WILD seas and shale beaches are an integral part of Aberaeron’s landscape and award-winning author Cynan Jones can’t get enough of them.

He was born and raised in the seaside town and credits it for influencing his work.

“As a very young kid I was doing one of two things,” he said.

“I was either outside playing or inside reading if I couldn’t go out to play because it was too rough. Both of those things were about imagination.

“So from the word go the landscape, the environment was kicking off the make-believe. If you look at the books I write, that’s what they’re about. They’re about the landscape throwing up a question or event. In that respect it has been integral, growing up here. The tales have grown out of here as I have.”

He went on: “After two or three days in a city, I come apart, really, I feel very isolated. But here in Ceredigion my imagination is fired.”

Cynan’s pared-back fiction has earned him considerable praise, prizes and high-profile commissions over the last few years.

He uses this same economy of writing in his latest book 3 Tales, his first children’s book published by Gomer.

3 Tales is a trio of stories illustrated with pen and ink drawings by Rohan Daniel Eason and printed in hardback.

The stories were first written over a decade ago but kept in a drawer while Cynan honed his craft as a writer of adult fiction.

He unearthed these buried treasures, dusted them off and reworked them into a trilogy of fables for young readers.

He explains: “I wanted to learn to be clear in my stories, and as you have to be clear for children, I wrote a number of tales like these when I first committed seriously to writing.

“The novels – given their subjects – demand a stark, direct style; but the tales are more playful. For example, in The Scarecrow and the Doll I can play with sounds, have sibilance, resonating words, repeats, rhythms. Ultimately, the story dictates the language used to tell it, and it’s great to bring the Tales out alongside the ‘grown up’ fiction. It will be interesting to see what people who associate me with more harsh, visceral stories think.”

See this week’s south papers for the full feature, available in shops and as a digital edition now