Author Guest Post with Madalyn Morgan

Welcome to one of the March 25th stops on the blog tour for Old Cases New Colours by Madalyn Morgan, organized by Rachel’s Random Resources. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for excerpts, reviews, and other author guest/interview posts!

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Author Q&A

Q. Where do your ideas come from?

A.  At the beginning of my writing career, ideas came from talking to my mother about the Second World War. She had three sisters who worked for the war effort in different ways. One worked on the land, one joined the WAAF, mum worked in a factory – and her other sister, an office worker, sang and danced in concerts put on in the village hall. Mum’s sisters are not characters in my novels. I developed the characters imagining what mum’s sisters might have been. One day mum said she wanted to give back a brass aeroplane, made for her by a young Polish airman named Franek who had stayed with mum’s family in 1940. She knew he was married and had a son. Franek had passed away, but I found his only son. The brass plane was a Wellington bomber. There were two RAF Aerodromes near my home town, and one flew Wellingtons. So my first novel, Foxden Acres, a love story between a land girl and an RAF bomber pilot was written.

Q. Has being an actress helped with writing novels?

A.  Very much so.  Characterisation is key in acting and in writing. I apply the way I worked as an actress to the way I write. I was a Method actress. I made the characters I played real and I make the characters I write about real. At least I hope I do.

Q. What are your strengths? And what are your weaknesses?

A.  I hope my strengths are writing believable characters in situations that transport a reader to another time and place, and my writing is strong enough and clear enough for a reader to enjoy and relate to. My biggest weakness is grammar. I went to school at a time when the comma was king. Today most readers are probably better educated than me. They want authenticity, but not old-fashioned writing. 

Q. Are the books you write similar in genre, or do you like to write in different genres?

A.  I like the challenge of writing in different genres.  The first four books I wrote about the four sisters was a saga set in World War Two. So, I suppose The Dudley Sisters Saga is classed as a historical fiction.  However, within that main genre, Foxden Acres is a love story that crosses the class divide, Applause is about ambition, the good and bad that goes with striving to reach the top.  China Blue, secrets and sabotage and The 9:45 To Bletchley is a spy thriller. 

Q. Readers first met Ena Dudley in The 9:45 To Bletchley and there has been two stand-alone novels since . Do you have any plans for another book in the Ena Dudley series?

A.  I don’t know yet. There are other books I want to write, but I do love the characters of Ena and Henry in Old Cases New Colours. This is my first detective thriller. I think I’ll wait and see what you and the other Bloggers think of it. If readers like it and I get some positive feedback, I’ll write another detective story, but if the feedback is negative, I may go back to psychological or spy thriller.

About the Book

Old Cases New Colours
The Dudley Sisters Saga Book Nine
by Madalyn Morgan

Published 25 March 2021

Genre: Historical Thriller
Page Count: 251
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Sick of working in a world of spies and bureaucracy, Ena Green, nee Dudley, leaves the Home Office and starts her own investigating agency.

Working for herself she can choose which investigations to take and, more importantly, which to turn down.

While working on two investigations, Ena is called as a prosecution witness in the Old Bailey trial of a cold-blooded killer who she exposed as a spy the year before.

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About the Author

I was bought up in a pub in a small market town called Lutterworth. For as long as I can remember, my dream was to be an actress and a writer. The pub was a great place for an aspiring actress and writer to live with so many characters to study and accents to learn. I was offered Crossroads the first time around. However, my mother wanted me to have a ‘proper’ job that I could fall back on if I needed to, so I did a hairdressing apprenticeship. Eight years later, aged twenty-four, I gave up a successful salon and wig-hire business in the theatre for a place at East 15 Drama College and a career as an actress, working in Repertory theatre, the West End, film and television.

In 1995, with fewer parts for older actresses, I gave up acting. I taught myself to touch-type, completed a two-year correspondence course with The Writer’s Bureau and began writing articles and presenting radio.

In 2010, after living in London for thirty-six years, I moved back to Lutterworth. I swapped two window boxes and a mortgage for a garden and the freedom to write. Since then, I have written nine novels. The first four, The Dudley Sisters’ Saga, tell the stories of four sisters in World War 2. My current novel, Old Cases, New Colours, is a thriller/detective story set in 1960. I am writing Christmas book – Christmas Applause – and a Memoir; a collection of short stories, articles, poems, photographs and character breakdowns from my days as an actress.

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