The Challenges of Writing Cozy Crime Fiction
My Computer at Work
My November will be a busy with activities related to marketing Grounds for Murder. On the 7th I have a CBC Saskatchewan interview. On the 14th, a book launch (which will also feature my friend Shawn Sanford Beck). And, on the 19th, an author talk at the North Battleford Public Library. Important activities, all of them, but Jeez—is it every easier and less stressful to sit in front of my computer writing!
October’s (late) blog is the first page of the NB library talk.
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When I retired at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, one of my priorities was to find a major new project. I’d always liked reading and writing, had graduate degrees in English, and had spent my career as a part-time sessional instructor teaching English. Writing a novel was an obvious choice. Twenty-some years earlier I’d written a bad novel—it would be an interesting challenge to see if, this time, I could get it right.
But why a crime novel? Literary fiction has more prestige, and I’d spent years studying the work of some of the world’s best writers. The problem was, I had no confidence that my skills were good enough. Literary critics are a demanding bunch, and I quailed at the thought of meeting their high standards. Besides, I like crime novels. So do a lot of other people. I wanted to write something that gave me a chance of success and that other readers would enjoy.
Choosing the setting was easy. I wanted to locate my story in a world with which I was familiar. What better place than my home turf? And so, I set most of my novel in rural northwest Saskatchewan. But it’s a northwest that exists only in my imagination. The protagonist, for example, lives on farm that resembles mine, only I’ve moved it a kilometre or two down the road to where my niece Rachelle lives. While a few locations—such as the Height of Land along Murray Lake and the North Battleford Public Library—are easily recognizable, most of the rest I’ve modified to suit plot purposes.
Two other elements—theme and character—were particularly important to me because I’d blown them in my bad first novel.
A series of events strung together isn’t a novel; it’s a plot. A novel is more complex. Its events require meaning. It must be about something, and that something must be important to the writer. I unconsciously patterned my early writing upon Agatha Christie, who created marvellous plots that were almost an end in themselves. Things happened, but they had little importance outside the novel. And they didn’t affect the lives of their protagonists. Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple remain completed unchanged by the events in which they participate.
Agatha Christie pulled it off. I didn’t. Writing manuals informed me that I needed a theme—or two. And at least one major character who experiences a significant transformation.
