Monthly Archives: October 2015
THE COZY MYSTERY
COZY MYSTERIES are also referred to as ‘cozies’. In England they are called ‘Aga Sagas’ because they are read sitting by the Aga stove on a blustery evening (or afternoon).
I’m drawing to the close of my third complete revision of my cozy. Round of applause, please. It’s been gruesome and exhausting.
One of the members of my writing group had only a vague concept of what a cozy was even after years of critiquing my work. I asked this person to read one that had influenced my choice of fiction, and then he could critique me. After reading twenty-eight pages my fellow writer was completely saccharined-out.
Cozies can have that affect on some people. There are cozies, and there are cozies, just as in any other genre. They run the gamut from Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers down to. . . well I won’t say down to whom, but they are out there, complete with misspellings and main character name changes in the middle of the story. One cozy I read misspelled leech throughout the book, and the poor leech was a secondary character.
Usually a cozy takes place in a small community where everyone is known to each other, though not necessarily intimately. It’s a cliquey sort of environment, and emotions can run high for extra tension beyond the tensions the prerequisite murder have caused. If you think of how a movie is rated for S, V, and L, a cozy will come in at a PG. Sex, Violence and Language are virtually absent from the page, only referred to so the reader will know that S and V have occurred in some less savory quarter, or to an unsavory person who uses L.
The protagonists are usually female, as are the readers of cozies. Almost always they are amateurs when it comes to dealing with crime. They continue this charade even if the series runs to ten or a dozen books. It’s an appealing shtick.
The protagonist sometimes has an interesting side-line that can be part of the mystery, or an aside that the followers of that series enjoy reading about. Examples are: innkeeper, caterer, animal breeder, bookbinder, herbalist. The list stretches on.
And the protagonist usually has a friend in the police force who aids her in the search for truth and justice.
I fought against it, but my protagonist has been working with a policeman. He wants to retire, preferably in the arms of the heroine, but that, and anything else un-cozy, will never darken the pages of my story.
Unless there is a sequel.
It’s complicated
With just 13 days—yikes!—until NaNoWriMo starts, I should be well on my way to an outline, character list and setting. At a minimum. And that has been my plan since my failed attempt to win Camp NaNoWriMo in July. It’s a sad story, a common refrain (for me). My July project is floundering and I am unprepared for November.
I thought I had it under control. I knew what my plot was going to be. Sort of. (It’s those “sort of’s” that seem to be my downfall.) All I needed was some additional information from my mother and I’d be ready to outline like a madwoman.
Last night I met with her (my mother, not the madwoman) for what I was certain would be the details that would weave the story together. Alas, all she could tell me was all that she’s already told me.
You may wonder why I need information from my mother to write this story. It’s complicated. But when isn’t it? Back to my resource, my mother. Several years ago, she gave me what I assume is a pewter or silver plated wall frieze of the Roman goddess, Diana the Huntress, and the stag.
She’s 88 (my mother, not Diana), from Germany, and lived there during World War II. The wall frieze was given to her by her mother in 1953 when my mother moved to the US with my father, who was in the US Air Force.
My grandmother found the wall frieze in 1952 in a trunk that her son-in-law (not my father) bought at an auction. Assuming it only contained a bunch of old newspapers, he stored it in the basement. But my grandmother thought otherwise and trudged down to the basement to paw through the newspapers. She was rewarded for her effort with Diana and my uncle let her keep it. She passed it on to my mother, who gave it to me.
I believe that the trunk was property confiscated by the Nazis from a Jewish family. The twist is that a few years ago I found out that the mother of my German grandmother was a Jew who married a Christian. That means I am 1/8 Jewish. Ties with the Jewish part of the family were severed, which may have been what saved my immediate German family from the Holocaust. (I can’t allow myself to think about the fate of the Jewish part of my family.)
Sounds like a lot of potential material for an historical novel. Or would it be creative nonfiction? A memoir? I could incorporate my Jewish and my German ancestry and my American upbringing. And I do want to write that book. But 13 days just isn’t enough time to do the necessary research and develop the plot, outline, setting, characters…..
So I’ll stick to the story of Diana. If I can come up with 50,000 words about a trunk, a Roman goddess, a stag, and a wall frieze.
WINTER IS COMING!
The weather, the leaves, the wood stove are all busy doing their thing. What thing? The pre-winter thing.
Well, is that a good thing, or a bad thing? F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall”. That sounds like a very good thing to me. Summer is just too sultry.
Every season has its ups and downs, but I’d say that the pre-winter season, sometimes called fall, is my favorite. Pre-winter, called so because preparing for winter is what the season is basically all about. My houseplants all have to be back from summer vacation in the yard, and in their spots along the south facing windows by Friday of this week. That’s when the first killing frost happens. Wood has been ordered, and when it arrives it has to be stacked. Screens are already off, and windows need to be washed. I’m looking forward to finishing the current revision of my novel, and putting it to rest for a month or two. I want to get out my yarn and knitting needles and create stuff. I want to learn to do Fair Isle knitting. All I know about Fair Isle knitting is that it is not for the weak. Neither is writing. What, all of a sudden I’ve become Super Woman? I don’t think so. I just keep trying.
I’m looking ahead to those quiet hours spent INDOORS reading, knitting and writing. Those are good things. Of course that means that there will also be more time for things like paper work (not related to writing), cleaning out closets, drawers, and constantly stoking the wood stove instead of only sporadically, as we are now. Those are not my favorite things. Eh, you have to take the good with the bad.
Enjoy your pre-winter now, whether you like it or not, because winter is coming!
Eleanor Ingbretson
Karen Whalen
llandrigan
Heidi Wilson
Mike M
Thursday Night Writes 