Nancy's Notes From Florida

Writing the Cozy Mystery – Howdunit

August 2, 2021

When writing a cozy mystery, you need to decide upon crime scene details even though interpersonal relations, and not forensics, are your story’s focus. The murder might even be off scene, but you’ll still have to determine how it happened.

Writing the Cozy Mystery - Howdunit

In Trimmed to Death, the story begins at a farm festival bake-off contest, which my hairstylist sleuth Marla Vail enters as a contestant. But I was stymied regarding the setting because our city’s fairs were held at athletic fields or local parks. I was telling this to my manicurist when she suggested Bedner’s Farm as a possible model for my story. The next day, my husband and I drove north to visit this farm in Boynton Beach. See my post for a report on this visit. The varied structures and grounds were ideal for my purposes, but I’d move my fictional site nearer to Marla’s hometown.

Now what? I had to select a victim. Spoiler alert!

After looking up farm festivals online, I decided my story would include a live scavenger hunt with the prize going to the guest who collected all of the stamps. Francine Dodger is the final target of the festival’s Find Franny game. Unfortunately, she is slated to die.

Next, consider the five Ws to expand the details.

Who ends up dead? Francine is the victim.

Where is she killed? In the strawberry field. How does she arrive there? Is she lured on purpose, or it is a crime of opportunity? Did the killer follow her? Determine Where-dunit.

 

strawberry plants

How does she die? Will it look like an accident or right away be clear it’s a homicide? Water-filled canals line the U-pick rows. She could be drowned in a ditch. Or she can fall down a silo and smother in the grain. But what would make her climb up there in the first place? Or maybe we should run her over by a tractor.

What knowledge does the killer need? If the murder involves an equipment accident, it’ll have to be someone who knows how to operate the machinery. Ditto the hazards inside a silo. You don’t want to point the finger at a particular suspect like the farmer, because it’s too obvious. Maybe give one of the other characters a secret history of working on a farm or of selling agricultural machinery if you go this route.

If you poison a victim, who has knowledge about the type of poison plus has access to it? Is it fast-acting enough for the circumstances, or do you need a slower more insidious death? What are the particular symptoms? In a cozy mystery, we want to avoid anything messy or too graphic. 

When does it happen? Think about not only about the time of death, but also why not a week or a month ago? Why NOW? What happened to trigger the killer at this point in time?

How does the killer get away? Does he have blood on his clothes? Are his shoes wet or muddy? Is he able to blend back into the crowd at the farm festival?

Now let’s throw a wrench into the works. What if it’s a case of mistaken identity? The murderer thought he had killed one woman, but he got somebody else who was similarly attired. How will he react upon seeing his intended victim alive and well? This leads to another set of problems. It means he can’t see the victim’s face before he kills her, or he’ll realize it’s the wrong person. So again, we go back to Howdunit?

Once you figure out these details, you’ll have to determine how your amateur sleuth stumbles across the dead body. And this is when the story actually begins.

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Previous posts on this topic:

Writing the Cozy Mystery – Whodunit
Writing the Cozy Mystery – Whydunit

Note: This post topic originally appeared in Feb. 2017.

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Writing the Cozy Mystery – Whydunit

July 27, 2021

When writing a cozy mystery, you need to identify the victim and then figure out who has something to gain from this person’s death. It can be friends, relatives, or colleagues. Give each person a secret that may or may not provide a motive for murder.

Writing the Cozy Mystery - Whydunit

Next figure out how these people relate to each other. Imagine a spider web. Put the murder victim in the center circle. The spokes coming from the center are the suspects. These spokes have branches that are their motives. Then connect these people to each other like a web. If you want to see this web of deceit illustrated, pick up a copy of my book, Writing the Cozy Mystery.

Here are examples from Trimmed to Death to show you how it’s done. Hairstylist Marla Vail enters a bake-off contest at a local farm during a fall festival. She finds a dead body face-down in the u-pick strawberry field. Spoiler Alert!

Tally Riggs, Marla’s best friend, met Becky Forest at a local historical museum. Becky told Tally about the bake-off, who invited Marla to participate with her. Here is Becky in her office.

Becky Forest in Trimmed to Death

Becky, a scientist, is a cookbook author and curator of the museum. She studies plant remains of ancient peoples, including early Florida food practices. Every time Becky has a new cookbook out, she’s a guest on Chef Raquel Hayes’ TV show.

Raquel Hayes in Trimmed to Death

Raquel, a judge at the bake-off contest and a TV chef, did something in the past that could cause a scandal. Francine Dodger recognizes her on TV and threatens to spill her secret.

Francine, a contestant at the bake-off, is a food magazine editor. While researching an article on the farm, she uncovers something that could ruin the owners’ reputation.

Zach Kinsdale, eldest brother of four siblings who run the family farm, hasn’t told his two brothers and sister Janet about this looming disaster.

Janet is married to Tony, who runs an import-export business. He sells his imported olive oils to Zach for the farm’s marketplace. But Janet suspects something is unethical about her husband’s business. She organized the bake-off since her husband’s company is a festival sponsor.

Tony Winters in Trimmed to Death

Tony, Janet’s husband, is worried about an exposé that Francine has mentioned. He’s also concerned about Tristan Marsh, pastry chef at The Royal Palate and a judge at the show. Tristan has been making inquiries that concern him. Then there’s Alyce Greene, a blogger who supports the farm-to-table movement. She has been troublesome as well.

Alyce is a contestant at the bake-off. She’s married to Jon, a food truck operator. Jon got a loan to start his business from Alyce’s brother, Steve Madison. Steve, an investment advisor, manages Tony’s accounts.

And so on. You see how these people are interrelated. It helps when the puzzle pieces fit together as a whole, but this process may take a while. In the meantime, allow your subconscious to stew on your characters until story magic happens. The connections will pop into your brain. It’s a joyful moment when this occurs.

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If you missed my previous post on this topic, go here: Writing the Cozy Mystery – Whodunit

NOTE: This post topic originally appeared in Feb. 2017.

Next comes Writing the Cozy Mystery – Howdunit.

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Writing the Cozy Mystery – Whodunit?

July 23, 2021

During the Discovery phase of your novel, which I discuss in my post on Five Stages of Writing, you’ll begin formulating the characters. If you’re writing a mystery series, you may already know the protagonists and recurrent characters. So now you have to determine the suspects that are specific to your WIP (work-in-progress).

Writing the Cozy Mystery - Whodunit

As a plotter and not a pantser, I’ll create these characters before I begin writing. This means knowing their goals, motivations, and conflicts as in Debra Dixon’s excellent text on the subject. I’ll assign each person a secret with a motive for murder. At this stage, I may not know which one is the killer because it could be any of them. Or, the person I pick to be the killer might turn out later to be a red herring.

Here’s an example of how I develop my characters. This guy is one of three judges for a bake-off contest in Trimmed to Death.

Round One

Alton Paige, food critic, has a pudgy face and a rotund figure that reminds Marla of a dog. He’s a bit of a philanderer. Alton extorts money from restaurant owners in return for a good rating.

Oops, I have an Alton and an Alyce, one of the contestants. Watch out for similar names when creating your characters. I will change the judge’s name. In the next round, I fill in his secrets and start working on his relationships to the other characters.

Carlton Paige in Trimmed to Death

Round Two

Carlton Paige, 44, food critic, has a pudgy face and a rotund figure that reminds Marla of a dog. He’s a bit of a philanderer. Carlton accepts gifts from restaurateurs. In return, he gives them a high rating but only if warranted. The word to describe him would be smarmy. His wife, Sally, who accompanies him on his food jaunts, spends most of her spare time at the gym. She’s always criticizing his lack of restraint in eating…and in other things. Since she’s having an affair with her personal trainer, she overlooks his marital transgressions. Secretly he has an inferiority complex, being the younger brother of three siblings and on the plump side even as a kid. He strives for recognition. Food has been his means of consolation. He’s worked his way up in journalism and aspires to be editor of the entertainment section. Carlton’s reputation is all important to him, and he resents the attention being given to upstart bloggers like Alyce Greene (a contestant in the bake-off). Her blog is eroding his ratings and putting his job in jeopardy. He has to learn self-respect in order to refuse bribes and move ahead in his career…or to realize his worth in his current role.

Alyce Greene in Trimmed to Death

Round Three

Carlton Paige, 44, food critic, has a pudgy face and a rotund figure that reminds Marla of a pug breed of dog. He’s a philanderer whose sensual attitude in life appeals to women. Carlton accepts gifts from restaurateurs. In return, he gives them a high rating but only if warranted. The word to describe him would be smarmy. His wife, Sally, who accompanies him on his food jaunts, spends most of her spare time at the gym. She’s always criticizing his lack of restraint in eating…and in other things. Secretly he has an inferiority complex, being the younger brother of three siblings. He strives for recognition. Food has been his means of consolation. He’s worked his way up in journalism and aspires to be editor of the entertainment section. But this won’t happen unless he gains readers. He resents the attention being given to upstart bloggers like Alyce. Her blog is eroding his ratings and putting his job in jeopardy. What will he do to protect his reputation and his readership?

Sally Paige, Carlton’s wife, knows Francine Dodger, another contestant, from the gym. When Carlton complains to her about Alyce, he suggests Sally should discredit her to Francine. But Sally hesitates to approach Francine because the food magazine publisher knows about Sally’s affair with her personal trainer. And while she overlooks her husband’s marital transgressions because she’s unfaithful as well, she still loves Carlton. How far will Sally go to protect her husband and her marriage?

Francine Dodger in Trimmed to Death

You see how each round adds another layer? These people will come alive when they walk onstage for the first time. I don’t bother with long biographies. I’ll see how they move and speak and act when I meet them on the page. What matters now are their motives for murder. If you want to get a better handle on their physical descriptions, search for images online at the royalty-free sites.

After you have a profile on each character, it’s time to connect them to each other. These interrelationships are crucial for a cozy mystery, because the focus of this subgenre is on personal connections among the characters rather than on forensic details or police procedure. More on this next time in Writing the Mystery – Whydunit?

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NOTE: This post topic was originally published in Feb. 2017

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Book Collections

July 13, 2021

Book collections take up a lot of space, especially when they’re print books. If you have a large number of books, you may stack them haphazardly or sort them into alphabetical order by author or perhaps by genre. I prefer the latter method. 

Book Collections

If you’ve been hearing from me more sparsely these days, it’s because I’m busy polishing Styled for Murder before sending it to my editor. I’m also preparing the next box set prior to formatting. And I’ve been busy with household projects. One of these was getting our book collection into some semblance of order.

We had a long wait for our family room bookcase. Once it arrived, the top piece was cracked, and we had to wait a month for a resolution. Now it’s been fixed, mounted onto the bottom, and filled with our treasured volumes. It’s a beautiful piece of furniture.

Bookcase Family Room

The arrival of these shelves prompted a disgorgement of the five remaining unpacked cartons in our garage. These contained nonfiction reference books and classic literature. After placing these books on the shelves, a bit of space remained for my overflow of hardcover genre editions. And yes, I dedicated one shelf to books by my favorite author…Moi.

My mystery collection fit onto these shelves in the master bedroom. I had to double layer the paperbacks to get them all in.

Bookcase Mysteries

Romance novels have a bookcase of their own in the guest bedroom. These also necessitated double layers. Now anyone who stays here will have some racy reads if they can’t sleep.

Bookcase Romances

Outside in the hall, there’s an alcove where we fit this little piece. It holds my young adult fiction including Harry Potter and Alex Rider series. You’ll also find a few Nancy Drew books in there along with some classics and some more modern reads.

Bookcase Hall

Lest you think we’d forgotten the young children, we have a bookcase filled with kids’ books upstairs in the single guest bedroom and more downstairs on a shelf accessible to our grandson. Hopefully he’ll enjoy storytelling hour when he can sit still long enough to listen.

I also was lucky to fit this bookcase into our kitchen for my cookbooks. It’s a lot handier to look up a recipe this way than when these books were mashed in with the rest of our collection.

Bookcase Kitchen

I love being surrounded by books. They’re my comfort zone, and while I read on the Kindle as well, I’m always afraid somehow those files will vanish. Not so the books on my shelves. They are here to gather dust and to feed my soul until they become part of our legacy.

How do you arrange the books in your place?

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New Mystery Release – Box Set Volume Two

July 6, 2021

I am excited to announce the release of The Bad Hair Day Mysteries Box Set Volume Two: Books 4-6!

Bad Hair Day Mysteries Box Set Volume Two

Copyright © 2021 by Nancy J. Cohen
Published by Orange Grove Press
Digital ISBN: Digital ISBN: 978-1-952886-17-1
Cover Design by The Killion Group, Inc.
Digital Layout by www.formatting4u.com

Meet Marla Shore, a Florida hairstylist and salon owner with a knack for styling hair and solving crimes. In this trio of adventures, Marla helps her ex-spouse solve a murder, searches for her missing pet-loving neighbor, and stumbles across the body of a rival hairdresser.

BODY WAVE – Book 4

In a story braided with unexpected twists and curls, salon owner Marla Shore takes on a role as nurse’s aide for wealthy Miriam Pearl. While Marla snoops into the elderly matriarch’s affairs, her boyfriend, Detective Dalton Vail, is afraid that the only affair she’ll snag is with her ex-spouse, Stan. Juggling work at her salon, crime solving, and two amorously inclined males, Marla fights a race against time to save Stan before the dashing detective nails him for murder. RONE Award Winner!

“Ms. Cohen’s plot has more twists than a French braid, and Marla is a shear delight.” Joanne Fluke, author of the Hannah Swensen mysteries

HIGHLIGHTS TO HEAVEN – Book 5

Hairstylist and amateur sleuth Marla Shore lands a case close to home when her animal-loving neighbor—a man aptly named Goat—disappears, leaving his pets alone and a dead body in his master bedroom. Even more disturbing is the pattern of highlights Marla notes in the victim’s hair. She recognizes the signature technique of her former mentor, master stylist Cutter Corrigan. Soon she’s untangling clues that link Goat, Cutter, and the unsavory pet fur trade to her own past. Someone at her former beauty school has a hair-raising secret worth killing to keep.

“Full of twists and turns, great characters, and an interesting setting. Who could ask for more?” Denise Swanson, author of the Scumble River mystery series

DIED BLONDE – Book 6

Hairstylist Marla Shore stumbles over her rival’s body in the meter room behind their competing salons. When her boyfriend, hunky Detective Dalton Vail, asks for her help in solving the murder, she jumps on the case. The stakes rise when the victim’s trusted psychic warns her that someone she loves is in danger. Her investigation takes her to a smoky bingo parlor, a spooky town run by spiritualists, and sunny Delray Beach. But what scares Marla the most is her relationship with Dalton that takes a surprising turn.

“Nancy Cohen has penned another follicle‑raising frolic with a wry twist of romance.”  P.J. Parrish, NY Times Bestselling Author

Get Your Copy Now

Amazon – https://amzn.to/3b7xyb0
Apple – https://apple.co/3tqS7Fw
BN Nook – https://bit.ly/3uoQ862
Kobo – https://bit.ly/33ggBGU
Books2Read – https://bit.ly/3nSLQBy
Goodreads – https://bit.ly/2QWmEOm
BookBub – https://bit.ly/3yrcc1B

The Bad Hair Day Mysteries Box Set 2 is now available! #cozymystery #boxedsets Share on X

GIVEAWAY

Enter Here July 1-18 to win a free book from Booklover’s Bench in our monthly giveaway.

July Booklovers Bench Book Giveaway

UPCOMING EVENTS

Summer Book Blast Celebration – July 8, 2021

Save the date! Join us for a fun Summer Book Blast Celebration with 6 authors, prizes, and giveaways! The Facebook party is Thursday, July 8 at 8:00 – 9:30 pm EDT  https://www.facebook.com/NewReleaseParty

Summer Book Blast

 

“And the Women Gather” Annual Book Event – Aug. 21, 2021

Saturday, Aug. 21, 2:00 pm, “And the Women Gather” Annual Book Event with authors Nancy J. Cohen and Cecilia Rodriguez Milanes at the Museum of Art, 100 N. Woodland Blvd, DeLand, FL. https://www.desert-sage.co/single-post/and-the-women-gather-annual-book-event  Cost is $19.00. Buy tickets here – https://www.desert-sage.co/events

Desert Sage

 



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