A mockingbird, a cardinal, and a bluejay are pecking around on the grass. They may think spring has come early, or perhaps they are just taking advantage of the lull in winter. It is a confusing kind of morning–is it winter or is it not?
As a reader, you probably have favorite scenes in the cozy mysteries that you read. As a writer, I often do too. In The Cemetery Club, I liked writing the wild episode of the flight down Deertrack Hill, but then, I also liked the part where Darcy and Flora discovered an underground cavern.
Grave Shift, the second in the series, had several favorite spots, among them Darcy and Flora’s trip to the Inglenook Ranch in Amarillo. As they sat on the porch of the ranch and looked at the stars the last night of their visit, I wished I could be there with them. In a way, I suppose I was.
I liked the way Best Left Buried started, with Darcy upside down in an abandoned well, and in Grave Heritage, this mother and daughter team faced a record-breaking rainy July and a killer who was…well, he was more than a little crazy. I liked getting them out of several extremely tight spots.
Old houses fascinate me, so the Ned series centers around houses with a history. In fact, Ned lives in one. She inherits it in Moonlight Can Be Murder. She’s asleep upstairs in By the Fright of the Silvery Moon when a terrifying nightmare wakes her and sends her on an episode where the killer is someone she knows and would never suspect.
Moonstruck and Murderous centers around another old house, this one 200 years old. It’s fun to watch Ned’s admiration for it turn to fear and in the final scenes, the beautiful old house becomes a fearsome prison.
So, on this lovely spring morning when birds are hopping on the lawn and the sun promises that spring is somewhere out there in the future, what am I doing? I’m bogged down in one mystery after the other, considering plots and characters, and thoroughly enjoying it all.
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