Despite all the cozy series available through both online and retail book sellers, there are still a lot of people who have no idea what a cozy mystery is. Books authored by Agatha Christie are probably the best and most recognized examples of cozy mysteries.
Also called "cozies", a cozy mystery is a sub-genre of the larger one known as crime fiction or mystery. In a cozy mystery:
Sex is all but nonexistent. What happens in the bedroom stays there.
There's a lack of blood and gore. If it does feature, then it's downplayed.
The overall tone is light, if not lighthearted. There might be puns!
Crime typically takes place in a community or small town.
The sleuth is an amateur with ties to some brand of the law.
If cozy mysteries were television shows, then you'd most likely find them on the Hallmark channel or some equally family-friendly television programming station. Some good examples are Murder She Wrote, Pie in the Sky, the Father Dowling Mysteries, or Matlock, although the latter was a criminal defense lawyer and not an amateur sleuth.
As Lieutenant Columbo would say: Oh, just one more thing....
My cozy mystery for NaNoWriMo is coming along nicely. I'm slightly ahead of the curve as far as daily word counts, and look forward to completing the book so I can move on to the next phase of seeing it in print.
Where do you get the ideas for your books?
It's something people ask writers all the time. The answers, in its most simplest form, is anywhere and everywhere. Most of the time ideas happen when we are not even looking for them.
From Mystery Lights to Short Story Collection
For example, on an early fall morning in 2013, I scrolled through my emails while waiting for my husband. He was undergoing physical therapy for a shoulder injury that ultimately ended his firefighter career.
One of those emails was a newsletter from The Moonlit Road, a website that tells "ghost stories, folktales, myths and legends from the dark backroads of the American South." This particular newsletter featured a story about the Brown Mountain Lights which led to this train of thought:
My paternal grandmother's maiden name was Brown.
Those Browns hailed from North Carolina.
What if this mountain was named for someone in that family?
What if the lights are ghost-related?
What if I wrote about it?
What if I wrote a story for each state in the Appalachians?
Sometimes the inspiration is much more literal, which is what happened to me just a couple of months ago. I was in Baltimore, Maryland to adopt a rescued gecko when I pulled over at a fast food restaurant to double check my GPS.
I noticed a zucchini vine trailing out from beneath the fence separating the parking lot from the residents next door. This sent the author neurons in my brain into overdrive. I wondered:
Who owns the zucchini who grow on the opposite side of the fence?
Is it the fast food company, because the gourds are on their property?
Is it the private residence, since the vine originated on their property?
What if someone entered a wayward zucchini in a contest and won?
What if the property owner lost the same contest because of it?
What if the deviant entrant wound up murdered as a result?
The next thing I knew, I was plotting out my next book: ONE SQUASHED VICTORY. It's my 2015 NaNoWriMo attempt. Follow Becky Muth Author Page on Facebook so you can keep keep up with my progress during the entire month of November.
If you're a reader, then I'm happy to answer your questions. And if you're a writer, then I'd love to hear where you find inspiration.
In the meantime check out this video about the Brown Mountain lights during a National Geographic shoot. Creepy isn't it?
