Category: cozy mystery

Guest Author – Kathy Manos Penn

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I’m a Cozy Mystery Writer because . . .

Would you believe me if I said it was an instance of serendipity? Or several instances? As an English major, I did a brief stint as a high school English teacher and then moved on to a banking career where I became the go-to person for writing—no matter my actual job title. Trust me, they never let me near the money!  Maybe that was the first instance of serendipity.

While I was still ensconced in that career, the next serendipitous moment occurred. I was inspired to write a guest column for a local weekly paper and before I knew it I was producing “The Ink Penn” every week. 

I knew I enjoyed my corporate writing, but this was different. I’d found my passion, so I started a weekly blog. When I retired, I published a collection of my columns and then a book that grew out of the blogs written by my dog. Don’t ask how.  It just happened.

I was seeking help in marketing a second dog book when a consultant uttered the words, “You know, I think you should write a cozy mystery.” My reaction? “Who me? What do I know about plots or mysteries?” Except it turns out I know quite a bit.  After all, I’ve read two-three books a week my whole life, mostly mysteries. 

How did I happen to talk to the one person who would see that potential in me? Once again, I’d call it a stroke of serendipity. Together, we ticked off a list of ingredients for my cozy—a list that represented my personality, my sense of humor, my writing style, and my likes.

  1. Be set in England to suit my Anglophile tastes
  2. Include a cat and a dog—Better yet, the main character can converse with her pets
  3. Have a more mature main character—not someone in their twenties or thirties.

From there, I followed the adage to write what you know. Like me, Leta Petkas Parker is Greek. She’s a retired banker, an avid reader, a word nerd, and a good cook. Unlike me, she’s a widow.  My husband hasn’t yet forgiven me for that detail and keeps wanting to know when I’m going to bring him back to life. I keep telling him he is NOT Henry Parker, but he’s not buying it.

And there you have it. Leta, Dickens the dog, and Christie the cat move from Atlanta to the fictional village of Astonbury in the Cotswolds to start a new life. They make new friends, have new adventures, and—of course—find a dead body. Whiskers, Wreaths & Murder, Book Three in the Dickens & Christie mystery series is sure to put you in the mood for shifting into the holiday season. Enjoy!

Whiskers, Wreaths & Murder

Christmas in the Cotswolds. Three wise women. Two furry friends. One dead body. Will they unwrap the killer?  Or become the latest victims?

Leta and her friends are busy preparing for the Tree Lighting on the Village Green. The children hang ornaments, the choir sings, and the Earl of Stow flips the switch to set the tree ablaze with lights.

What could go wrong?

Plenty when there’s a new Earl in town. The beloved elderly Earl passed away months ago, and his American grandson has arrived to claim his title and inheritance. And he has plans—big plans.

The village is rife with rumors about the goings-on at Astonbury Manor.

Add a tragic accident and a grieving family—and the season is off to a rocky start. Can the village pull together to chase away the dark mood? Only if the mystery surrounding the accident can be solved.

Leave it to the Little Old Ladies’ Detective Agency and their four-legged sidekicks Dickens & Christie. Fresh off investigating a murder at the Fall Fête, they’re once again on the case.

Amazon Link for Whiskers, Wreaths & Murder https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08FRTQP7F

Amazon Series Link https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B085FSHQYW?ref_=dbs_p_mng_rwt_ser_shvlr&storeType=ebooks

AUTHOR BIO

Picture Kathy Manos Penn sitting serenely at her desk surrounded by her four-legged office assistants. Happily retired from corporate America, she’d never considered being an author until a friend suggested she write a cozy mystery.

As a child, she took a book everywhere—to family dinners, to doctors’ offices, and of course to bed. Years later, a newspaper article inspired her to put pen to paper and submit her thoughts to the editor. Before she knew it, she was writing weekly columns and blogs—in addition to her demanding day job. Then came a book co-written with her dog. As she says, “Doesn’t everyone do that?”

Now, she’s writing cozy animal mysteries featuring a dog and cat who converse with their owner. If a dog can write a book, surely animals can communicate. Naturally, her office assistants help with the dialogue. And, yes, they’re angling to be listed as co-authors.

Find Kathy on these social media sites:

Website:https://kathymanospenn.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KathyManosPennAuthor/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kathymanospennauthor/

Guest Blogger – Lois Winston

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Killing Two Birds with One Stone

By Lois Winston

When I began writing A Sew Deadly Cruise, the ninth book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series, I set myself two separate tasks. First, I thought it was high time I gave readers some additional background about Zachary Barnes, Anastasia’s love interest. Zack is introduced in Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in the series, as Anastasia’s new tenant. A photojournalist, he’s looking to move from Manhattan to a quieter location in the suburbs where he can work in his darkroom without crazy neighbors suspecting he’s running a meth lab out of his apartment. The apartment above Anastasia’s garage provides the perfect location for him.

Almost immediately Anastasia suspects Zack’s career as a photojournalist is cover for a more covert government gig with one of the alphabet agencies. After all, when he’s not traveling back and forth to Washington, D.C., he’s flying off to questionable locations full of political and social unrest. Not to mention, he’s got a badass gun! Was he really photographing lemurs and pochards in Madagascar, or is he there for other reasons?

Of course, Zack denies he’s a spy, but wouldn’t any spy deny he’s a spy? So, is he, or isn’t he? Neither Anastasia nor my readers know at this point. Other than mentioning Zack’s brief marriage twenty years earlier, I’ve never delved further into his background. This all changes in A Sew Deadly Cruise when I finally reveal more about Zack’s history—or at least a substantial part of it.

In addition, for some time now I’ve been itching to write a locked-room mystery. A year ago, while on a cruise up to Canada with my husband—pre-pandemic—I began plotting a murder on a cruise ship, an ideal location for a locked-room mystery. However, to write a truly locked-room mystery, I needed to find a reason to keep the ship’s passengers from disembarking at any scheduled ports of call. Covid-19 hit as I was writing the book, but I certainly wasn’t going to use a pandemic or even an outbreak of norovirus, no matter how common they are on cruise ships.

How would Anastasia investigate a murder if passengers were all confined to their rooms due to illness? And really, who wants to read a humorous cozy mystery with characters suffering from gastrointestinal issues? Where’s the humor in that? Any reader with a weak stomach would be running for the porcelain throne!

I was at a point in my plot where I had to make a major decision about the story. Since I really, really wanted to keep my passengers stuck on the ship, I started hunting around the Internet for stories about stranded cruise liners, searching for a plausible excuse to keep the ship from being allowed to dock at any of its scheduled ports. Of course, I’m going to keep you in suspense, but I did find the perfect solution for keeping everyone onboard the ship but not confined to their cabins due to illness.

A Sew Deadly Cruise

An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 9

Life is looking up for magazine crafts editor Anastasia Pollack. Newly engaged, she and photojournalist fiancé Zack Barnes are on a winter cruise with her family, compliments of a Christmas gift from her half-brother-in-law. Son Alex’s girlfriend and her father have also joined them. Shortly after boarding the ship, Anastasia is approached by a man with an unusual interest in her engagement ring. When she tells Zack of her encounter, he suggests the man might be a jewel thief scouting for his next mark. But before Anastasia can point the man out to Zack, the would-be thief approaches him, revealing his true motivation. Long-buried secrets now threaten the well-being of everyone Anastasia holds dear. And that’s before the first dead body turns up.

Craft projects included.

Buy Links

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3fwHR7X

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/a-sew-deadly-cruise

Nook: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-sew-deadly-cruise-lois-winston/1137427499?ean=2940162697930

Apple iBooks: https://books.apple.com/us/book/a-sew-deadly-cruise/id1526052822

USA Today bestselling and award-winning author Lois Winston writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense, chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and nonfiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name. Kirkus Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” In addition, Lois is a former literary agent and an award-winning craft and needlework designer who often draws much of her source material for both her characters and plots from her experiences in the crafts industry.

Website: www.loiswinston.com

Newsletter sign-up: https://app.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/z1z1u5

Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers blog: www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com

Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/anasleuth

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Anasleuth

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/722763.Lois_Winston

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/lois-winston

Guest Author – Tara Lush

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Write What You Know (And always listen to your best friend)

By Tara Lush

When I first started writing fiction six years ago, I turned to romance. It was a genre that I’d read and loved — along with mystery and true crime, of course. When I told my oldest friend about my plan to write a steamy novel, she scrunched up her face.

“Why aren’t you writing crime fiction?”

It was an excellent question. I’ve been a newspaper and wire service journalist in Florida for two decades, with many of those years devoted to the weird, the horrific, and the criminal. I’ve covered many of the state’s biggest crime stories. High-profile ones such as Casey Anthony and Trayvon Martin. Lesser-known murderers who had abducted children and those who attacked fellow citizens in a drug-induced haze. I’ve also covered eleven mass shootings (including Parkland and Pulse) and witnessed thirteen executions in Florida’s death chamber.

“Pfft. Why would I write crime fiction?” I asked my friend. “It’s too depressing. Too much like my day job. I want to do something different. My muse is telling me to write about sex.”

And yet, my muse told me to write a romantic suspense for my first novel. I moved on from there, writing contemporary romance and erotic romance. And while I had some measure of success — a RITA finalist book in 2018 — it never felt a hundred percent right, either.

In 2019, I was on a trip to Vermont and sitting around my best friend’s house. I was musing aloud about my next steps for my fiction career. Self-publishing contemporary romance was increasingly difficult and competitive, I told her, and writing the happy-ever-after between the couple wasn’t as satisfying as it had been in previous years. I wanted to tell a story about justice, but with humor and nuance.

I’d recently finished a series about couples in a quirky Florida town, and let’s just say the eccentricities of the characters weren’t resonating with romance readers. I was frustrated.

“What about a mystery novel?” my friend asked.

I mulled this over for the entire month of August while I was on a monthlong vacation. I’d been reading Kathy Reichs’ Deja Dead, and although I loved it, I couldn’t imagine myself writing something so dark. There was the matter of the day job trauma, after all. But what if I could write something softer, something with a little romance and a twisty murder… something gentle.

A cozy mystery, perhaps?

While sitting in a café in Quebec City and drinking the best espresso I’d ever had, I sketched an outline for my cozy. I used my experience as a crime reporter to plot the murder. First I chose a victim. Then I chose a murderer. I worked backwards with the details and clues, thinking about all the police reports I’d read over the years, all the news conferences I’d been to, and all the cops I’d chatted up. Suddenly everything made sense.

You know those wooden puzzle boxes, the ones that seem so hard to open? That’s what my brain felt like. Each clue, each detail, unlocked something inside my creative soul in a way that romance didn’t. I was able to blend my quirky characters and my love of a Florida setting with a murder and a romantic subplot. Justice as an HEA was more alluring than a fictional marriage proposal.

What was this sorcery?

That fall, I wrote my cozy mystery and in March of this year, sold it to Crooked Lane Books.

The lesson here is to always listen to your best friend. And perhaps, listen to what your muse is whispering.

Barista Lana Lewis’s sleuthing may land her in a latte trouble as Tara Lush launches her debut mystery series.

When Lana Lewis’ best — and most difficult — employee abruptly quits and goes to work for the competition just days before the Sunshine State Barista Championship, her café’s chances of winning the contest are creamed. In front of a gossipy crowd in the small Florida town of Devil’s Beach, Lana’s normally calm demeanor heats to a boil when she runs into the arrogant java slinger. Of course, Fabrizio “Fab” Bellucci has a slick explanation for jumping ship. But when he’s found dead the next morning under a palm tree in the alley behind Lana’s café, she becomes the prime suspect.

Even the island’s handsome police chief isn’t quite certain of her innocence. But Lana isn’t the only one in town who was angry with Fabrizio. Jilted lovers, a shrimp boat captain, and a surfer with ties to the mob are all suspects as trouble brews on the beach.

With her stoned, hippie dad, a Shih Tzu named Stanley, and a new, curious barista sporting a punk rock aesthetic at her side, Lana’s prepared to turn up the heat to catch the real killer. After all, she is a former award-winning reporter. As scandal hangs over her beachside café, can Lana clear her name and win the championship — or will she come to a bitter end?

Preorder here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/667052/grounds-for-murder-by-tara-lush/9781643856186/

Tara Lush is a journalist with The Associated Press. Her debut cozy mystery, GROUNDS FOR MURDER, will be published Dec. 8. learn more about her and her books here:

https://tamaralush.com/coffee-lovers-mystery-series-2/

The Year of Uncertainty by Karen Shughart

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For many of us this has been a year of uncertainty, a difficult year, and a year we could never have imagined, one that took us completely by surprise and rocked our universe. For my husband and me it has meant almost no in-person contact with our children. Our son and daughter-in-law live on the West Coast, my husband and I live north of the Finger Lakes on Lake Ontario,  and although we spent time over the summer with our daughter who lives in New Jersey, she’s started back teaching. We have no idea when we’ll be able to visit with any of them again.

Zoom meetings have become part of our lives. Truth be told, it’s not a great way to mourn the death of a beloved sibling, celebrate several new births, or the milestone of a cousin’s 70th birthday.  We do it; we have no choice, but it’s been much harder than giving up dining out at restaurants or attending live cultural performances.

On the professional end, book talks and signings, and a conference for readers of mysteries where I was to be a panelist, were all canceled because of Covid-19, shortly after my second mystery was launched. Appointments for yearly check-ups and screenings have also been canceled and rescheduled, more than once.

But despite the uncertainty and sadness, there have been bright spots: The babies and birthday mentioned above, the support of friends when we were mourning the death of my sibling; the outdoor, safe distancing gatherings of a small group of us who are bonded not by blood but by heart; a cooking video on YouTube with me preparing a recipe from one of my books. And we do get to speak with and see our children on FaceTime and at family Zoom gatherings.

In early April we adopted Nova, a tiny Blue Tick Beagle, who captured our hearts from the moment we saw her photo at the shelter. A gentle, easy going and loving dog, she also is spunky and stubborn, qualities that have stood her in good stead, given the horrible neglect and abuse she suffered before becoming part of our family. Five months have passed, and Nova is a happy, healthy, increasingly confident and secure dog, just as we had hoped. It was the virus that brought us together.

To deal with the anxiety I feel because of these surreal times, I’ve been listening to guided meditation CDs, about 20 minutes daily; it’s helped. As has writing in a journal, giving voice to thoughts and feelings about all the chaos in our world. But I also write down ten things each day for which I’m grateful. Poetry and classical music, always part of my life, have assumed a greater role, calming and centering me.

Most of us have heard the old saw, “this too shall pass,” but sometimes it’s not all that easy to believe. I think it will happen, eventually, but our world, both big and small, will be changed forever.  Hopefully, when it does, we’ll find strength to pick up the pieces and move on.

Guest Blogger – Sally Carpenter

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New Books For Strange Times

I’d like to thank Paty Jager and the ladies of mystery for allowing me a guest post. It’s been a while since I was a regular contributor on this blog, and much has happened in the meantime.

 The pandemic has not affect me as much as others. Fortunately I work an essential job (newspaper), so I’m still commuting to my day job. Many of my fellow employees are working from home, so those of us who are still in the office have plenty of space to move around safely.

As a writer, I’m at home much of the time anyway, and I’ve put the time to good use. I reorganized files and did some rearranging to make my home more comfortable. Little changes, but effective.

And I’ve gone gun ho on the writing.

I hadn’t written a Sandy Fairfax mystery in several years, so I reread the older books to get up to speed on the character. I found grammatical and continuity errors as well as more cuss words than necessary. Ouch! How embarrassing. With permission of my publisher, I took the opportunity to edit the older books. I’m fixing the mistakes, cleaning up the language, and reworking awkward passages for a better read. With Print On Demand technology, all new print and ebooks purchased going forward will have the changes. So far “The Sinister Sitcom Caper” is finalized. “The Cunning Cruise Ship Caper” and “The Quirky Quiz Show Caper” should both be ready in a month or two.

Once all the old books are corrected, I can focus on the next Sandy book. The working title is “The Cryptic Christmas Caper.” Sandy is the emcee of the Miss North Pole Pageant, where the contestants are dropping like snowflakes.

I launched a new book in June, the second in my Psychedelic Spy retro-cozy series set in 1967. “Hippie Haven Homicide” follows the further adventures of actress Noelle McNabb as she works with a super secret spy organization, SIAMESE (Special Intelligence Apparatus for Midwest Enemy Surveillance and Espionage). This time her cat, Ceebee, is part of the action.

In the 1960s, the CIA had a project called Acoustic Kitty. The plan was to implant a cat with a microphone, using its tail to hold a wire for transmission. The cat would wander around parks and embassies where spies met to talk. Nobody would notice a stray cat. The real-life project went nowhere, but the idea was too good to pass up.

So I made Ceebee the acoustic cat. The microphone is inside a metal collar around the cat’s neck. Noelle and agent Destiny King are inside a nearby van, listening in. As you might imagine, felines are a bit unpredictable, even spy cats.

While SIAMESE is chasing an enemy agent, a busload of counterculture hippies invade Noelle’s staid town of Yuletide, Indiana. This plot point was inspired by the International Society of Krishna Consciousness, better known as the Hare Krishnas, the orange-robed devotees who were hung out around airports and large cities to chant and pass out brochures on their beliefs. The 1960s saw an explosion of new spiritual ideas: Vatican II, the Jesus People, contemporary Christian music, Transcendental Meditation, communes and ISCKON.

My sect is SPARK: Spiritually Pure And Radiant Kin. Their guru is the Wise One, an elderly leader who rarely appears in public. First Sage handles the day-to-day operations of the sect. He also rigorously guards the members from “contamination of the material world.” The cult members clash with the police chief and residents of Yuletide. The situation worsens when one of the SPARK members is found dead. The police chief calls it a drug overdose. Noelle has her suspicions and investigates on her own with the help of a newspaper reporter, Trevor Spellman.

Noelle uses her acting skills to go undercover to both find a spy and solve a murder. Meanwhile, she babysits her siblings, works with an anxious bride-to-be who’s buying clothes for the bridal party, and digs out secrets in the McNabb family tree. All in a day’s work for a cozy sleuth.

So happy reads to all. If you want to stay abreast of my writing projects, follow me at facebook.com.Sally.Carpenter.54, or my website at sandyfairfax.com, or email scwriter@earthlink.net.

Sally Carpenter is native Hoosier living in southern California. She has a master’s degree in theater and a creative writing award from Indiana State University.

She also has a Master of Divinity and a black belt in tae kwon do.

She’s written six books for Cozy Cat Press: four in the Sandy Fairfax Teen Idol series (including 2012 Eureka! Award nominee The Baffled Beatlemaniac Caper) and two books in the Psychedelic Spy retro-series.

She’s contributed short stories to three anthologies and penned chapter three of the CCP group mystery Chasing the Codex.

To atone for killing characters on paper, she writes the Roots of Faith column for the Acorn Newspapers (theacornonline.com).