ingénu/e magazine’s first encounter with writer Patricia Feinberg Stoner was with the publication of her collection of comic verse 'Pawprints in the Butter', described by ingénu/e at the time as 'perfect as a gift for cat lovers, lovers of good verse and those who love to laugh'.

As well as having poetry and short stories published in various anthologies she has published two books based on her experiences as an ex-pat in the south of France: 'At Home in the Pays d'Oc' and 'Tales from the Pays d'Oc'. The latter has now been given a new lease of life and reissued with the inclusion of her most recent tale 'Murder in the Pays' d'Oc.'

Your new novella 'Murder in the Pays d'Oc' revisits rural France, the setting of your two previous books. What prompted you to return?

It was my husband, Patrick. I was just putting Tales from the Pays d’Oc to bed, and musing idly about what would come next, when he announced: ‘You ought to write a murder mystery.’

I have to say I was dumbfounded. Patrick knows I like to read murder mysteries, but he also knows I am hopeless at plots. I very often pick his brains for advice or inspiration:  he’s a writer too, which helps. But then he said, rather cleverly, ‘You’ve always said you’d like to murder Goubert, haven’t you?’ 

That got me thinking. The Languedoc is dear and familiar territory and I’ve got plenty more stories from the almost 30 years we lived there, on and off. But the prospect of writing a whole book was very frightening. Then it occurred to me that I could cheat.  I would set the story in the framework of a birthday party, with all the suspects assembled. Hardly original, I know. But then I could write the tale of how each suspect had reason to wish Gaspard harm – in effect, it’s a series of linked short stories rather than a sustained narrative.

I have to say that Murder in the Pays d’Oc is very light-hearted, and even the ‘murder’ may not be a murder after all. Any reader expecting things to be tied up in a neat bow just above the words ‘the end’ may be somewhat disappointed, but I am a firm believer that less is more!

In your other Tales from the Pays d'Oc the characters seem drawn from life. Is the central figure in Murder in the Pays d'Oc, the oafish Gaspard Petit, based on anyone in particular?

Anyone who has read my first book, At Home in the Pays d’Oc, has already met Gaspard! His name was Michel Goubert and he was our neighbour in France for many years. We actually shared ownership of a building, thanks to some quirk of French inheritance law, and as you can imagine that led to a lot of sturm und drang.  For some reason he took a dislike to us, probably because we were English, and he used to pull charming little stunts like cutting our phone wires – not once but three times – or reporting us for putting in a window without getting permission. Needless to say, we had permission. I’ve written a new story in Tales from the Pays d’Oc, Chickengate, to introduce him to new readers.

Looking through Tales from the Pays d’Oc, nearly every story is based on personal experience, however tenuous, and yes, the characters are mostly based on real people.  One purely fictional character, whom I am very fond of, is the poet Richard Patterson, with his wife Martha and his menagerie of animals. I ‘stole’ Patterson from Patrick, who created him for his own book but hadn’t put any flesh on his bones. Now when Patrick wants to write about the poet, I tell him sternly to go back to Tales and get properly acquainted! The name is a joke: Rick Patterson is an anagram of Patrick Stoner, though nobody except Martha calls him Rick.

What is your favoured genre to read and when did you start writing?

As I’ve said, I like murder mysteries, especially writers like Reginald Hill and Val McDermid. I also like historical fiction and so-called ‘literary’ fiction: some recent favourites have been Where the Crawdads Sing, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, and Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. I’ve recently discovered a wonderful writer called Jennifer Saint who writes novels based on Greek legends. I devoured Ariadne and Elektra and I’m looking forward to her next book.

Like most writers, I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t writing. It started with school essays, English was my favourite subject, and my poor long-suffering teachers were always having to rein back my enthusiasm. I adored purple prose. At university I worked on the college magazine, and when it came to finding a job I was lucky enough to land a trainee place on what was then quite a prestigious regional paper, sadly now defunct. I was a journalist, advertising copywriter and publicist for most of my working life.

I started writing semi-fiction when we were living in France. I wrote a column for the magazine French Property News called At Home in the Pays d’Oc, which became the title of my first Pays d’Oc book. It was a humorous take on the life of an ex-pat. There was huge excitement when someone from Harper Collins contacted me: would I think of turning these articles into a book? Sadly, it came to nothing, as these things so often do, but it gave me the impetus to start writing in earnest.

As a writer are there specific authors from whom you draw inspiration?

As a child and growing up I loved the Americans: Damon Runyon, Dorothy Parker, J.D. Salinger, but it was comic verse that really inspired me. My parents had a lot of books – and I think that’s so important when it comes to introducing children to reading – and on their shelves I discovered Ogden Nash and the wonderful Complete Limerick Book edited by Langford Reed. I immediately decided this was something I could do too: I wrote my first limerick at the age of ten and it was very, very bad. The funny thing about limericks is that they seem so simple, but they are fiendishly difficult to get right. 

My very first book was comic verse: Paw Prints in the Butter, which is sold in aid of the local animal rescue charity Wadars. It’s a collection of cat poems that I had been writing for decades. I’ve also, rather sneakily, inserted poems by ‘Richard Patterson’ into both Tales from the Pays d’Oc and Murder in the Pays d’Oc. One of them even found its way into ingénu/e: Sitting on a Bench, which is a parody of the White Knight’s song in Alice Through the Looking Glass.

Do you have any advice for those setting out on their writing journey?

Sit down and have a long hard think about what you want from the book. Don’t have huge expectations of fame and fortune, because unless you are very lucky, they won’t come. Write for the joy and satisfaction of writing. 

Once you have finished the book, the really hard work begins. If you want a traditional publishing contract you will first have to find yourself an agent, which isn’t easy, because most mainstream publishers won’t accept direct submissions.

If you are going to go independent, beware of so-called publishers who would love to publish you, or who are dying to read your manuscript. The chances are, they will cost you a lot of money for very little return. Self or indie publishing has come a long way from the days when it was sneered at as vanity press, and with new platforms such as Amazon KDP and Ingram Spark you can do it for very little money. 

I would make two very crucial points:
1.   Before you submit to a publisher or put your book on Amazon, get an editor, or at least a beta reader who is not your auntie or your best friend. An independent eye is essential: you are too close to your own work to see any flaws, errors or plot holes.

2.  Promote, promote, promote. This is the difficult bit: promotion can never let up if you want to get noticed. Use all the media you are comfortable with: press, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Insta and so on. But don’t just bang on about how wonderful your book is – that gets old very quickly – think of new and refreshing ways to get the message out there.

What can we look forward to next?

I’m taking a step back from books for the moment. I find it hard to write at any length and the prospect of a full-length novel, even a short one, is daunting. I write a short story for my writing group every month and try to write a poem for my poetry group when inspiration strikes.

That said, I am thinking about putting together a collection of stories featuring the redoubtable Mrs Arbuthnot. She’s had a couple of outings already: to her surprise and mine, Covid and Mrs Arbuthnot won first prize in a Worthing WOW short story competition and was printed online by the Littlehampton Gazette. Another Mrs A. tale was published in ingénu/e a while back: Time to Speak Out. I’ve only got seven stories so far, so there’s a long way to go, but I have a title: and Mrs Arbuthnot.

For the moment, my editing business is keeping me occupied. I’m in the process of helping a client put together a volume of her dark and spooky stories, and I’m also working on a new book from a wonderful American horror writer, Craig E. Sawyer. I’m pleased and proud to say that the first book we worked on together, Clay Boy, has just won a publishing contract.

Murder in the Pays D’Oc is available from Amazon, along with Patricia Feinberg Stoner’s other titles; also at Heygates Bookshop, Bognor Regis and Pier Road Coffee & Art in Littlehampton.