Can A Terrible Accident Turn into a Fluffy Murder?

Of course it can. 
That's what cozy mysteries are all about.
I'm guessing people like them because
They make the horrendous neat and tidy, even pleasant. 
Fluffy.

    The book I'm reading this week is non-fiction about the Dark Ages of Europe. So, I'm talking about the mystery I finished last Sunday, cozy mysteries being one of my favorite forms of fantasy. 

   Cozies are known for their light touch with murder and mayhem. Why do I say this? Because I can't remember one that's gets into the messy process of grieving. Lorna Barrett's Sentenced to Death provides a perfect example. Oh, the main character feels sad and impelled to investigate. But no writer even gets close to the raw emotions that even a hard-boiled egg like me feels when losing a friend. 

   On the craft level, Sentenced to Death gives the reader a fast moving plot, an engaging cast of characters, and a delightful little New England town filled with small shops, including bookstores. And, ranks high is reader satisfaction. What's not to like? Everyone, except perhaps the villains, are pleasant.

   Result? I couldn't shake the thought that the book provided a perfect illustration for the phrase "once again lightly". Not that the book was badly written. I just didn't find anything memorable, except maybe the opening scene when a plane dropped from the sky and killed the main character's best friend. That's a solid hook if I ever saw one.

    The plot was so well constructed, it kept pulling me along, in spite of my wrinkled nose. Want twists and turns that jump from one complication to another until another murder needs to be solved? Ya got it. And, the clues are well embedded in the details of the villains' lives as they are unearthed by Tricia Miles, mystery book seller extraodinaire. In fact the plot reminded me of reading Agatha Christie, only with a younger, American "Miss Marple".

   The depiction of the characters got to me, like sand paper. I'd spend never more than fifteen minutes with the actual types of people depicted in the book, however well-rounded they are. The one exception is the main character's sister, but she annoyed me too. Didn't think she had her sister's back enough.

   This is the fifth book in a successful series which has a couple well-received additions since 2011, but I found the protagonist flat. So, she stressed out by the men in her life. But, she dithers. Eeeewww. She does have a nice cat, though.

   Again a summer read, mostly for fans of cozy mysteries. The plot and the writing overcome the overuse of conventions.

You can read excerpts and more reviews at  
Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  

~~~#~~~

My Writing Rut 

    Am I making progress yet? Did get Vengeance to the copy editor and have my appointment with the formatter. Now I have to decide whether to have pre-orders. For a novelette, aka long short story. There's the rub. In short, I'm staring at the marketing tar pit and finding it unattractive. Guess I'll try pre-orders just to see what happens. [That's how I'm feeling today.]

I am looking for reviews. 

 Hint. Hint

   If anyone reading is interested, I should have a PDF copy by mid-August. You can email me at mkkaytheod at yahoo to get on the list for me to mail it to you. If you have a book review blog so much the better.  

My current blurb:

    After four centuries of political infighting with Linden, the ruler of the Marches, all Mariah wants is a little peace and quiet. Then, her daughter's family is attacked by enemy privateers, leaving Norerah at death's door. Mariah’s anger boils over. Ashton, her ring-mate, and Mariah seek vengeance, ignoring Linden’s decrees, only to discover a strange magic that threatens every thing the three Half-Elven hold dear.  

 
   On the Run? Would you believe I'm revising? Even tacked a new paragraph onto the beginning to set the emotions of Pillar, my main character. Yeah, I tend to be short on my characters reactions until my critique group yanks my chain. Look for a new installment of the On the Run wip. I should get it added when I clean up my author website some more. Give it a look if you want to check out longer versions of my estories.

Yeah, I'm getting sick of playing with my author website.

It's like getting immersed in quicksand.

Have you tamed your website? 

To Cozy or Not to Cozy -- Aaron Elkins "Dying on the Vine"

    Was reading a perfectly good cozy mystery--by a new author, to me, which I eventually finished with enjoyment. But...the family book exchange interrupted that read. A recent paperback by Aaron Elkins, Dying on the Vine, landed on my dining room table/desk. Of course, I had to take a peek.

   Now, I think of Elkins as a forensics mystery writer, featuring one of my favorite disciplines--physical anthropology. But that isn't what hooked me. The depiction of an old Italian man facing a difficult decision about his four sons' inheriting the family winery did. Yeah, Dying on the Vine began like most cozies--with a description of a bunch of interesting characters. Only Elkins doesn't use first person viewpoint. He uses third, and his stories are based on science.

   Elkins' sleuth, Gideon Oliver, the Skeleton Detective, doesn't appear until page 36 after the old man's body had been found along with the corpse of his missing wife. Voila! Two skeletons to puzzle over until the murder was solved with gobs of info on the tales a bunch of bones can tell. Plus the reader gets a nice tour of Florence, Italy and surroundings, especially the noshing possibilities.

   Then, for the heck of it, I did some research and discovered Elkins writes cozies, at least according to Wikipedia's definition: "Cozy mysteries, also referred to simply as cozies, are a subgenre of crime fiction in which sex and violence are downplayed or treated humorously, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community." Nothing like having your preconceptions knocked upside-down.

   How can you have a mystery without some violence? After all, most mysteries solve a murder or a conspiracy that includes a lot of deaths. Cozies merely shoved the violence off-screen or ends right after the victim is confronted by the perp, and death might be inevitable. Yeah, there are exceptions, but the generalization holds from my reading.

   Same goes for sex among the long-marrieds. It probably happens, but it's off-scene. The fire of anticipation common in many kick-ass mysteries/fantasies is also missing. There's not even any hand-holding, that I remember.

   Almost as absent as sex was the growth in the main and secondary characters. In fact, this depiction of Lau, Oliver's sidekick, often fell into caricature. I felt his purpose was to make some dumb, somewhat funny, comment to reduce the tension rather than offer a new insight to solving the puzzle. Actually, there wasn't that much tension in the book, even at the end--no showdown with the perp or bringing the suspects into the drawing room to nail down the guilty.

All that said, I recommend the book. It's a relaxing, light, well-paced, well-plotted puzzle. Elkins' skills as a writer keep the storyline moving. And, you'll learn more about bones than you ever thought you wanted to. 

You can read a sample and more reviews of Dying on the Vine

 on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

~~#~~

Interesting Links on the Importance of Storylines

 The Passive Guy, one of my gurus, pointed me to an interesting article in the New Statesman about the importance of story, a commentary on a book by Agatha Christie. You might check it out, especially if reading means you like to immerse yourself in a book.

What kind of experience do you look for from your reading experience?

What annoys you?
Me? I hate to read in dibbles and dabs, but it seems to be what I'm doing lately.

~~#~~
Writing Accomplishments

   Think ignoring social media is paying off a bit. Got all the guest blogs and interviews done for a Blog Tour for The Ghostcrow. The e-story was published in March. What can I say but "I'm slow"?  I've gotten some nice reviews for my stories from other blog tours I tried. Hopefully, this one will provide the same. So far it's doing better than Doom Comes for a Sold Soul. Makes me wonder if longer stories get better reviews than short stories. Any one else have some experiences to share?

    More important, I got my revisions off to my critique group for On the Road. Not only am I transferring the already written story line to the new character, Pillar, but I'm seeing why the guys said it wasn't working. I've also shortened the chapters. Instead of running around 3000 words, they're coming in between 1500 and 2200 words.

   Translation: It means I'm avoiding one of my biggest complaints about reading late at night when I want to "read just one more chapter". I find myself reading for 45 minutes instead of 20. Grrrrrrrrrrr.

I may actually get back to Go Daddy and get my website mechanics fixed.
Wish me luck. You'll get a new snippet of my revisions of On the Road.

Murder Most Feminine -- Are All Mysteries with Female Main Characters Cozies?

Psst ... Wanna know one of my guilty secrets?
I like tepid, cozy mysteries.

While reading Cruz Smith's mystery, Rose, I was also reading Thrill of the Haunt by E. J. Cooperman. A lovely cozy romp about a lady who sees ghosts and uses her resident ghosts to lure guests to her not-bed-and-breakfast. All the time I was reading Cooperman, I kept hearing a long-gone friend snort in the back of my mind. She had nothing but contempt for cozy mysteries that trivialized the high crime of murder. Like she thought Miss Maple was an abomination.

Can't say her opinions influenced me much. I continue to read cozy mysteries for the worlds they create. So what if all to often some of the "villagers" turn murderous? I still think Margaret Rutherford's Miss Marple movies are laugh-out-loud funny.

But back to the cozy mysteries.

Read It and Weep by Jenn McKinlay reminded why I sometimes get impatience with cozy mysteries. Liked this mystery about who is trying to disrupt the production of A Mid-Summer Night's Dream. The theater fundraiser imports a big time actor/friend who becomes the target of a murder plot that's meant to ruin the production. The solution was ingenious and unusual, but the klutzy romantic complication dropped a star off my rating. -- Four Stars.

As for the above mentioned, The Thrill of the Haunt, A Haunted Guest House Mystery, had me grinning most of the read though two people get offed in what seem at first to be unrelated murders. Cooperman soon adds clues and red herrings to tie the dynamics of a local vendetta against Alison Kerby and a floundering love interest force the MC to acknowledge her ability to see ghosts and solve the crimes, all against her druthers. -- A pleasant, well-crafted read -- Five Stars

By way of comparison, Patricia Briggs recently offered a nice little mystery-thriller which offered a kidnapping and mass murder, Frost Burned. A secret organization manages to kidnap almost the entire Tri-Cities were-wolf pack. Mercy Thompson, Briggs' ingenious shapeshifter hero, proves her worth by saving the pack's ass when a car accident delays her return to the pack's headquarters. While there are no murders to solve, Mercy must rescue the pack who looks down on her and her mate, the pack's alpha. There is a glorious massacre of the bad guys and a twist which leads to an interesting ending. [Yeah, I can get a little blood-thirsty at times.] -- Five Stars, even though, having driven through the area many times, I can't imagine multiple traffic jams ... even when Christmas shopping.

So, why do I put all three books in the cozy category? All three books are set in well-defined communities where even the secondary inhabitants capture readers' interest. So I read them and make no apologies. Can't help but be a little envious though.

###

My own writing is still bogged down in edits. Part of it is that I'm suffering the effects of working with a small "Mom & Pop" publisher, more kindly known as an indie publisher. Actually, The Grumpy Dragon is doing well by their authors, but when the main editor [and editor of my book] is laid low by winter flues and such, timelines drag on. The other project I decided to edit, The Ghost in the Closet, a languishing short story. It's in process for cover and other end of the line processes to become a self-published e-pub.

The other project in the works is another short story which has been fermenting in my computer. It's been rejected multiple times ... but suddenly if reconfigured itself to be part of There Be Demons' world of Andor. How did this happen? Was sitting petting the cat as usual in the morning, when Cassy Mae put her cup of coffee on Britt's table in the college coffee shop and told her to stop staring at the demons. Told Britt to tone down her magical ambiance before the demons noticed her. Surprise. Britt listened to her.

So, I now have three book in the Britt Kelly series ... and simplified the number of worlds in my computer.

Cozy Is as Cozy Does: Making Your Story Different

One of my favorite forms of fantasy is the cozy mystery. Why fantasy? Because I can't imagine any murder being so charmingly serene. Of course, the "detective" doesn't do the nitty-gritty stuff like collecting evidence. They just shift through the tangled relationships to solve the crime.

Recently read two cozies back to back: Jenn McKinlay's Due or Die and, one of local authors, Bailey Cates' Brownies and Broomsticks. The similarities of both books give some insights on how to twist a trope to come up with something different.

Most American-set cozies I've read seem to be craft oriented in some way. Due, the second book in the series, focuses on a group of friends having a weekly crochet project session at the local library. The MC, the library director, is a recent immigrant to the New England coastal community when one of the library board's husband gets murdered. McKinlay sets up a number of red herring suspects for the MC to shift through with complications coming from a powerful northeaster and love interests. Oh, and I forgot the dog who also plays his part in solving the crime. The plot threads are nicely tangled but get sorted in the end. 

Brownies and Broomsticks is the first of Cates' new series. Again, the MC is a new resident who moves to Savannah to help in her aunt and uncle's new bakery. Yes, artisan baking is a craft ... even when you don't pay a school an arm and a leg for the credentials. Complications here is the MC is introduced to her family's background as hereditary witches and love interests. In between baking scrumptious desserts, the MC tries to solve the murder of the "town bitch" when her uncle is the prime suspect. 

All of which, raises the question in my mind of where do these amateur sleuths find the time to detect. I don't do the 9-to-5, yet I have trouble keeping up with all my writing stuff -- and, I don't have any deadlines.

Neither Cates nor McKinlay need help writing scenes. Yeah, I'm sure they rewrite and rewrite, but the results hook. The books were both 2-AM-reads. If you want help writing scenes or just a check list to see if you covered the bases, C. S. Lakin recaps her blogs on writing that crucial first scene: Five Months on the First Scene. I thought it was worth printing out to underline and study. Even though my pig intro scene is liked by my preliminary readers.

Need a whole week's worth of blogs on writing?

Roni Loren's Fill Me In Friday runs them more regularly than I do. Here's the link to this week's selection.  There's some good stuff here. Came up to the computer in between fixing food sessions [farmer market strawberries] to find the computer still on Twitter. When I check my tweets, from this link and was absorbed until I had to got down and start the artichoke.

On a personal note.

The Poudre River Canyon is suffering from its fourth and largest forest fire in four weeks:

over 41,000 acres and 5% contained in spite

of five planes and a bunch of helicopters.

Where is the Northwest Coast rain when you need it?

I'm willing to give New Mexico the rains from the Mexican hurricanes.