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Showing posts with the label cozy mysteries

In Defense of Cozies

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Upcoming Release of a Series I Enjoy When authors get together, there's a tendency to disparage cozy mysteries , and many of my friends think of themselves as "just" cozy writers. To be honest, cozies can get pretty silly, with amateur sleuths bumbling through situations that no sane person would put herself into. Often they have only the faintest of reasons to do so, and most of us would have called the police, told them our suspicions, and gone back to canning green beans. So why do zillions of people read zillions of cozies each year? Possibly because we trust them. We trust cozies to provide a few hours of entertainment that won't depress us, scare us, or force us to ponder the darker side of humanity. Cozy villains might be a little papery, but we don't imagine them showing up in our bedrooms with a butcher knife or shadowing us in a dark parking garage as we hurry to our cars. It might be my age, or it might be TV's predilection for long

30 Days of Christmas Day 9: A Pet Question

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If you know the Sleuth Sisters, you've met Buddy, Faye's mongrel, and Styx, Retta's Newfoundland. You know Barb has formed a tenuous relationship with a stray cat. Book #2 had some horses join the family, and Book #3 took us to the family farm, where there are reindeer and peafowl. In the 4th Sleuth Sisters book, chickens are an inciting factor--Bet you never heard that in a mystery before! All this brought to mind a question for today's post: If money, space, and other possible drawbacks were somehow taken care of, what animal would you choose to get for a Christmas gift? (to add to the ones you already share space with, of course)

30 Days of Christmas Day 7: Let's Surprise an Author!

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Guess how this author picks winners for giveaways and such! These days as many of my friends are authors as are not. I thought for the Dec. 1st post I'd tell you about someone else's books for a change. These people have no idea what I'm doing, so I'm hoping it's a nice surprise for the next few Tuesdays for them and possibly some new reading for those who read this blog. Today's "honoree" is Janet, who has a book releasing today. She has two series published under pen names, and both are worthy of a read if you like cozy mysteries and haven't yet tried them. The PTA Murders series is published under the name Laura Alden and features Beth Kennedy, recently divorced with two kids. When she gets drafted into more involvement in the local PTA, things start happening, and Beth is reluctantly drawn into sleuthing. The five-book series is notable to me because the humor is genuine, not derived from exaggerated characters who do unbelievable thing