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Re-release: Modern Cozy Mysteries
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While we take a short break for the holidays, we are re-releasing some of our earlier episodes. This week is the our cozy mystery episode (originally released on June 28, 2022) where Melissa Bourbon joins Brook and Sarah to discuss what makes a mystery cozy and current trends in cozies.
Authors discussed: Tonya Kappes Allison Brennan
Books and television discussed
Smile Beach Murder (Alicia Bessette)
Flour in the Attic (Melissa Bourbon)
The Closer (TV series)
The Staircase (TV series)
For more about Melissa
Website
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Join the Book Warriors Facebook group
For the Writerspark Academy
Courses
Website
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YouTube
More information
Instagram: @cluedinmystery
Contact us: hello@cluedinmystery.com
Music: Signs To Nowhere by Shane Ivers – www.silvermansound.com
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Transcript
Introduction to the Interview and Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi Brooke. Hi Sarah. So this is the final of the episodes that we are re-releasing before we start to release new episodes in January. And this is the interview that you did with Melissa Bourbon. Yes, I loved this interview. I found Melissa to be just so knowledgeable about Cozy Mystery. And I think you guys are all going to enjoy listening to it again too.
00:00:30
Speaker
hope you enjoy. Welcome to the Clued in Mystery podcast. I'm Sarah. And I'm Brooke. And we both love mystery. Brooke, I'm excited to record another episode today. I know. Today we have another interview. We're interviewing Melissa Bourbon and these are always some of my most favorite episodes.
00:01:00
Speaker
Yeah, it's always great to have someone else join our conversation and I'm really looking forward to discussing cozy mysteries with Melissa. So before we get started, I will just briefly introduce her and then we can jump into it.
Meet Melissa Bourbon, the Author
00:01:18
Speaker
Melissa Bourbon is the author of The Book Magic Mysteries, a traditional mystery series. The Lola Cruz Mysteries, which are PI capers, and Two Cozy Series, a magical dressmaking mystery series and the bread shop mystery series, written as Winnie Archer. She lives in North Carolina with her educator husband and the youngest of their five children. Her dogs Bean, the pug, Dobby the Chug, keep her company while she writes.
00:01:42
Speaker
Welcome, Melissa. Thank you. I'm so glad to be here. Thank you for having me. Before we get started, I do feel like I need to give a thank you to Cindy Bullard. She is with Birch Literary. She happens to be my agent. And I reached out to her and asked who she would recommend for someone to come in and talk cozy mysteries with Sarah and I. And in true Cindy fashion within an hour, I think we were introduced and talking about this
Writing Cozy Mysteries: Insights and Courses
00:02:09
Speaker
show.
00:02:10
Speaker
Thanks to Cindy. And then in my looking into Melissa, your work, I realized that you've recently written a course on creating cozy mysteries. I have. So I'm a teacher by early profession, middle school English language arts. And that I've done that on and off throughout my writing career until about three years ago when I quit altogether.
00:02:33
Speaker
And creating WriterSpark Academy and the courses, including the field guide to how to write a cozy mystery has really been a fun opportunity to put that teaching hat back on. And then also I'm a big proponent of kind of paying it forward. You know, I had to learn the hard way before there were podcasts and online courses and
00:02:54
Speaker
access to so many resources. And so I feel like I've been able to condense 15 years worth of learning into this course to help somebody move along on their writing path a little bit faster than we probably had to all of us.
00:03:10
Speaker
It's been great. That's wonderful. That's a great segue. You're obviously somebody that would have a beat on this, which is what makes a mystery a cozy mystery? I'm always surprised actually. I'll hear somebody online or in social media mention that they don't even know what that is. Fill us in. What are the essential elements of a cozy mystery?
What Makes a Cozy Mystery?
00:03:33
Speaker
That's so funny that you say that because I had no idea what they were before I started writing them. I had written my P.I. Capert series and it kind of ended.
00:03:43
Speaker
my agent said, you have a great voice, it'd be great for cozies. And I was like, what's a cozy? I had to do a bunch of research to figure that out, which I since have, because I have two fully cozy series. A cozy, essentially, in the traditional definition or explanation is an amateur sleuth.
00:04:05
Speaker
who happens upon murders. It takes place generally in a tight-knit community, generally in a smaller town. And, you know, I like to call them happy murder because the gore and
00:04:21
Speaker
All of that takes place off the page. So even though they are murder mysteries, they tend to be on the lighter side. There's always a spectrum, of course, within any genre or subgenre. But in general, cozies are on the much lighter side. There's often a lot of humor. And you don't get any of that real violence or gore, except for the fact that there is a dead body.
00:04:44
Speaker
you know, and a villain. And then also sex is off the page.
The Appeal and Joy of Cozy Mysteries
00:04:50
Speaker
You know, there might be romantic threads, but that's, you know, secondary to the puzzle of the cozy mystery.
00:04:56
Speaker
I like to think that they really appeal to and are available to people whether you're 9 or 90. I joke about my stories being okay for your preteen or your grandma. Yeah, I agree. I think that when I first went into writing Cozy's, so it was about maybe 10 years ago,
00:05:16
Speaker
And I was maybe already in middle age, I don't know, on the cusp, I guess. But I was like, oh, these are for, you know, middle aged women, of which I am fully one now. But then my niece came over one day and she was like, you know, her teacher put on the outside of her classroom doors, books that she was reading. And one of my books was just coincidentally up there and my niece was so excited. She was like, oh my gosh, my
00:05:40
Speaker
you know, teacher is reading your book and her teacher was, you know, like 28 years old. I was like, oh, okay, a younger audience. That's cool. And then I had a neighbor who is reading one of my books right now and she's, you know, I don't know, three or four deep in the series. So you're right. It's just a whole, and then my mother, you know, who's 80. So it's, there's a whole range and it does really satisfy the interest of a lot of people.
00:06:04
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. And I think the other thing you mentioned in there that was really interesting to me is that spectrum of coziness, I guess, because there is a range. Some of the stories that meet all the other criteria are edgy and some are very sweet and cute. So I find that interesting in this subgenre.
00:06:26
Speaker
Right. I have a friend, Tanya Kappas, mega, you know, bestselling, wonderful author who I think she's got like a hundred books now somehow. I don't even know how she does it, but hers are, and she markets it this way, clean, um, clean Southern cozies or something like that. So hers are very, very clean, like nothing bad at all. But then you're right. There's a range, you know, you might look at Jenna Bennett or, um,
00:06:52
Speaker
I don't know I can't think off the top of my head but you know there is a range going the other way that kind of pushes the edge a little bit. Oh I know like I just read the Smile Beach Murder by Alicia Bissette and I would say that's sort of on the cusp of
00:07:08
Speaker
to cozy and traditional almost because there is a little bit more darkness to it. One of my books, Flower in the Attic, which is one of my bread shop books, Kirkus Reviews made a comment that it was wheels within wheels of this darkly turning tail or something like that. It was definitely on the darker side for cozies and even within my own series, it was on the darker side. So there's definitely a range within the genre, the sub-genre, and then even within a particular series.
00:07:37
Speaker
And you do write in more than one mystery genre. What is it that you like about writing cozies specifically? Like I said, I didn't even know what a cozy was initially, but I do find that my voice fits in the way that I tell a story fits for the cozies. I do have two sort of romantic suspends or mystery thrillers, whatever you want to call them out there.
00:08:00
Speaker
And I loved writing them. And I think they're some of my best books, actually. But I don't like living in that dark place as a whole. I'm not... I don't watch horror movies. I don't like Scream. One, two, three, four, 20, any of them. You know, I...
00:08:18
Speaker
I like happen things and I like domestic thrillers like your show that I just listened to this morning which was so cool. I love domestic thrillers and but that's like a psychological element and horror and you know that the others are darker thrillers with all the violence that you know there's just enough violence in the world I don't like to live there.
00:08:42
Speaker
So for me, the sort of happier tone of cozies just I think fits who I am as a person. And that is reflected in my voice and in the stories that I tell. I don't focus on
00:08:58
Speaker
the violence, you know, I focus on the puzzle, but even more than that, I focus on the community. I'm very much about female relationships, mothers and daughters and sisters and cousins and surrogate, you know, family and stuff like that. And that's what I really love to sort of dig into. So I think that's why my voice lends itself to the cozy genre.
00:09:22
Speaker
That is so interesting and I think it's so true of the personality of the author really matters. Yes, as writers, I think a lot of us can take any project and run with it, but your personality and where your heart is really plays a big part in what you decide to spend your career working on.
00:09:44
Speaker
I think you'd agree with that, Sarah, that that's probably why our fiction leans towards the cozy end of things.
Why Cozy Mysteries Thrive During the Pandemic
00:09:52
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think I'm like you, Melissa. I like reading in the lighter side of things and watching in the lighter side of things, right? Like I have a hard time with kind of the heavier stuff and I can't imagine writing that. Like I think it would be very, it would take a lot to do that.
00:10:14
Speaker
Yeah. I do watch some crime procedural shows like The Closer. I love The Closer, Brenda Lee Johnson, and things like that. One thing that often comes up with the police officers and detectives and stuff is them ruminating or living the fact that it's so difficult to maintain any kind of normalcy in a job like that. When you're surrounded by
00:10:42
Speaker
death and violence and I have a friend one of my earliest critique partners was Allison Brennan who's New York time best-selling crazy suspense thriller author
00:10:53
Speaker
now and I started out with her and we went in very different directions. I went very much on the lighter side and she is very, very, very dark and I have often wondered and in the early days we talked about, I'm like, what is it like inside your brain? How do you stay sane? She's got five kids and wonderful mother and very just awesome normal person, but I'm like, your brain is really twisted girl.
00:11:21
Speaker
I couldn't do that. I feel like it would really mess with me over time. I'm guessing that that's probably the same inclinations that we have. It's probably what makes Cozy so popular with readers, don't you think?
00:11:35
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Especially during the pandemic and during times that are difficult. We're facing inflation and potential recession and all of these things. And it's just a form of escape. And it's a nicer form of escape than people getting slashed.
00:11:54
Speaker
So yeah, I think it's just a nice way for people to kind of escape their ordinary lives. And then the hooks of cozies, because every cozy has a hook of some sort, whether it's baking or cupcakes or knitting or sewing or bread making or pet shops or whatever, it's fun to sort of glom onto this craft element or this lifestyle element that resonates with you as a person, as a reader.
00:12:22
Speaker
So I think it's, yeah, I think it's just a nice way for people to, you know, step aside from real life for a little while. And you mentioned that the pandemic kind of inspired people to pick up some of the lighter stories. And a few episodes ago, we spoke with Francis at Chronicles of Crime about, specifically about hard boiled. And I thought it was cute. I was doing some research for today and realized that cozies are also sometimes called soft boiled.
00:12:51
Speaker
So that was, I thought, a cute moniker. But Francis did mention that during the pandemic, she sold almost predominantly the lighter cozy mysteries and golden age mysteries. So do you think that as a result of that, that the audience has expanded?
00:13:12
Speaker
I think that, yes, I don't know if it's directly related to the pandemic. Maybe I don't have any research on that or anything, but I do think that the cozy audience is continuing to expand. I don't exactly know why that is. I think that initially, I don't know how long they've even been around, but I've been writing them for eight or 10 years. And like I said, I've been a reader all my life and I didn't know what they were. So I think a lot of that is just exposure and the fact that
00:13:40
Speaker
more people are writing them. There are so many out there. People are talking about them. They're featured on the end caps in bookstores. You know, there are there is a cozy for every craft or hook under the sun. You know, I think they're just much more talked about now, which by definition, I think is going to increase your audience. So expand your audience potential.
00:14:03
Speaker
readers. So, um, I don't know why exactly it's happening, but yeah, I think it's just, and then you have publishers like Berkeley crime, prime, prime, crime. Is that what it is? Crime, crime, crime, crime. And then Kensington Posies, who, uh, you know, two branches of these big publishing houses who are, which are focusing solely on Cozy. So even within the few remaining big publishers, Cozies are getting, you know, a decent representation.
00:14:32
Speaker
And, you know, as long as a publisher is putting some of their weight behind the genre, then it's gaining exposure too.
00:14:40
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's great. And like you say, for at least 10 years, it's been a really hot sub genre and I don't really see the end anywhere near. It seems like it's just really going strong and that's exciting. I think it's great. So thinking about the cozy space in general, and you know, you've mentioned some of the tropes and some of the common hooks and what trends are you seeing that are coming up new in the cozy space?
00:15:07
Speaker
Well, I'll tell you about a sort of briefish conversation I had with one of my editors. And when we were talking about new potential series, pitch ideas and things like that, and, you know, her take, or at least what she was specifically looking for, and she was with Kensington, now she's with Berkeley.
00:15:23
Speaker
But her take on the industry is that, or I'm sorry, on the cozy genre, is that it's staying the same with the same elements, but certain elements are developing, are changing, are growing. And so the heroine or the protagonist, for example, we're seeing a lot more protagonists with a little bit more baggage or backstory or series arcs and things that need to be resolved.
00:15:50
Speaker
And then we are transitioning somewhat from these small, cute communities, you know, Cabot Cove and that type of thing, to bigger cities or enclaves within bigger cities. So the settings are still remaining small, but within a bigger environment. And so sort of expanding the possibilities that exist by
00:16:14
Speaker
changing that setting a little bit. So that's what she was looking for. And that's what she was seeing. And in a way, I've seen that. So I mentioned the small beach murders. And you can kind of see a little bit because you have this here. I mean, you often have a heroine who comes back to a small town from a bigger city. Right. And so in this case, we have Callie who comes from Charlotte back to her small Outer Banks Island town.
00:16:40
Speaker
And she brings with her a lot of that bigger city sensibility that she then has to.
00:16:46
Speaker
sort of figure out how to reconnect or mesh into that small town island life, which is so vastly different. So, you know, we have books like that where you have sort of this transition from a big city to a smaller town. And then you have other books that are taking the sleuth out of that small town and again, putting them like in Brooklyn, for example.
00:17:13
Speaker
And that becomes the small town and it's still a tight knit community, but you have that bigger setting.
Evolution of Modern Cozy Mysteries
00:17:19
Speaker
And then when I first started writing cozies, I had my first hero in Harlow Cassidy with some, you know,
00:17:26
Speaker
difficult backstory. I can't remember what it is right now, but my editor at the time, she was like, you know, we don't really want that in cozies. We just want the murder to be the conflict. We don't need the heroine to have conflicts to resolve. And that I think is the biggest change that I see that the heroines, the sleuths, the protagonist and hero, if it's a male, which is atypical, but still they're out there.
00:17:52
Speaker
has baggage and stuff that they have to overcome. That's, I think, adding a layer of depth to the cozies, to some cozies that are going that route that they didn't have before. Yeah, that's really interesting. I think as a reader, it's much more satisfying to have some growth from your main character as well. Like you mentioned, a series arc
00:18:17
Speaker
So maybe this overarching story that throughout the series, yes, they're little episodic mysteries that she's solving, but the whole story arc is there too. And to me, that's what I would prefer to read. I agree. And I think that we also have a transition in which
00:18:37
Speaker
Traditional mysteries are taking on a few cozy elements so for example i have a series my book magic series that i would. Classify as a traditional mystery series with some magical realism she's a bibliomancer so it has this little magical threat of this divination.
00:18:56
Speaker
which is kind of like a cozy hook, right? So it's this bookish theme, and it takes place on an Outer Banks island, actually. But that's it. Those are the two cozy elements, and the rest of the book is very traditional. And there is a huge overarching conflict throughout the entire series, and a lot of
00:19:22
Speaker
emotional baggage and conflict. So I would say that we're seeing a shift in cozies going a little less cozy, but we're also seeing a shift in traditional mysteries taking on a few little cozy elements, which I think is another way to broaden the audience.
00:19:38
Speaker
Yeah, that's really interesting. And you're right, it broadens the audience also in the fact that someone might read that series of yours and really enjoy the way you tell a story and then they may go back and read more of your cozy series. So really fun, really great. Right, ideally. We can hope, right?
00:20:02
Speaker
I find it really interesting the kind of difference between traditional mystery and cozy mystery because I'm reading the first book in your book magic mysteries and I would have placed it as a cozy mystery.
00:20:15
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that again, it has cozy elements, but I wouldn't place it firmly in the cozy mystery category because mainly of the overarching plot line that carries through all of the books. So as you get to the end of this one, you'll see what I mean. Um, and then that carries through and I'm working on book four right now and, and it's coming to a climax.
00:20:42
Speaker
And so I think that's one of the big things that sets it apart from the cozy genre is that it has this, that huge overarching thing is really what drives all the subsequent books, if you will.
00:20:55
Speaker
And that's different than a cozy. So cozy, you have all these crimes that are unrelated, you know, just people dropping dead in this loose pathway in this little small town. And in this particular series, that's not how it happens. I mean, you do have these people ending up dead, but it's for a different reason, you know, and it's all interconnected. So in that way, I think it's different. That's my own take. I mean, I don't know, I could be totally wrong. No, I think that I think that's really interesting.
00:21:26
Speaker
From somebody who's been in the industry for many years, who sets the trends? Do you think that it's readers, authors, publishers? Who pushes the trends in any genre?
Impact of Indie Publishing on the Genre
00:21:40
Speaker
Gosh, if I had the answer to that, I think I could be a New York Times bestseller. I don't know. That's a tough one, especially with the self-publishing indie world, which is just exploding.
00:21:56
Speaker
I think there's a huge influence with the very successful indie authors and what they're putting out there. I think that in part, our trend is towards having a lot of content. It's like the Netflix binge. We now have been programmed to
00:22:19
Speaker
have everything right out there all at once so we can binge it. And I have readers who have told me, your books sound really cool, the book magic series, for example, but I'm not gonna read it until you have the third one out, because I won't buy any series until there are at least three. And then the third one comes out and they buy it and then they'll read it because we have this binge sort of sensibility now. So in that sense, I think that the indie market really is influencing
00:22:47
Speaker
what's being read and what there because there is th
00:22:52
Speaker
whole mechanism for indie authors that traditional publishing houses can't compete with. My last bread shop book came out earlier this year. I can't remember. No, no, it didn't. It came out last November. That was number seven. Number eight was supposed to come out in May and it was pushed to November. So that's an entire year. That book's been done for months. That's an entire year. So how does somebody who is
00:23:19
Speaker
kind of program now to just be reading, reading, reading, reading, reading. Are they going to wait for my book? Are they even going to know it's out there when it releases unless they're part of my little bubble? You know, so I think that in my opinion, I think that indie publishing is just influencing things in ways that we didn't even know that they could, you know, and I think a great part of that is just, you know, how we have been reprogrammed to have instant gratification over and over and over.
00:23:48
Speaker
Yeah, that is a great point. The whole binge watching a series has changed our mindset as consumers, right? Right. My husband and I were watching The Staircase on HBO and Swift, Colin Firth and Tony Collette.
00:24:09
Speaker
And it is a true crime. It's a fictionalized story of the true crime event that took place in Durham, right next door to where we live, about a woman who dies on the staircase. And we watched the first four. I'm like, oh, it's really good. And it's right down the street. And it's, you know, I love these characters and so interesting. And we got to number four and we're like, okay, let's watch another one.
00:24:31
Speaker
And there's no more. Like, what? We have to wait two weeks? What? You know, so yeah, I mean, we're just, it's we're so used to being able to just, okay, let the little thing go to the next episode and keep playing. And I think, you know, that definitely has translated or transferred into book reading for so many people.
00:24:54
Speaker
Yeah, fascinating. And your comment is coming from, we all remember the age where you had to wait a whole week for the next episode of your show. So that's how we feel. We've been switched over to the binge watching. Think about our 20-somethings. It's how their whole life has been. So I think it definitely does impact all entertainment. So that's a really good point, Melissa.
00:25:24
Speaker
Well, before I ask our last little fun final question, is there anything that we missed that you'd like to share with us, Melissa, about cozy mysteries or about mysteries in general?
00:25:36
Speaker
Oh, um, I
Why You Should Read Cozy Mysteries
00:25:38
Speaker
don't know. I think we kind of touched on everything that I would have talked about. Um, you know, for anybody out there who doesn't read cozies, I would say give them a try because they're a lot of fun. And, um, if you're, if you're just happening upon this podcast and you're not that into mysteries, I would say definitely give them a try because that's, you know.
00:25:57
Speaker
some fun reading ahead. I don't know. I think that it's just a great genre to read and obviously, but I think it's a wonderful genre to write in mysteries, cozy mysteries, traditional mysteries, any of it, because I have a lot of fun creating the puzzle. So my hope is that my readers have a lot of fun trying to piece the puzzle together. You know, so it's just a it's a great job. That's awesome.
Favorite Mystery Protagonist: Poirot
00:26:25
Speaker
And so our final fun question is, who is your favorite? Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, or Miss Marple? Yes, that is a tough one. I like them all for different reasons, but I would have to say that I would probably choose Poirot because he's
00:26:47
Speaker
Well, he and Sherlock Holmes both are larger than life characters, I would say. Right. They behave in acting ways that are more that are just bigger than the ordinary person. And they do things and think in ways that are bigger than the ordinary person. So I like that about both of those characters. I love Miss Marple. She's just a you know, and I've read all of the books. But in terms of a character, I think she's a lot more low key. Right. And so in terms of engagement,
00:27:15
Speaker
I think I find Holmes's deductions and just the way his brain works fascinating and Poirot is quite similar. But I think that Poirot to me is a little bit larger than life, just a little bit more memorable of a character, you know, with his moustache and I don't know, his just his hats and different things. And so I just enjoy
00:27:38
Speaker
him, I think as a character, maybe a little bit more, but I think they're all great but for me the characters that really resonate are the ones that are a little bit larger than life that that you just think wow I wish I would
00:27:52
Speaker
be able to say that in the moment because you know I think of my characters as alter egos of myself that if I in the moment were sassy or sexy or smarter more clever whatever you know then that would be awesome I put them in my books but it takes a while right to come up with those comebacks or you know I'll almost an argument over something and I'll be like
00:28:14
Speaker
five hours later, I should have said that. And my characters can come up with it just like that. So I think that the characters that resonate are the characters that we see something in that we would like to see in ourselves. And for me, that's Poirot more than the other two, although they're all great. I love it.
00:28:38
Speaker
I love it and I see your point. Those characters that can be witty and smart and quick and it's who we would want to be. And that's what makes reading mysteries so fun, right? Is that we get to live a whole different life through these characters.
00:28:57
Speaker
Well, Melissa, it has been a pleasure talking with you. I'm so pleased that you joined us today. Thank you for having me. This was so much fun. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your feedback. You can reach us at hello at CluedInMystery.com or on Instagram at CluedInMystery. If you enjoyed the episode, please consider leaving a rating or a review or telling a friend to help spread the word. Thank you for joining us today on Clued In Mystery. I'm Brooke. And I'm Sarah. And we both love mystery.
00:29:27
Speaker
Clued In Mystery is produced by Brooke Peterson and Sarah M. Stephen. Music is by Shane Ivers at Silvermansound.com. Visit us online at CluedInMystery.com or social media at CluedInMystery. If you liked what you heard, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or telling your friends.