In this feature, we ask our Crime Cymru authors to name six things that influenced their life and shaped them as a writer. This week, Cal Smyth talks of sycamore trees and tremors, of Belgrade and mortality, and of love and the road to Marseille.

One experience

When I was 10 years old, I was sitting in the living room and looking out at a sycamore tree. I saw one of the sycamore helicopters twirl down to the ground and had a vision of how the tree rooted, grew, branched and decayed… which made me think about my own existence, how one day I would die and not even have a mind to be aware that I wasn’t alive. This realization shook me to the core and I sobbed uncontrollably. My mum tried to comfort me, but I was inconsolable. From this point on, I knew that…