Writing a Cozy? Follow the Rules … And Mind Your Language / Author Penny Clover Petersen

Nancy Drew never cursed. She was always under duress in one manner or another, but she never let, even the occasional expletive, spill from her titian-colored head. In this week’s guest blog, author Penny Clover Petersen discusses what makes a cozy mystery, and the ongoing debate about the use of bad words.

Read like they are burning books!

Clay Stafford,
Founder Killer Nashville,
Publisher Killer Nashville Magazine

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Writing a Cozy? Follow the Rules … And Mind Your Language

By Penny Clover Petersen

I began my first novel when I was fifty-nine. Being an avid mystery lover, I had spent most of those fifty-nine years inventing puzzling scenarios for the most trivial occurrences and envisioning dark motives behind the most benign actions. Cookies for a teacher? They are no doubt laced with something in order to avoid the afternoon’s math test. A package delivered late? You know the mailman is up to something, but what?

Poison pen letters, tripping over bodies lying by the side of the road, murder, mayhem, blackmail, all of these fascinating ideas rolling around in my head had me wondering if I were to write a mystery, what would I write?

When the mood finally moved me to get to work I took to heart the adage “write what you know” and figured that I know family, cats and dogs, suburban living, and cozy mysteries. So I determined that a cozy mystery involving two sisters, a goofy mother, and a hormonally challenged dog was something I could achieve.

Now, writing cozies is a bit tricky. The rules are pretty well defined. The first two are actually almost carved in stone and I think that we must adhere to them if we want to call a mystery a cozy.

Number one is all violence will be off-stage. Cozy writers do not depict grizzly murders. Autopsies are avoided. We don’t have psychotic killers torturing hapless victims in gruesome detail. As with many cozy writers, my victims tend to be obnoxious people that no one much likes who are conked on the head and found by the side of the road.

Number two is, of course, sex. That, too, must be off-stage. There are no steamy love scenes, no kinky aberrations. If sex enters into the plot, it generally is glossed over with only the incidental reference to “incredibly tall, slim men with well-cut graying hair and eyes the color of smoky quartz under wire-rimmed glasses.” Perhaps adding “kind of bookish and sexy — quite the studly muffin.” If the studly muffin and the leading lady ever do get together, it is definitely behind closed doors!

Number three concerns foul language. Agatha Christie, the mother of the cozy, did not use any off-color language in her books. But neither did anyone else writing at that time. It wasn’t a part of the culture.

Today, I think this is one rule that can be tinkered with. I have spoken with a number of cozy writers and this is a stumbling block for many of us. We want our characters to be somewhat real and the use of “language” in society has certainly become looser. For instance, my own everyday speech is not chockfull of colorful invective, but I do occasionally throw out a word or two my mother would not approve.

So what is acceptable in a cozy written in 2015? Of the writers to whom I have spoken, many have main characters that use the S-word. Many feel a leading lady is allowed to say, “Oh Christ!” or the like. Damn, hell, and variations seem to be acceptable these days.

But what of, as they say, the F-bomb? Now I don’t advocate throwing it around like confetti, but I do feel there are appropriate times that it might be used. As my children could tell you, if they heard me scream f….., they would most certainly know that I am really, really mad or have gone completely around the bend. And I feel the same holds true in a cozy. A crazed killer saying, “Oh gosh, I think I have to kill you now,” does not have the dramatic effect as something much more strongly worded.

A friend and fellow author, Austin Camacho, suggests leaving the cursing to the peripheral characters — the crazies, the villains — and keeping the leading ladies ‘cozy’. I tend to agree with this point of view. But I think purists probably wouldn’t. And so the question is, just how much is too much — and is it still a cozy?

If you would like to read more about Penny Clover Petersen’s books please click here.

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Penny Clover Petersen’s first Daisy&Rose mystery, Roses and Daisies and Death, Oh My was released in December 2013 by Intrigue Publishing. In addition to writing, Penny enjoys spending time with her family, refurbishing old furniture, collecting stories and recipes for the ‘family cookbook’, and savoring new cocktail recipes. She loves historic homes and is a docent at Riversdale Mansion in Riverdale, MD. Her second novel, Roses Are Dead, My Love, will be released April 2015. Penny is currently at work on her third Daisy&Rose mystery. Visit her website at http://pennypetersen.com/

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(Have an idea for our blog? Then share it with our Killer Nashville family. With over 24,000 visits monthly to the Killer Nashville website, over 300,000 reached through social media, and a potential outreach of over 22 million per press release, Killer Nashville provides another way for you to reach more people with your message. Send a query to contact@killernashville.com or call us at 615-599-4032. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks to Maria Giordano, Will Chessor and author Tom Wood for his volunteer assistance in coordinating our weekly blogs. For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com or www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com)

A Cozy, Little Success Story 33 Years in the Making / Author Rosalyn Ramage

Sometimes an idea needs time to mature, or in the case of this week’s guest blogger Rosalyn Ramage, the idea needs to find a genre. I think most authors would agree that stories have to come out one way or another. How they are received is another matter. Ramage explains how her latest book took 33 years to see the light of day.

Happy Reading!

Clay Stafford,
Founder Killer Nashville,
Publisher Killer Nashville Magazine

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 A Cozy, Little Success Story 33 Years in the Making

By Rosalyn Ramage

It’s a done deal! Millicent’s Tower, Five Star Publishing, 2014. Mission accomplished! But wait a minute, I thought as I sat gazing at the book in front of me. Where did you come from, Millicent? Where have you been? What took you so long to get here? Memories began to flutter in . . .

The year was 1980. I had just received my college degree at Belmont College as an older student with children at home. During that time I had been fortunate enough to do some freelance writing, including the publication of two books of children’s poetry. I was on a roll!

Then, in 1981 our family went on vacation to Campobello Island in New Brunswick, Canada, just across the causeway from Lubec, Maine. We were there for a month, and while there, I wrote a book!

Actually, the main plot of the book had been floating around in my head for a while. I had had situations and characters in mind, but no specific names. As we had embarked on the trip, one of our pastimes was to create names for characters that would be in my book. We named them for places and signs that we saw along the way (like Moose when we saw a “Moose crossing” sign).

I had taken my manual typewriter and a ream of paper with me. My writing space was a small room at the back of the cottage with a fantastic view of Passamaquoddy Bay, looking toward Lubec. It was in that setting that Who? came into being. What, you might ask, is Who? That was the title I first gave my book. I called it Who? . . . as in “whodunit.”

Believe it or not, I accomplished my goal and returned to Nashville with a three-ring binder filled with pages for my book. After sharing it with friends and relatives, I met a literary agent who took a look at it. He reviewed the manuscript and returned it to me, saying, “I like the book, but, quite frankly, I don’t quite know what to do with it. It is family-centered, with children, but with adult topics and situations, like . . . dead bodies and . . . ‘language.’ ” He wished me well. All of this was in 1981.

My reaction to this rejection was to take it to my office, put it on a shelf, and forget about it. Life went on.

Then, 29 years after I had given up on my novel, my oldest grandson, who was in college, brought up the topic of Who? He said, “I’ve always heard people talk about Who? But I’ve never seen it myself. Could I read it sometime?”

Hmmmm. Let me see now. Just where had I dumped that dusty, musty manuscript so many years ago? Ah, yes. Here it is. I pulled it out, dusted it off, began to read … and I liked it. As a matter of fact, I liked it so much, I retyped it, added more characters and material, extended the storyline, and dared to ask for a critique at a conference of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) in the fall of 2011.

The gist of what my critiquer said was that she “really liked the story, but didn’t quite know what to do with it.” Sound familiar? It really wasn’t a hard-core adult book, she said, but it certainly wasn’t a children’s book. Young adult? Maybe.

And then she said the magical words: “I think what you have here is a cozy mystery.”

“A what?”

“A cozy mystery,” she said. Hmmm.

In my quick research on cozy mysteries, I found that my book had all of the attributes of a cozy mystery.

I was intrigued. So intrigued, in fact, that I signed up to go to another conference known as Killer Nashville, an annual conference geared especially for writers or would-be writers of various kinds of thrillers, mysteries and suspense.

Long story short, I decided to “pitch” my manuscript and, to my surprise, was asked by an editor at Five Star Publishing to submit my full manuscript for review. After a bit more preening, I submitted Who?, which, by now, had been renamed Millicent’s Tower.

And, in January 2013, I was informed by the editors at Five Star that they would take pleasure in publishing my book.

A long journey for a cozy mystery? You bet. But one I have enjoyed creating at every uncertain step of the way. I sincerely hope other writers will find my story encouraging as they pursue the journey for themselves.

If you would like to read more about Rosalyn Ramage’s books please click here.

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Rosalyn Ramage is the author of two books of children’s poetry entitled A BOOK FOR ALL SEASONS and A BOOK ABOUT PEOPLE. She is also the author of three middle grade mysteries entitled The TRACKS, The GRAVEYARD, and The WINDMILL. She is a retired elementary school teacher who enjoys writing poems and stories for readers of all ages…just for the fun of it! MILLICENT’S TOWER is her first book for a more mature audience. She and her husband Don split their time between their farm in Kentucky and their home in Nashville, Tennessee. She invites you to visit her website at rosalynrikelramage.weebly.com.

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(Have an idea for our blog? Then share it with our Killer Nashville family. With over 24,000 visits monthly to the Killer Nashville website, over 300,000 reached through social media, and a potential outreach of over 22 million per press release, Killer Nashville provides another way for you to reach more people with your message. Send a query to contact@killernashville.com or call us at 615-599-4032. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks to Maria Giordano, Will Chessor and author Tom Wood for his volunteer assistance in coordinating our weekly blogs. For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com)