Cozy Mysteries

Hello Fellow Readers & Writers–

Sales are booming for Knitting Can be Murder!  Thanks to readers, I’ve figured out that cozy mysteries are still in favor with the public.  YEA!

So what is a cozy mystery, anyway?  Well, it used to be set in a small town, murders happened “off screen,” and the detectives were usually not professional police personnel.  Things have been that way ever since Agatha Christie did her thing–way back when.

And readers still seem to love that small-town/less blood and gore/amateur detective kind of thing, which is great, because I LOVE to write that sort of book.  True, my Annie Malone, P. I. series is more of a suspense type of book, but writing them takes more out of me, in that there’s a tension that has to be kept up throughout the book.  And those types of books don’t seem to sell as well.  Why?  I think it’s because people are looking for an escape from the tension that’s in their lives.  For example, we’ve been on “high alert” up here in the mountains of Southern California, because they found a killer’s truck up here.  Stores closed early, school was cancelled for a couple of days, and it looked like a ghost town up here–except for over 1000 police personnel knocking on doors, trying to find the guy.  Who wants that kind of tension?  Not me!

So, readers, keep reading cozy mysteries, and I’ll keep writing them–along with many others.  Lately, I’ve been reading Jenn McKinlay’s books (Library Lover’s Mysteries and Cupcake Bakery Mysteries).  Fun, easy reads.  Give them a try–after you’ve read MY books, of course.  LOL!

                                         Happy Reading and Writing,

                                                                         Jill-Ayn