Mystery is the M theme of the day, mostly because I’m a little enchanted with it at the moment. I recently released my first true mystery, Her Cousin, Much Removed, though my other books have elements of mystery to them. But this time, I forgot the elements and went for it wholesale.

It was marvelous.

The worlds of cozy mysteries, especially the ones with a helping of humor, are bright places stocked with fleshy characters with fun names. Simply thinking up those names, whether for businesses or people, is, itself, a delight. Violence is largely bloodless in the world of cozies; people die but most of the time the deaths won’t leave you sobbing into your Kindle. It’s whodunit that matters.

Writing one was a new challenge, a different kind of challenge, for a non-planner like me. I had to keep track of everything, know where my loose threads were and how to find them again when I needed them. I had to figure out who the killer was, and it surprised me, even as it came from my brain.

And I couldn’t wait to do it again. So I am, I’ve officially started a first draft of a sequel to my cozy, as I affectionately call it, putting aside, at least for the moment, the young adult novel I’m working on. I admit I missed my characters.

Possibly, I missed killing people. But only from this side of the computer, just to be clear.

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