National Novel Writing Month has come and gone, the holidays
are over, and oddly, the world did not
end on December twenty-first. Most significantly, all the Christmas cookies are
finally gone, so, I decided it was time to return to reality.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my writing lately. I did
write most of another novel for kids in November. I still need to finish it as well as
work on editing two other works in progress. Thus, one of my New Year’s
Resolution is to try and work on these at least some every day. Sad to say, I’ve
only been partially successful. Sometimes the pull of Spider Solitaire is just
too powerful!
In the course of thinking about writing, I have been
considering trying to write a cozy mystery. For those of you unfamiliar with
the genre, cozies are similar to the stories written by Agatha Christie or like
Murder, She Wrote. Unlike
procedurals, the investigator is not a cop, but some regular person who has
some stake in figuring out the murder.
The main character is usually female and as far as I can
see, often lives someplace like New England. Inn keeping and catering seem to
be popular occupations, although I have found numerous other occupations represented
– Renaissance Faire re-enactors, quilters, antiques appraisers, event planners, newspaper writers, pizza
makers, bakers, knitters, stay-at-home moms, museum curators, house renovators,
bookstore owners, archeologists, etc. The list goes on and on. Often, the MC
has a side-kick. This is usually a best friend or some kind of relative. I
believe authors often try for quirky when they write the sidekick, but
unfortunately more often than not, they are just plain annoying. In addition to
a sidekick, frequently, the MC is married to or dating someone in law
enforcement. I suppose this is so they can be privy to all that information
that a real cop would never divulge to non-police personnel, especially their
wives or girlfriends.
Despite all these things, cozies are fun to read. Granted
some are so downright cozy they practically smother you in coziness, but there
is something comforting in reading about mundane people doing non-mundane
activities. The secret is to make it seem believable.
When I read a cozy, I evaluate it by the number of eye rolls
the story elicits. Mind you, I realize that if any innkeeper or caterer ran
into as many corpses as these characters do, their establishments would have
been shut down long ago, so you do have to suspend a certain amount of
disbelief. I can deal with that, but there are times when I find the characters
so unbelievable my eyes practically roll right out of my head. Some authors are
much better at making unbelievable behavior believable. I mean, how many real people
really feel compelled to investigate murders outside of the police? If you
suspected person A was a cold-blooded murderer, would you really follow them
all by yourself down dark alleyways into an abandoned building in the middle of
the night? I highly doubt it. Even cops have back-up. Yet, for the most part,
we don’t care overly much as long as the author can make it even the least bit
believable.
So, now I am in the process of reading multitudes of these
cozies written by as many different authors as I can find. Who knew there were
so many murders in small towns solved by quilters, caterers, and owners of
B&B’s!
Sadly, there is still no big news concerning my book. It may
be it just wasn’t meant to be, but I keep hoping!
