What is a Cozy?

When a writer has been writing a while, he forgets that everyone may not be familiar with the terminology, even if the reader has had contact with the material. Though there is a blurring between the lines in both sub-genres and genres in general, I thought I’d just pop in and give my take on the elements of the cozy mystery. At a later time, I may come back to discuss suspense and how that differs.

Think of a cozy as just that, warm and fuzzy, feel-good. The sleuth in the story is generally an amateur, though some are professionals, many of whom are retired or have changed professions. The setting of the cozy is usually in a small town or community. It can be set in a city but, if it is, it’s probably confined to a small area with a related group of people. The cozy generally relies on humor during the solving of the crime (murder or other), a crime that happens early in the book and usually not graphically described. It is common for the crime to take place “off-camera,” and the heroine (and/or hero) arrive shortly after. The heroine is involved with the crime on a personal level somehow and usually bungles along while trying to solve the puzzle. The cast of characters often includes some quirky idiosyncratic friends and neighbors who help or hinder the heroine or simply add the delight factor.

The reader should be integrally involved in solving the crime, and the writer must supply all clues necessary to the solution, including some false ones, red herrings as David Fingerman describes in the blog below.

I have a series of cozy novellas debuting in March from Turquoise Morning Press. The first in the series, Buried in Briny Bay, introduces the two main characters, Roxie Turner and her sister, Trixie Frye. These two ladies, aged 42 and 54, are thrown into solving their first crime when Georgia Collins, Roxie’s nemesis of more than twenty years is found dead and buried in the town’s landfill.

Since the beginning, Roxie has been telling everyone who would listen she planned to kill the woman, even listing methods to accomplish it. Now people are dying around her and all of their deaths seem to point back to her. Helping the sisters in their crime solving is Greg Norris, Private Investigator, who becomes Roxie’s love interest in the stories.

Here’s a short excerpt:
Trixie groaned as she flopped on her living room sofa. “I’d never have guessed our town’s detectives could be so downright unpleasant.”

“Make that shitty.” Roxie sat in a side chair and crossed her arms. “I can’t believe our own brother took us in. And you were just about as bad. Thanks for getting us dragged in for two hours.”

“Look.” Trixie waved her finger in the air. “I was dragged in with you. It’s no fun being related to a cold-blooded killer.”

“I am not a killer.” Roxie voice quivered on the last word.

“Sorry.” Trixie kicked off her shoes. “I told you the detectives surprised me with how good they are—at the end, they even had me convinced.”

Roxie sagged against the chair back. “Sure I’ve thought of ways to kill Georgia for nigh on twenty years, but I could have done a lot better than dumping her in the landfill. Even throwing her in the Pamlico Sound like I suggested once. That would have been better. There’ve been a lot of bodies they’ve never found out there. It’s just a matter of watching the tide and the moon phase. Then there’s that area, you know the one off the point with all the sharp jutting rocks and the deep drop-off…”

“Roxie, too much information. Remember, Georgia’s dead with a capital ‘D.’” Trixie rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Who else would the police think did it? You had cause, that’s for sure, and you’ve even told the mayor how you planned to kill her. Everyone thought you were joshing, but now that someone’s actually murdered her, well, thinking you did it is a natural conclusion.”

“So how do we convince them otherwise, Trix? I don’t look good in yellow or stripes.”

Get caught reading a Turquoise Morning Press book!

TMP has a great offer for readers, a free TMP e-book of choice to anyone sending them a photo of you or a friend reading one of their books (including my short story in the latest release, Be Mine, Valentine). You can be reading it on an ereader. Just take or have someone snap a photo showing the cover page on the reader or the page of Chapter One (or however you want to do this creatively). More details here: http://tinyurl.com/4dgthzf


Mary O'Dell reading Renee Vincent's Raeliksen on Friday, January 28, 2011 at Karen's Book Barn in La Grange, Kentucky.

RFO-Relinquish, Fight, or Overcome

Last night as I dreamed, I realized that everything that happens to us depends on the way we perceive it. We can react in one of three different ways: 1) relinquish control even though we could affect the outcome, in other words, the cowards’ way out; 2) fight what's going to happen or 3) we can overcome it. Now I don't know about you but I would much prefer to overcome my obstacles than to relinquish control or fight against them. Think of it as making lemonade out of lemons.

How does this relate to our writing? How many of you have written for years, learned your craft, then submitted time and time again, without anything really to show for it? Stop for a minute. Maybe you’re doing the same thing over and over again but not elevating your craft in such a way that it's piques the editor’s curiosity and enthusiasm. Maybe it's time to try something new. Isn't a new year a great time to implement new strategies?

So, today fellow readers I challenge you to try something new in your writing, whether that be a new genre, writing a book in a different tense, or in first-person instead of third- person, identify something new to try with your writing and see if you get a better response than you have in the past.

I'm a firm believer that with enough determination and drive, anything can be accomplished. My mother used to tell me that I had more determination than anyone that she had ever met. I took that as a compliment and proceeded to be as determined as possible towards meeting my goals. I haven't always succeeded in what I want to do, but I believe truthfully that I’ve gone farther as a result of believing in myself. Only when I began to question whether or not I could do something that I falter.
My parting advice to you is to believe in yourself, constantly try to make yourself better, and never give up.

Living with Writing

Our guest today is Clark Lohr, mystery author of the book, Devil's Kitchen, soon to be released by Oak Tree Press, www.OakTreeBooks.com Welcome!


Our art won’t save us from addictions or failing brain chemistry. Get professional help for those; however, writing, like exercise, becomes its own kind of high. ~Clark Lohr

In my senior year in high school I asked a classmate what she was going to do for a living. She said she was going to be a harpist. Okay, I thought, that’s weird. There ain’t a lot of call for harpists out there. She became a harpist. They paid her to play a harp. I myself wanted to be a tough guy. I went to Vietnam. Oops. I’m still not a tough guy.

Years later, I’m reading Julia Cameron and doing what she suggests. I’m starting to write a novel. I fix on a quote from The Artist’s Way which is better known now: “Leap and the net will appear.”

So, I start, and my novel gets done and redone. Eventually, I get lucky. At least that’s what Sunny Frazier, crime writer and acquisitions editor for Oak Tree Press, told me when I asked her why she picked my novel out of the slush pile. Frazier said it was luck. Kismet.



If getting published all depends on luck, why write? One answer: Because we have to write. We have to express ourselves.

The authors of The Artists Way note few persons getting college art degrees continue to make art after graduation. Not many of your college art friends kept at it after graduation, either. You can bet it’s about the same with those who receive creative writing degrees.

Another gem from Art and Fear is a story about perfectionism stalling the work. A pottery teacher told one section of his class that their grade depended on one perfect pot. He told another section of students that their grade depended on the number of pots they made—on quantity, not quality. At the end of the course the quantity people had learned to make great pots. The quality people were still living in fear. Stories like that illuminate our predicaments. They help show us what to do to cope, to keep on, to see the scope of the task all artists experience.

If you’re considering college and thinking about a creative writing degree, I’d say go for a journalism degree instead. Journalism teaches fluency. Journalism teaches you how to write fast. You’ll also have company, and more likely will be writing in a classroom with a lot of other people who will instill you with energy.

I have a creative writing degree. It taught me neither true fluency in writing nor how to cope with the problems of being a writer while surviving the challenges of ordinary life. Most of the working writer friends I know and know about have either journalism degrees or degrees in something else altogether. My author friend Susan Cummins Miller is a geologist. Rocks. Well, she’s also written a string of crime fiction novels using her heroine, Frankie McFarlane, who is both a geologist and a detective.

About writing workshops: I’d say use them. Even if you’re still in high school, pay for workshops and go to them. Adult learners want information that’s to the point. Good writing workshops tend to be intense and focused. They’re also short. You learn a lot in one weekend. Your college creative writing professor has to string it all out over a semester. The people who teach writing workshops don’t.

I started my crime novel (Devil’s Kitchen, soon to be published by Oak Tree Press) in a writing workshop taught at a YMCA by Paul Fouliard, an ex-Marine and a novelist. He told us to, effectively, take the hill. He said he wanted us to have a novel underway by the next class meeting and he was talking about writing whole chapters. I just started writing.

Along the way, Fouliard mentioned that comparatively few people under forty years of age write a novel successfully. He cited lack of life experience, not ability.

If you’re under forty, don’t worry about it. Google legendary young novelists on the internet. You’ll find that literary fiction writers tend to be in their thirties and they have MFAs. Not every young writer goes that route. Google Susan Eloise Hinton or Arthur Rimbaud.

How do you piece a novel together? William Faulkner said that writing a novel is like trying to build a chicken coop in a hurricane. What does the structure of a successful story look like? It’s damn sure more complicated than Acts I, II and III.

Syd Field, in his book on Screenplay (cited below this article) gave us a model, step-by-step, for making a story that works. Today, writers will tell you there can be a problem with that: Everyone tries to write to Syd’s model and the writing lacks originality. Yes, but originality happens. You can veer off in the right direction and come up with a unique structure that works.

I suggest you look at Fields’ book, then play some films, use your pause button, and start watching how the writer makes it work, bit by bit. For example: In White Heat (classic noir, 1949, stars James Cagney) there’s a plot point where the good guy gets outed as an undercover cop by a gang member who has just come on the scene. The gang leader, James Cagney, a sociopath who’s already killed a couple of people in this movie, points a 12-gauge shotgun at the good guy. Hit the pause button. Ask yourself: What’s going to save the good guy? Hit the play button and find out. Then start thinking how you’ll adapt it to your own writing. Maybe you’ll decide to write a screenplay instead of a novel. Why not?


Good luck.

Clark Lohr


My Books for Learning About and Crafting Your Writing:

Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande. This novelist and writing teacher published her book in the 1930’s. She has a strong writing voice and good ideas. I came to believe that, if I put a picture of Dorothea Brande on my wall, her eyes would follow me around the room. She’s decisive. She’s tough. She knows who writers are. You don’t want Dorothea Brande chasing you down the street. She’s faced the blank page and won. She’s viable today. She lives through her words. Hear and act on Dorothea Brande’s advice. Things will get better.

The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron with Mark Bryan. This is a workbook for “discovering and recovering your creative self.” Published in the 1990’s, this book is about transforming yourself into someone who can and will create. Cameron inventories the expectations the world puts on us. Did your parents encourage you to make fiction writing your first priority in life? No? Neither did mine. Cameron gives us strategies for beating our own sloth, apathy and despair.

Art and Fear: Observations On The Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland. This is a thin but deep book about making art of all kinds. Although it’s concerned primarily with the visual arts, writers will recognize the problems and gain perspective.

In Film: Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting. We all want our book to go to movie. Syd Field wrote the granddaddy of how-to books about screenwriting. What does this have to do with novel writing? Syd Field teaches story and story structure. I don’t know any creative writers who don’t watch a lot of films. Films and books run together. They feed each other. We feed on them both.

On Crime: How to Write a Damn Good Mystery: A Practical Step-by-Step Guide from Inspiration to Finished Manuscript. James N. Frey is the author. He favors a Five-Act story structure. Frey claims that using the tools he explains and writing full time can get you a finished mystery novel in three to five months. I don’t doubt it.

Establishing Yourself Under a New Pseudonym

Oh, boy, does it feel strange to be a newbie all over again! After fourteen years of writing with friend and co-writer, Linda Campbell, I have set sail on a new solo voyage under the name Daryn Cross. Although I still have my rights to be called a member of the RWA Published Authors' Network and being on a first-named and friendship basis with some of the mega-stars of romance writing, I am, by virtue of no track record, considered to be "just another" beginning writer. On sites where I don't disclose all my writing history, many who have recently signed a contract, their first, with a small press or even medium press, or someone who is now agented and not yet contracted,will point out I seem to have the basics of writing down pretty well. :-) If not, maybe I ought to consider a career in car mechanics.

But, I will try extremely hard to remain humble, for "humility goeth before the fall." And I remember well the words one published writer told me when I was truly a beginner. "You never know who you're talking to, and you never burn bridges you may have to cross later on down the road."

Writing is a Business

I spent this afternoon reading up on medical practice management (don’t ask—I know it sound odd, but there was a reason). As I read those areas practice managers must master, I realized the processes weren’t that different from what a professional writer must use to master the business of writing. Here’s the list and how the two professions compare:

1. Running a Practice with Maximum Efficiency, Quality Patient Care and To Increase the Bottom Line

Writers have a “practice” in the sense that they have a business producing a commodity that can be sold to the end-user, the reader. The better the quality controls on the writing, such as critiquing, editing, and testing the market before submission, the better it is likely to sell and produce a profit.

2. Handling the Multiple Management Tasks of Financial, Operational, Managed Care and Personnel

A writer’s multiple management tasks consist of: the financial, which encompass most of a writer’s end-put activities; operational, what needs to be done to submit, close the deal track sales, and how to turn a profit after advertising, home office and public appearance expenses; managed care in writing would be publishing discounting; personnel would include any individuals hired by you to edit, advertise, provide administrative support, etc.

3. Measuring How Well the Practice is Doing. Reporting Meaningful and Practical Financial Data to Senior Management and/or Physicians

Now we’re back to tracking sales, then submitting ARCs for reviews, checking fan reaction via author pages, blogs, Facebook and other networking sites. Make sure to let the editor know what input you’re receiving.

4. Pre-collections and Post-Collections
Always make sure you keep the publisher honest about sales. This is where an agent really helps.

Okay, I admit there are some dissimilarities between medical practice management and the business of writing, but I think I have proven one thing. Writing is a business.

Writing Tip: So You Want a Book Trailer?

Book trailers are becoming more popular, and many writers from New York Bestselling authors to newly pubbed authors in small press are getting on the bandwagon. So, when should you produce or get someone to produce a book trailer for you? Here are my thoughts:

1.If you’re a newly pubbed author in small press, don’t do it. The chances of the video plummeting your book to the stellar heights of Number One bestseller are few and far between. They’re also very expensive. I had one published once, foolishly, for a book my co-writer believed in and couldn’t sell. We self-published it and put the trailer on our website. The company we used was great, and they gave us a deal. But the deal was $1000 for a thirty second spot (I think. Sometimes I can’t remember if that was my half of the payment or that was ours together). Due to the nature of all the details, it didn’t help.

2.It depends on the type of book you have and what you’re trying to convey. My own belief is that suspenseful books, whether they be straight suspense, horror, or paranormal, lend themselves better to a video.

3.Unless you work in video, don’t try to do it yourself. Again, IMHO, the trailers work better when there are actors in segments instead of a lot of writing and fade in/fade out still scenes.

4.If there aren’t any actors and you still want to make a trailer, use it for more than one book so you can get more bang for your buck.
Want to watch a good book trailer? Watch this one from Karen Rose posted on You Tube.