The Joys of Binge Reading

T.A. Williams writes highly entertaining, escapist romance and cozy mysteries. that take you to exotic locations without you having to leave your armchair. Great in a time like this.

Hi there. I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and T.A. or Trevor as his friends called him, came very close to getting published in his early twenties. And then he waited 40 years for the chance to come around again. When it did, he grabbed it with both hands and hasn’t looked back since.

This Week’s Giveaway

Our Giveaway this week is another BookSweeps Draw. This one is the Read and Reflect Literary, Historicals and Book Club Fiction draw – 40 books, $450 in value and a new E reader to the Grand lucky winner.

Take a chance and enter the drawer, get yourself a library of literary historical and book club fiction. You’ll have reading for the next season, including Sadie’s Vow, Book #! in the Home At Last series.

ENTER BOOKSWEEPS DRAW Links to thing mentioned in this episode:

Cathy Rentzenbrink: thttps://cathyreadsbooks.com

John Le Carré: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_le_Carré

Agatha Christie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie

Hilary Mantel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Mantel

Via Francigena: https://www.viefrancigene.org/en/

Sigoric The Serious – founder of the Via Francigena:: https://www.onefootabroad.com/blog/explanation-via-francigena/

Where to find T.A. Williams online

Website: www.tawilliamsbooks.com

Facebook: @tawilliamsauthor

X: @TAWilliamsbooks

And remember if you enjoy the show, leave us a review so others will find us too. Word of mouth is the best way for others to discover the show and great books they will love to read.

Introducing author T.A. Williams

Jenny Wheeler: But now here’s T.A. or Trevor. Welcome to the show, Trevor. It’s great to have you with us.

T.A. Williams – (Trevor) Moves easily from romance to cozy mystery in escapist locations

T.A. Williams: Thank you, Jenny. It’s very kind of you to invite me on.

Jenny Wheeler: You’ve been writing very successfully fiction for a number of years now, but you did have a very successful entrepreneurial career and it is a later in life thing for you. Tell us how you got into the writing

T.A. Williams: To be honest, my first ever attempt at a book was at age 14. It was called it was a shameless rip off of Arthur Ransom’s story, set up on Lake Windermere, Swallows and Amazons.

That obviously didn’t get very far, all 44 handwritten pages of it. But in my twenties, I wrote a thriller – I was quite into thrillers in those days.

And I still have a letter from Collins publishers before they became Harper Collins, where they actually read the manuscript that I sent them twice, and then came this letter saying, “We liked it a lot, but due to the parlous economic situation in the country at the moment, we can’t splash out on a new author.”

So that rather shot that one. So yes, had that all worked, then back in the seventies, I might have been a published author. As it is. I had to wait until 2013, 10 years ago.

A medieval trilogy which captivated him

Jenny Wheeler: Did you continue to write in that interim?

T.A. Williams: I wrote another couple of thrillers. They are just sitting there, gathering dust. But I got hooked, to be quite honest, on medieval history. And I wrote a series of three books set around the time of the Crusades.

And then – I don’t know if you’ve come across people called the Cathars in southern France. They were basically a Christian sect, but they were deemed heretical by the Pope at the time, mainly because they weren’t prepared to pay their subs to Rome. And as a result of which, he sent a crusade against them.

It was the only crusade called by Christians on Christians in Western Europe. I got hooked on that, and wrote the books.

Needless to say, nobody wanted to publish them, and it was over the course of years that I gradually changed from that to writing something more like romance, whatever.

Jenny Wheeler: You decided you wanted to go a bit more commercial, did you?

T.A. Williams: Yes. Basically, the story goes back in the beginning of January 2013. My wife went out and bought the newspaper, and I was reading the culture section in it.

And there was an interview with a lady called, I forget what her name was, anyway, she was the editor of the Bookseller magazine at the time.

Oh, Cathy Rentzenbrink, that’s her. She’s actually a writer in her own right now. And she was asked, what’s going to be big in 2013? And she said, quotes, in the wake of the success of the 50 shades phenomenon, I think erotica will do well. But not just any old erotica, but erotica with a twist for example, historical erotica.

T.A. Williams – Getting the writing bug again

So I thought to myself I’m not sure about the erotica, but I can do history.

I sat down one weekend and tried to write basically a dirty book and realized within a very short space of time, like about a day and a half that I had neither the experience nor the desire to write a dirty book.

I turned the whole thing on its head. And the first book that came out was basically somebody like me, a man trying to write an erotic novel, failing.

And in consequence he engages the help of a little group of female authors. to help him out. And the thing descends from there into a certain amount of humor.

The book never gets written, their book, but it’s the interplay between the characters and so on. A certain amount of humour.

Jenny Wheeler: Oh, that’s wonderful. And you returned to that theme with your first book in the Dan and Oscar series, Oscar at Armstrong, don’t you?

Because you have your retired detective attending a writing school in Italy in which it’s a fancy few days, a long weekend for authors to supposedly learn erotica and poor old Dan is sitting there feeling very uncomfortable.

Now that was so convincing that I did wonder if you’d been in that same situation yourself.

T.A. Williams: No, I’ve certainly never have been, I’ve never been on any kind of writing course actually, but no, the idea of a course to write erotica would frighten the life out of me.

Deciding on a gender neutral author name

Jenny Wheeler: You also decided at that point on a gender neutral author name. That’s how you came to be published as T.A. Williams when you’re very happy for us to talk with you as Trevor.

You felt that perhaps romance wouldn’t be so readily accepted by women because they are the main romance readers if it was a male seen to be the author.

Did you feel now that was that a reasonable assumption?

T.A. Williams: Yes. It was something we cooked up between me and my first ever editor that was at what started off, the how incestuous the publishing world is.

But I started off with one company, which was then subsumed into Harper Collins, and then moved on from there.

Anyway, the editor I had there, between us, we thought it was probably a good idea just to keep my gender vague, just in case.

And I still, to this day, I get reviews from people unaware of my gender. In fact, I was just reading reviews on one of the Italian versions of one of my romances, and the lady there was very complimentary about the book.

She ended up by saying, Oh yes, and above all compliments to the, and she used the Italian word, lady writer, because she just assumed that I was female.

Why should I disabuse them?

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Jenny Wheeler: That’s right. And some female authors use the same tactic because they want to be taken seriously. Like some of the historical authors, for example. I’m thinking of one that I’m going to be interviewing in a couple of weeks, who writes medieval history under a name that’s two initials.

Your romance stories are all gorgeous escapist stories. And a lot of them, most of them certainly, take place in continental Europe, mostly in Italy. And you have a long affection for Italy. Won’t you tell us about your links with that country?

T.A. Williams: Very quick bio. I went to university to do French and German. And by the way, I don’t always sound like this. I’m just coming out of an attack of Covid at the moment.

So if I disintegrate into a coughing fit, you’ll know what it is.

I did French and German at university. And then when I came out, I couldn’t get a job. So I thought, Oh, I know what I’ll do. I’ll go and learn another language, make myself more marketable.

And the only way you could get a job abroad in those days – now it’s changed a lot more professional – was in English as a foreign language teaching.

I applied for these various jobs, and I was offered – in fact in the same week I was offered a job in Lisbon in Portugal, and a job just outside Turin in Italy, and both for the equivalent of 84 pounds a month. Which I was going to say in those days was a lot of money. It wasn’t, but never mind.

I took the Italian job simply because it came with a company car. The company car then turned out to be a Fiat 500 with no starter motor, but that’s beside the point.

That’s how I got into the Italian side of things. I then spent seven, eight years there. Ended up falling foul of the major hazard of adult education.

I married one of my students and we’ll be celebrating our 47th wedding anniversary in a week’s time. Oh goodness, that’s a thought.

A reminder of an important anniversary

Yeah, actually, that’s… hang on, 20… What are we today? 22nd. (of August, 2023) Oh my God, it’s tomorrow. 23rd. Oh, blimey. Anyway, yeah, no, we’re the 21st, so it’s the day after tomorrow. I’ve got time to find something as a present.

Anyway, that was the connection. When we started off, I was living up in the Alps to start off with. And then we moved down for four years after we got married to Florence.

I love Tuscany and Tuscany has really stuck in my heart. I think if I wasn’t married to the only Italian who would rather stay in England than in Italy, I’d be back in Tuscany now.

Jenny Wheeler: Oh, that’s lovely. And congratulations on that anniversary that’s coming up. I’m glad that you had a chance to remember it,

T.A. Williams: I’m right. It wouldn’t be the first time. In fairness, my wife is probably even less romantically inclined than I am. And she forgets as well, quite often. Which is why it’s so weird that I’ve been writing romances,

Jenny Wheeler: Yes.

T.A. Williams: Really.

Jenny Wheeler: One of your romantic coms To Rome with Love is set in a charity bike ride from Venice to Rome, and I understand you did a ride like that some years ago?

T.A. Williams: We did. Up until quite recently, actually, up until about three or four years ago, I was doing quite a few of these long distance rides.

We’ve been across Spain from right to left and left to right, and we did Venice to Rome, and then we did various other rides in Italy.

We did Pisa through Florence, Tuscany, Umbria, down into Rome again. Yeah, I did a lot of that, and it was quite nice to draw upon personal experience.

Chasing Shadows – a time slip novel on the Pilgrim’s Way

Jenny Wheeler: I bet it was. And also, another one of them, Chasing Shadows, which is actually a time slip novel, which is slightly different from what you’ve been mainly doing, is set along the Pilgrim’s Way.

Perhaps you haven’t walked that, but you obviously have done quite a lot of cycling in Spain.

T.A. Williams: That was the big trip that I did in 2006 when I finally gave up the day job, and I decided this is something I wanted to do.

With a couple of friends we set off and we cycled from the UK all the way down through France. We took the ferry across the channel first, all the way down through France, over the Pyrenees, turn right and across to Santiago de Compostela.

So, it’s 1900 kilometers. It was about three weeks, but it was a memorable achievement. And that really was what sowed the interest in my mind of wanting to write something set on that particular track.

Jenny Wheeler: Yes. We haven’t got onto talking much about your books. We must get onto the books. But I’m sure that people have become convinced that you really know your stuff when it comes to the continent and all of them have got a most fantastic sense of the locations that they’re in.

The latest one for Oscar and Armstrong is Murder in Siena, number four in the series.

It’s just recently out. Tell us a bit about that one.

Ex DCI from London Police, now settled in Italy

T.A. Williams: That one is, as I say, I do have Tuscany very much to my heart, and so I started off with a general Tuscan one, then we did Chianti, then we did Florence.

This one is the story, by this time, book four, Dan Armstrong, the ex DCI from the Metropolitan Police, who’s now settled in Italy. He’s set up his own investigating agency.

He and his girlfriend and a couple of friends, one of whom is a husband as a senior officer in the Florentine murder squad, go for a holiday in a. country hotel just outside Florence and then all kinds of mayhem happens.

Dan and Oscar step in and solve the crime.

Jenny Wheeler: Oscar is there in all of the books, this beautiful black Labrador. And I see that he also even creeps into one or two of your other stories as well in the Dan and Oscar series.

He is there on the cover of all the books, he’s like a totem for the series. Tell us about your affection for black Labradors.

Have you had one yourself?

T.A. Williams: That all goes back to good old Merlin. Merlin, the best dog who ever lived, in my humble opinion.

We got him as an abused child and the vet said he’d be lucky to live for six years. He lived to 13 and a half. That’s pretty good. And he was just a lovely dog. When he died, I was all set to get another one, but my wife said no, I can’t go through that again.

We haven’t had a dog since, and in consequence, I put a black lab into all my books. It’s as simple as that.

Seeking a change from romance

Jenny Wheeler: That’s gorgeous. I had a white German shepherd called Taha that I have a similar kind of relationship with. I’ve still got her ashes and I plan to have them buried with me.

T.A. Williams: Yeah. They are fully paid up members of the family. No question about it.

Jenny Wheeler: That’s right. You started by writing romance with one publisher. So how many romances did you do before you turned to doing the cozy mysteries? Roughly.

T.A. Williams: I have to look up on the wall in front of me I’ve got all the covers of the books. I think I’ve just written my 30th romance, something like that. It might be 29 or 31. And then s year and a half ago, I j felt I needed just a bit of a palate cleanser, really, and a bit of a change.

I wrote a thriller and sent that into my publishers and they said, nah, it’s not really what we want.

I thought, all right, fair enough. So I wrote A Murder in Tuscany, the first of the Dan and Oscar series, and sent it to them. And they had to think about it and said, nah, we’d rather have something based in the UK.

So fair enough. I sent it to Boldwood Books, which is another publisher. And bless them, two days later I got a response from them offering me a six book contract. That’s how it happened.

Jenny Wheeler: That’s fantastic. So you’re now continuing in parallel lines with the romance and the cozies?

T.A. Williams: Exactly yes. I’m probably writing four books a year now. Probably one romance and three Dan and Oscars, something like that.

Jenny Wheeler: Gosh, that’s a quite a production. Tell us a typical working day. What does it look like?

A typical working day for author T.A. Williams

T.A. Williams: My typical working day is, I tend to get up, the older I get, the earlier I get up. I have some breakfast, and come and sit down in my study.

And on and off probably most of the morning. Because I’ve got a dodgy back mainly caused by all the cycling, by the way. I because of that, I have to keep getting up and walking around and moving around.

But basically, most of the morning is spent writing. The afternoon, I either get the bike out and go for a ride or go for a long walk. We live here in the wilds of Devonshire and there’s lots of little lanes you can walk around. And then come back, maybe reread what I wrote in the morning, and then six o’clock sit down and watch The Simpsons on TV.

That’s my regular schedule.

Jenny Wheeler: You say that writing has become like a drug for you. Tell us about that and your perhaps your changing relationship with your creative life. Has it always been like that?

T.A. Williams: On and off. The day job, which was, like you were saying, I was running a language school, was very much a full time job, particularly in the summer when we had something like about 500 students with us at any one time.

But writing was a relaxation in the evenings while I was working. And then when I retired, I thought I’ll do something to occupy my time.

I have a very low threshold of boredom. Ask my wife. As a result, that’s how it started. I just finished writing book number seven in the Oscar and Dan series at the end of July.

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T.A. Williams – Escapist Romance and Mysteries