Today is the book birthday for my very first Cozy Mystery: Trouble’s Wedding Caper! I’m so excited to share with everyone this romantic mystery with a local Sheriff, Ethan, and a Treasure Hunter by the name Annabel who with the help of a great cat detective, solve the biggest bridal caper to hit Jupiter, Florida!
I started off writing a combination of Romantic Suspense and Contemporary romance. I later branded out into Paranormal and Fantasy romance. But it’s always been heavy on the romance, so when Laura Benedict introduced to me Carolyn Haines who invited me into the wonderful world of Trouble and Cozies, I thought I’d give it a whirl.
The first challenge I had was writing in a cat point-of-view, and not just any cat! I had to make sure how I wrote Trouble was in line with how every other author in the series wrote the black cat with mad detective skills who thinks he’s British. I thought it would be my hardest challenge.
What I think when it comes to writing is often not true. LOL Trouble came easier to me than I thought it, but writing in first person, that was very difficult. I have trouble with tenses to begin with, so writing in first person present tense and then shifting back to third person past tense made me nuts. It made my editor even nuttier! However, we muddled through that pretty well.
Suspense and mystery are very different beasts. When I write romantic suspense, I focus more on the romance than the suspense. The romance is driving the story. In a Cozy, I had to focus on the mystery, putting the romance in the background and that became very difficult, even though there is a big romantic component.
Writing to the cozy reader was also a challenge. I’m used to using colorful language in my romantic suspense novels, but really had to keep that from this novel. Now, not swearing isn’t all that hard, but what was a challenge was not using that as a character trait. It took a few rounds of editing to get all this just right.
And what I ended up with, I’m pretty darn pleased with. I think this is one of the best books I’ve ever written. I hope you’ll check it out!
I also participated in a couple of boxsets this month. Check them out!
Welcome to my World! I’m an Award-Winning and Bestselling Author of Romantic Suspense, Contemporary Romance, and Paranormal Romance. DARK WATER, book 2 in the NY STATE TROOPER series hit number 10 in Barnes and Nobel overall. THE BLIND DATE hit number 1 in the Contemporary Romance/Kindle Worlds List on Amazon. JANE DOE’S RETURN won both THE MOLLY and the BEACON before being published by the WILD ROSS PRESS.
I first started writing while carting my kids to one hockey rink after the other, averaging 170 games per year between 3 kids in 2 countries and 5 states. My first book, IN TWO WEEKS was originally published in 2007. In 2010 I helped form a publishing company (Cool Gus Publishing) with NY Times Bestselling Author Bob Mayer where I ran the technical side of the business through 2016.
I’m currently enjoying the next phase of my life…the empty NESTER! My husband and I spend our winters in Jupiter, Florida and our summers in Rochester, NY. We have three amazing children who have all gone off to carve out their places in the world, while I continue to craft stories that I hope will make you readers feel good and put a smile on your face.
