Hiraeth in Hollywood

For years Marni couldn’t understand why she wasn’t happy living in Hollywood. Despite her original intention of becoming a professional actress/vocalist, she suffered stage fright and hated L.A., so turned from performing to writing. “It took me seven years to have my first short story published,” she says.

After emigrating to England in 1991 aged 35, Marni’s work appeared in anthologies such as The Urbanite, Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror, and Best New Horror. Her career was just beginning to take off when she was diagnosed with ME (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) in 1997.

Feeling that overcrowded London didn’t help her recovery, Marni moved to Wales in 2002, and realised why she’d been so unhappy in America. Hiraeth is a Welsh word with no direct English translation. It’s a feeling, a deep longing or homesickness. “My mother was a Bowen, my paternal grandmother a Matthews, so there’s Welsh ancestry on both sides of my family,” continues Marni, something, as with her mixed race ethnicity, the family didn’t talk about. (In the 1960s Americans didn’t know about Wales, despite two U.S. founding fathers being of Welsh ancestry.)

For the setting of Marni’s first novel Knucklebones, she created her own seaside town, a merger of everywhere she’s lived in North Wales. “Because I’m not well enough to walk Rhyl or Abergele or Gwaenysgor to ensure accurate settings, and not being a driver (L.A. cured me of that), Ffrynt was born. I’d apologise for moving Gwrych Castle,” adds Marni, “but I thoroughly enjoyed it!”

The Ffrynt Trilogy, of which Knucklebones is the first installation, is connected by its North Wales setting and characters. None are formulaic genre novels, though they have elements of crime, suspense, magic realism and horror, in the style of Alfred Hitchcock and Rod Serling. Marni is concurrently working on the first book in a series about a female private investigator who is also a women’s rugby coach, and a Gwaenysgor ghost novella.

Marni is also a visual artist with a BA(Hons) in Design from the University of Wales. She creates many of her own book covers and has a shop on Redbubble featuring Welsh designs. n

From 8th – 12th June 2023, to celebrate 30 years of writing, Sometimes Dead and Gorgon Villa will be available as free downloads in the Amazon Kindle Store (https://www.amazon. co.uk/~/e/B0BNF7CMKP). For more information about Marni please visit: MarniD9.redbubble.com www.forattentionpress.com