On Writing Cozy Mysteries
Before e-books entered my life, I was a mostly stay-at-home Mom to four children. My preferred reading spot was in the bathtub late in the evening – the family was well aware that the only reason Mom could be disturbed during this quiet time was if there was an emergency and they needed the bathtub water I was soaking in to put the fire out.
I have always been an avid reader, and mysteries by Agatha Christie and Ngiao Marsh were my bathtime favorites. When my husband broke down and bought me my first tablet for an anniversary gift, the world of Amazon and e-books opened up unlimited reading to me.
When I first started thinking about writing a cozy mystery of my own I was working at my dream job. I was (and still am) working for a small publisher as a junior developmental editor, shepherding not one, but two cozy mystery series through the process of first draft, editorial revisions, and proofreading; on through to final manuscript and publishing. I was in heaven. I got to read cozy mysteries that nobody else had seen yet, AND (most importantly to me at that time) I was getting paid to read! Talk about having your cake and eating it too!
Soon after I got that dream job, I realized that my favorite reading material was actually a niche market and the books that I had stacked all over my house and loaded in my Kindle library were commonly known as ‘cozy mysteries’ or cozies for short.
The publisher I worked for put out a call for authors to develop new cozy mystery series, and I got to evaluate each author for writing style, and above all, did their story fit in the ‘cozy’ niche. What followed was a revelation to me. While there are many talented writers, not everyone can successfully write a cozy mystery in a way that readers will want to read it and engage with the characters.
My husband listened to my grumbles about some of the challenges I faced with the authors under consideration and when I finished explaining to him what it took to make a mystery a ‘cozy’ he said, “You could write one of those!”
Birth of a Cozy Writer
I’d love to say that I just sat down at my computer one day and dashed off a few thousand works (fifty thousand or so at least) without any effort, but alas, that wouldn’t be quite accurate. My first effort (Toasted to Death) took me well over a year to write and once it was done, the most often heard lament was that I seemed to have started the series in the middle. Readers had questions galore about my setting, the characters backgrounds and so on and so forth.
I ignored such trivial matters as developing the background in favor of writing a second book in the series which had the rebound effect of just creating more questions about the background in the reader’s minds. I was so busy creating red herrings and throwing them out there to engage the reader that I forgot that only I knew how everything was connected.
Then an epiphany — and more reading
Then I discovered Nancy Cohen’s amazing guidebook for writing a cozy mystery. Nancy laid out all the necessary elements of a cozy, and set my feet on the correct pathway for completing not one, but two cozy mysteries of my own.
Ghostwriting gets in the way
In the meantime, I managed to land a ghostwriting job of my own, writing, what else, a cozy mystery. Now I’m busy juggling two prequels and the third book of a cozy series that I’m ghostwriting.
2020 Update
It had become clear that my two mysteries, Toasted to Death and Sinnin’ Buns needed a prequel, so I went back to the drawing board and started writing a novella (coming soon) that covers portions of the background to my Gramma’s Off Her Rocker series. After only a few chapters of the novella, it became clear to me that I also had to write an actual prequel to the events of Book 1 so a prequel part B is also in development.
Close friends have described the hamster that powers my brain as being on steroids so these writing challengs are not as complex as they might sound. All it takes is some classical music playing in the background, a couple of minutes reading through the end of the last paragraph I wrote and then my fingers are flying and words start appearing on my compter screen, as if by magic.
Am I having fun yet?
You bet I am! Rock on!
