Interview with Cenarth Fox, author of A Plum Jaunt

 

Today it gives the Indie Crime Scene great pleasure to interview Cenarth Fox, whose novel A Plum Jaunt was published on 29th November 2023.

Hi Cen, welcome back to the Speculative Fiction Showcase. We’re here to talk about your latest novel, A Plum Jaunt. What can you tell us about Plum Wellesley, the main character? 

Plum is her nickname. She was born in 1920 and became Shirley Temple before the American child actress was born. Her full name is Louise Beatrice Wellesley making her initials LBW. Her two older brothers were cricket fans and called her Plum. They meant Plumb but spelling wasn’t their forte. She wanted to become an actress, persuaded her strict parents to let her go to Cambridge where she starred on stage with the local AmDram company and met a young doctor she reckoned was wonderful.

Your readers first meet Plum in A Plum Job, where she is recruited by the SIS. What inspired you to write about the travails of a female spy in WWII?

I prefer female characters and WW2. My crime fiction features Detective Joanna Best, my plays often star females – Aunt Georgie as the sister-in-law of Charles Dickens, The Merry Widows (6 females) and my cleaning ladies musical Scrubbers (5 females). There were far more male agents as spies in WW2 but the females to me are so interesting.

How did you set about researching the era and in particular the activities of the British secret service?

The usual way – I read books and articles, watched films and made pages of notes. The fact Plum is an actress appeals to me because of my work as an actor and playwright.

Some of the most famous fictional British spies are men, but women worked as spies in WWII. Why have they been less popular in fiction?

Women certainly did spy but there were far fewer female agents/spies hence the stars being males. Some females starred with Nancy Wake being a perfect example.

What enemies and perils will Plum face in this latest instalment of the series? 

Her two greatest enemies in all four books are the Nazis and double-agents. The Gestapo were so angry she escaped once they caught and tortured her; they put a price on her head. And her biggest threat came from those who claimed to be on her side but turned out to be double-agents or traitors.

How do her adventures continue once she is back home in England?

She always loved performing and joined the theatrical organization known as ENSA (Every Night Something Terrible) performing all around the country including at Windsor Castle for the Royal Family. The SOE wanted her to retire because she was such a wanted agent in Nazi-occupied France. She turned to acting and met a young man who had fled the Nazis in Belgium. He fell in love with Plum and persuaded her to run away with him. She did not telling the SOE. 

Does Plum return to acting and how does she keep her other work hidden from friends and relatives? 

She was lucky to find a theatrical agent in London and stuck with him throughout the war. He recommended her for touring shows – the troupe travelled in an old furniture van around rural Wales. She performed in BBC radio plays and West End shows including the UK premiere of An Inspector Calls. Her family realizes she’s a professional success when she’s heard on a BBC radio play with music composed by Benjamin Britten but only her big brother knows she’s a spy.

Will Plum finally meet her match and what can you tell us about her nemesis?

In A Plum Jaunt, the war eventually ends but an old romance comes alive and Plum looks like her spying days are over. But no. The Cold War begins and she comes out of domestic bliss to work for MI6. Her nemesis keeps on changing from a Nazi General to Gestapo fiends to British traitors to Russian socialites.

Do you have a writing routine?

I write every day. If I’m giving a talk to children or adults, my daily word count suffers. One rule I find works well is “No breakfast before 1000 words are complete”. Having an office in the back garden is good because the only interruptions come from doves demanding a second course. The determined ones hop up on my desk.

Tell us about your other work. You have written many crime series. What differentiates them from each other?

I started writing plays and the 50th anniversary of my first play being staged is in 2024. I’ve written plays and musical for adults and children. I began writing fiction in the late 90s and my first series of 5 books was about the schoolboy Sherlock Holmes. I’ve written literary fiction with novels about Dickens, the Brontes, Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. My other series apart from Plum are the Detective Joanne Best Mysteries (Crime fiction 8 books) and the Stationmaster George Miracle series (Railway and social history in Britain 4 books)

You also write plays, including a comedy about Dame Agatha Christie that has toured internationally. What made you want to celebrate this famous author and her characters?

I’ve always enjoyed her stories and her private life is interesting. I’ve written a comedy, Agatha Crispie, and a novel based on the play Almost Agatha Christie. The play is my most successful and has been performed in many countries. 

Do you think your stories are cosy crime, and what does that mean to you? 

If cosy crime has the sex and violence happening off-stage, then my stories are not cosy. But I don’t write graphic or gruesome scenes and in fact I wrote my first sex scene (more comical than graphic) in A Plum Jaunt.

What can you tell us about your next book, which I understand is the story of a young woman who goes to study with Galileo?

It’s part of a YA series about a 13 year-old girl with a telescope in her bedroom. She’s mad on science and joins a class for high IQ students. It enables her to time travel and she lands in Italy in 1620 when Galileo was making discoveries. She knows all about his life and becomes a maid in his house. The plan is to have time travel elsewhere in other times with the teen meeting other famous scientists. 

What are your plans for the future?

To stay well and to keep writing

Amazon

About Cenarth Fox:

There is no K in the Welsh alphabet so the letter c is hard as in cake and never soft as in circle.
Cenarth is pronounced Kenarth although the Welsh put an emphasis on the second syllable; KenARTH.
Some say writers are born and not made.
I was never interested in being a writer when young; I sort of just fell into it.
Performing in plays and musicals, I decided to try and write a show.
It took years to get performed. Today I’ve written more than 50 plays and musicals with performances in over 40 countries.
I started writing non-fiction books about the subjects I taught in schools – drama games, music games, radio plays, how to stage shows, how to write plays.
I started a novel for grown-ups in 1990. It’s still unfinished.
I wrote several stage shows about Sherlock Holmes and then five books in a series for children about the Schoolboy Sherlock Holmes.
In 2014 I resumed writing novels for adults and took 18 months to complete A Plum Job.
It’s about a young English actress who becomes a spy for her country during WW2.
There are now 4 books in that series with the most recent A Plum Jaunt.
Plum is the MC’s nickname thanks to her older brothers. Her name is Louise Beatrice Wellesley, her initials LBW.
If you know nothing about cricket, it will take too long to explain.
In between the four Plum books, I’ve written a series of 8 novels about a female homicide detective, 4 novels about a stationmaster in 2oth century England and single novels about Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, the Brontes, a crime novel about a conscience drug, another about a young woman who fled Vietnam and learnt to speak Elizabethan English the language of Shakespeare, and a novel about a chimney sweep who was transported to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania).
My current project is a series about a young teenage girl who is interested in science and discovers she can travel back in time to meet famous scientists. Book 1 sees her land in Italy where she becomes a servant in the house of Galileo.
My plays are at www.foxplays.com
My books are at www.cenfoxbooks.com