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WHAT IS THEME? In the world of cozy mysteries, thematic elements are practically required if you plan on doing a series, but they’re also beneficial for standalones. No, we’re not talking about traditional themes, as in the overall concept or message you want to portray (good vs. evil, love conquers all, etc.). The cozy…
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So, you just published your cozy mystery series . . . now, what? You sit and watch your rank, but your book is not rising as fast as you’d like. And when that happens, you start to worry your book might not ever sell as many copies as you’d like it to. You could…
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A great cozy mystery series is all about humanity’s insatiable curiosity, my dear Watson! Nearly everyone you meet has been curious about something at one point or another. When a person doesn’t know something but is taunted with just enough details, something in the brain triggers, and they HAVE to learn more. That drive to know what…
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Let’s face it. Finding creative angles to market fiction is a challenge because most books are built on characters, emotions, and something potentially awful that happens to the protagonist. Here and there, you might run across an author who has figured out a distantly related way to market their novels, but it shouldn’t be…
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Murder. It’s scary, right? We could also say it’s also frightening, terrifying, traumatizing, and just plain messy and disgusting. Blood and guts everywhere, nasty smells, and emotionally paralyzing. For those of us who have never seen a dead body, it’s beyond imaginable what it’s like to walk into a room to see someone lying…