the books on the shelf that have been published helps, but they don't, somehow, seem as real as the celebratory gifts! I dare say that reveals too much about me ;-) Hope you enjoyed the margarita. Cheers!

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  3. Cathy--everything about you is fabulous--even the way you memorialize finished manuscripts.

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    1. Hi Terrie - you're so sweet, and, yes, I aim for "fabulous" at a minimum (she types, sitting at her desk in a comfy old cardigan and a pair of Crocs - they are leopard print Crocs of course!) Cheers, my dear! :-)

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