sholio | As I contemplate my future career as a cozy mystery writer

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As I contemplate my future career as a cozy mystery writer

I realize at least some of these are more adjacent to actual genre cozies. That being said, if you are bored and would like to fill out a poll, may I ask you to contemplate these book series concepts and then vote for any of the questions in the following poll that you have an opinion on.

Turnkey Bookshop
Elderly widow buys/inherits a big complicated old building full of boxes of books, old letters, secret doors, and at least one dead body. The emphasis here is mostly on exploring the building and opening a bookstore with a sideline in mystery solving.

Hired Mourner
Aspiring actress has a sideline as a hired mourner attending (mostly) rich people's funerals and often pretending to be a distant relative. In the first book, a funeral at which a body turns up dead, she realizes that *every single person there* is actually a hired mourner as well, all of them having been given different specific roles to play. But who is a killer?

Book Detective
Middle-aged divorcee opens a small bookshop with a specialty in finding very specific books for people, which turns out to involve solving their personal problems as well. And murders.

Spies in Paradise
Millennial-age underemployed college graduate works as a receptionist for her uncle's charter fishing business on the Florida coast (or somewhere like that), finds a guy on the beach who appears to have lost his memory, tries to figure out who he is with the help of her uncle's cadre of senior friends while bodies pile up. Sort of like Bourne Identity but with a Greek chorus of old people and way cozier violence.

Art Detectives
Young female artist turns art crimes solver with the help of an elderly art thief mentor gone straight.

Poll #28699

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 75

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Which of these sound like the most commercial and/or bestselling idea(s) to you?

View Answers

Turnkey Bookshop
13 (20.6%)

Hired Mourner
26 (41.3%)

Book Detective
20 (31.7%)

Spies in Paradise
36 (57.1%)

Art Detectives
22 (34.9%)

Which would you most like to read? (Choose up to 3.)

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Turnkey Bookshop
40 (54.1%)

Hired Mourner
44 (59.5%)

Book Detective
28 (37.8%)

Spies in Paradise
29 (39.2%)

Art Detectives
34 (45.9%)

Do any of these sound to you exactly like something else you've seen/read/heard of?

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Turnkey Bookshop
3 (18.8%)

Hired Mourner
0 (0.0%)

Book Detective
7 (43.8%)

Spies in Paradise
4 (25.0%)

Art Detectives
8 (50.0%)

Do you read cozy mystery at all?

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Yes or at least sometimes
43 (58.9%)

No
4 (5.5%)

Depends
22 (30.1%)

I don't know because I'm not sure what it is
4 (5.5%)

I realize there are no new things under the sun, etc, but that next-to-last question is in there mostly to make sure that I'm not ripping off every detail from something else I only vaguely half remember, so that I can change it up a bit.

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I want to read Hired Mourner NOW, that seems awesome :D

Thank you; I was very fond of the concept when I came up with it. :D

I looove the hired mourners idea

Hee! Thank you; I'm excited to try writing it! :D

Book Detective and Art Detective have concepts I've seen before, but not those exact details.

Hired Mourner gets my vote for the coolest and most original concept.

Not gonna lie, I love the hired mourner idea, although it's more of a struggle to make it fit in a book shape than some of the others.

Cozy is also really crowded and tough to stand out in; it's kind of tricky to come up with concepts that sound exactly like they should be a cozy but aren't going to be the 10,000th one about a knitting shop. (Not that you couldn't potentially do well with that.)

Nancy Warren Vampire Knitting Club Cosy Mysteries. 15 books in the series and counting.....

I don't read a lot of cozy mysteries (because I mostly read fanfic and Zoe Chant and her/their offshoots), but I do enjoy the genre. I'd read any of these, although I'm least interested in the hired mourners idea.

Thank you; useful data!

My bad -- I got the books mixed up in my mind. It's the Turnkey Bookshop I'd be least interested in. I agree with others; hired mourners sounds interesting.

That said -- if I know you wrote it, I'll grab anything. I know it'll be good, regardless of my first impressions.

My burning question here is whether the elder reformed art thief is a man or a woman. I would be at least twice as interested if it were a woman. 👀

It's still up in the air based on how the character concepts shake out, but I was leaning towards a woman at the moment. :D

I answered 1) on the assumption that the market you're trying to be commercial in is cozy mysteries; I only read them occasionally but my mom goes through several a week and original concepts and exciting ideas are not really a selling point. I would probably have chosen something else otherwise!

(I'd also say B and E feel least like a natural fit for the cozy mystery formula; my mom would probably not pick them out of a pile based on those summaries.)

I don't often read cozies but when I've picked one up it was always because the characters seemed fun and not really worried about the originality -- although twists coming up later is fun! (This may be just my general reading style though).

Yeah, I think cozy isn't really a big-on-originality market. (That being said, it's also a crowded market; I'm struggling a bit to nail down concepts that won't be completely indistinguishable while also sounding like they fit what readers want.

Thank you!! This is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to learn; definitely taking notes.

I have been trying to pin down Mom's tastes so I can buy books for her! She only got really into mysteries in the last six years or so (around the same time I was also getting real into the comfort reads) and it's been interesting to watch her pin it down to "certain trusted authors + anything that's clearly marketed as a series cozy".

I think part of the formula she looks for is that it's about the detective in a community (sort of the way a gothic is about a woman and a house) so you need the town as a basic part of the concept, which is part of why the professional mourners one didn't quite feel right, even though I personally would love to read it. And it *has* to have a murder in it or Mom complains, though preferably not more than three, or Mom complains. And the murder has to stand out because it's the only real crime disturbing the community (unless it's a crime the murder was covering up); A Crime is a distinct incident that the detective can Solve and then there is no longer a Crime in the community until the next book, so career criminals (even reformed ones) aren't a great fit, though you could probably make it work if everything else was cozy enough, and their career happened Elsewhere.

Although really the main thing she looks for is that it looks like it will stick to the formula closely enough that she can be pretty sure it doesn't have any of the things she doesn't want (sex, gory violence, sexual violence, trauma, high stakes, etc.) She's been burned too many times with mystery novels that don't stick to the cozy formula and seem low-stakes/pg-rated but ramp it up later, so now she mostly only reads new non-cozies if my uncle recommends them. If you're looking at a non-print market with readers who are used to more reliable/flexible ways of filtering content, that might matter less, though.

Edited 2023-04-01 03:48 (UTC)

Thank you, this is so useful! Especially the really specific bits that do seem to agree with my osmosis/reading but I hadn't quite sussed out precisely. Especially not making something look low stakes in the beginning and then leading into higher-stakes books later on, which a lot of series tend to do.

I love the specificity of at least one murder but no more than three.

Edit: Also, yeah, figuring out how to handle a consistent cast and at least consistent-ish setting in the hired mourner one was my biggest hurdle; I'm still working out some ideas for that.

Edited 2023-04-01 04:47 (UTC)

Regarding consistent setting:

Speaking mainly from experience with PBS/BBC mysteries, Murder She Wrote, and Colombo -- which I know are only adjacent genres, not the target, but bear with me for a second? -- there's an inexhaustible supply of murders and guest stars in any small town as well as any big city, but most especially in a university town. The core community of local characters outside the university are safe forever, but professors, students, university employees, alumni, visiting lecturers, etc. can all come and go and get killed in their thousands on the side, as long as the series lasts, without anyone blinking.

Now that I've typed that, a twist on the nearby college or university as an inexhaustible source of suspects and victims, maybe a nearby armed forces installation...? I spent several elementary school years on Elmendorf -- which I know is now combined into a "joint" installation with Fort Rich -- and for sure, an armed forces installation is similarly an inexhaustible supply of available guest stars cycling in and out, not only the personnel but their families and contractors, while the nearby town community is permanent and sustained. Plus, there's that market of readers who really love a "patriotic bent" on their fiction, and military-adjacency delivers that big-time without any actual politics.

That said, for your professional mourner... a suburb outside San Diego, maybe? San Diego has it all: it's very much a navy town (very conservative by California-city standards), and they have a university, and they have people who vacation there, and while they're nowhere near Los Angeles for Hollywood, really, lots of one-famous people can retire there, golf there, and maybe die there and want professional mourners?

Just brainstorming! Good luck!

In my experience of the series Mom reads, they actually tend to get lower-stakes as they go on, in contrast to series in a lot of other genres! Or, rather, more about interpersonal/political drama in the community with the 'mystery' bit increasingly tacked on; the complaints about lack of murder tend to come in with, like, book 11 when she's three-quarters of the way through and we're still just talking about secondary characters' wedding plans and who is moving into the newly vacant house that tertiary character left last book and checking in with everyone who's been mentioned previously with nary a sign of a crime anywhere. This is not necessarily a good thing though, the '1-3' murders and killing someone within the first fifty pages I think is a lot about keeping the stakes steady for the formula.

Yeah, romance series often do this as well; the endless checking in with wedding plans for characters we've already met is something I'm definitely familiar with from reading and writing in that genre. I'll keep that in mind, as well as reader complaints if it becomes too much to bear; thank you!

I do not read cozy mysteries, but I try to buy them for my mum. Personally my genre is almost exclusively SF.

Turnkey Bookshop appeals to me because it sounds the most SF - Diana Wynne Jones, T Kingfisher, that sort of line.

Hired Mourner definitely sounds more thriller than cosy, or else a bit more literary, playing with ideas of identity.

Bookshop Detective sounds *just* *like* the books I look at for Mum, in the mainstream women's fiction. You know, where the protagonist owns a yarn shop or a dress shop or a bakery and part of what makes her *special* is always knowing exactly what will best suit her customers who are strangely willing to spill their deepest anxieties over the till. Adding a spot of murder to make a cozy sounds extremely commercial.

Spies in Paradise appeals to me solely because I enjoy cantankerous competent old men with a Past.

Art Detectives sounds less fleshed out as an idea and would probably require a lot of research, because I think it would sink or swim based on the details.

Edited 2023-04-01 09:00 (UTC)

Yeah, the Bookshop Detective immediately made me think of a women's fiction novel that I got for free at a book festival-ish event, which my teenager read and thought was pretty good. ("The Printed Letter Bookshop.") This is not a mystery but has some of the same vibes -- "able to make the perfect recommendation" is a character trait in a lot of books.

I'm tired of dead bodies. I remarked that I'd like a book in which someone tracked down a stolen bicycle, and a fried said dryly that I should re-read Encyclopedia Brown. I decided that what the world needs is middle-aged jaded EB solving opiate-related crimes in his local area, but I can't write it.
Janet Evanovich has a book (books?) centered around a bakery, not a bookstore, but it struck me that Turnkey might be similar in feel.

The Art Detective concept made me think of both Jane Thornley's Agency of the Ancient Lost and Found series and Charlotte Elkin's Alix London books but there's always room for another art detective! And for another bookshop mystery. I'd read all of books you've outlined, although my preference is for not too cosy.

The Hired Mourner idea is still one of my favorite concepts ever, one of those ideas I'm jealous that someone else came up with. <3 While it feels less like a cozy to me, it does feel like the kind of book that stands a real chance of breaking out and doing incredibly well with a broad range of people.

These are all good, though, and buttery in their various ways! I think these could also easily exist in the softboiled subgenre of traditional mystery that doesn't immediately ping as cozy (and so doesn't target that audience specifically, but can draw in people who wouldn't usually read cozies because they're turned off by the cuteness factor/titles/etc.), depending on how you wanted to market them and what cover art you wanted to use.

one of those ideas I'm jealous that someone else came up with. <3

I am VERY familiar with this feeling and flattered that I managed to invoke it. xD Also, now I am honor-bound to write it so I'm not idea-squatting.

Yeah, I was thinking that I might end up landing on soft-boiled cozy-adjacent rather than hitting actual cozy, which might be too fluffy and sanitized for me to manage to successfully write it. I'm kicking around various possibilities! Since we talked about the dearth of traditional mystery-type mysteries, I have started noticing more books on the cozy bestsellers with less cutesy covers and a suggestion of more trad-mystery plots.

All of these sound great and promising, truly.

"Art detective" puts me just a little in mind of the well-loved BBC/PBS Masterpiece show Lovejoy (1986-1994). To be clear, that's a reason to pursue it, not to avoid it; you don't rerun on PBS for decades without appeal. And every PBS/BBC mystery show features at least one art-centered episode; there's material there.

"Book detective" reminds me just a very little of the male love interest in the most recent-that-I-read Amanda Quick "Burning Cove" mystery. I don't know why I'm still picking these up at the library since she still can't stop herself from giving her characters paranormal powers for crying out loud, but... I like historical mysteries with a touch of romance, and she delivers that. SIGH. "By day, he is an antique bookseller but by night, he uses his paranormal talents to solve mysteries." Why, why, why must everyone have paranormal powers, in a whole sub-culture of paranormal powers, when we could instead be focusing on more real history and society? Bleah. ... When the first "Burning Cove" book came out, I thought she'd finally snapped out of it from her Victorian books, but no.

"Turnkey bookshop" and "hired mourner" sound most pull-off-the-shelf-and-read-the-back interesting for me, personally. Possibly because I do like my history, and those scenarios both have lots of possible touchpoints with historical artifacts, historical people, legacies, traditions, mourning and survivors... all things I really enjoy in stories.

"Spies in paradise" sounds the most commercial, widely appealing, and best-selling to me.

Good luck!

I think the Hired Mourner idea is the most original one. It's probably why it interests me the most though I'm not sure if "original" is good or bad for the cozy mystery market.

The prospect of old folks in these (and not necessarily being the body!) is lovely.:) For me, "Depends" means, did I stumble upon the book and survive the first few pages? Then we're off!

Oh, excellent! I actually really want to write that; I'm honestly surprised by the rarity of older people in these books in general - although I've read a couple of series along those lines that I liked, particularly a really cute series I can't remember the name of about Jewish senior ladies at a retirement home in Florida. Anyway, though, that's one of the things I'm really looking forward to writing.

I really want to read the Hired Mourner one and I think it's genuinely a good idea -- I voted for that one for Q1 because it's a really fresh idea, quick to describe and instantly appealing. "Which one of these strangers is the killer?" is a very traditional setup but "also, they're ALL ACTORS" makes it bonus levels of entertaining to anyone who's ever done ANY sort of theater. The whole concept of a Hired Mourner is also hilarious on its face. (There are cultures where it's an accepted thing, but not really ours, which is why it's hilarious.)

It also made me think of an NPR story I heard a while back (it was on This American Life), about a guy whose job is being a Hired Asshole at funerals. He gets hired by the dying person to show up and deliver the diatribe the deceased wishes to deliver. The first time, it was for a very close friend, who wanted to yell at his wife and his best friend for having an affair while he was dying. A few weeks pass and he gets a phone call from someone who TRACKED HIM DOWN to say "hey, I want you to do the same thing at MY funeral." One of the stories he tells is about a motorcycle club dude who wanted to come out as gay once he was dead -- it's not always "j'accuse!" Anyway now I'm imagining someone (clearly a drama queen for the ages) who'd hire (a) a hired asshole, (b) a bunch of hired mourners, and (c) a hired killer, all for the same funeral. (Definitely the final revelation is that they aren't actually dead -- anyone who'd go to THAT much trouble to stir shit is going to want to get to see it all play out!)

Here's the TAL story: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/766/well-someone-had-to-do-something/act-three-11 and the guy has a memoir called "The Coffin Confessor."

.... That is AMAZING. Thank you so much for telling me about it and digging up that link! I will definitely be getting his book; that is just - even if I don't end up using this in some way in the book (though frankly it sounds like it would fit really well), that looks like a really entertaining read.

I'd probably read any of them if you wrote them, but Hired Mourner sounds least like anything I've ever heard of or read.

That said, I'm most partial to the ones involving bookshops!

Edited 2023-04-02 18:43 (UTC)

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