My Idea For A Cozy

Thank you Hart Johnson and Elizabeth Spann Craig for putting on this amazing blogfest.

 Crazy Cozy Blogfest

The idea is to think of the craziest, zaniest set-up for a cozy mystery you can.

Include:
1)  Sleuth (age, occupation, maybe a little family info)
2)  Sidekick (either friend or foil, but someone who always seems to be around)
3)  Setting (town, city, or other sort of place)
4)  Theme (go nuts)
5)  Twist (be as creative as you like)

Here's my idea for the crazy cozy:

Thirty-four year old Jay Walker wants to be left alone. Although he inherited millions from his father's business, he prefers to live in his 1972 Plymouth station wagon with his pet Moped, the key stealing squirrel.

While dumpster diving in Miami, Florida, Jay finds a suicide note with bloody fingerprints. Who wrote it? Jay searches for the woman who signed her name on the bottom of the letter, Pearl E. Gates. When he sees her dead body through a basement window, he uses squirrel to fetch the key from her apartment. Moped will do anything for a peanut.

It doesn't take long to discover she didn't kill herself but instead she was murdered. Together they go on an adventure to catch the killer.

Also, check out these fine stories...

Quilt or Innocence
Beatrice has a lot of gossip to catch up on—especially with the Patchwork Cottage quilt shop about to close. It seems that Judith, the landlord everyone loves to hate, wants to raise the rent, despite being a quilter herself… But when Judith is found dead, the harmless gossip becomes an intricate patchwork of mischievous motives. And it’s up to Beatrice’s expert eye to decipher the pattern and catch the killer, before her life gets sewn up for good.

Elizabeth Spann Craig: Elizabeth writes the Memphis Barbeque series for Penguin/Berkley (as Riley Adams), the Southern Quilting mysteries (2012) for Penguin/NAL, and the Myrtle Clover series for Midnight Ink. She blogs daily at Mystery Writing is Murder, which was named by Writer's Digest as one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers for 2010 and 2011.

As the mother of two, Elizabeth writes on the run as she juggles duties as Girl Scout leader, referees play dates, drives carpools, and is dragged along as a hostage/chaperone on field trips.

Links:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Indie Bound
Mystery Writing is Murder

The Azalea Assault
Cam Harris loves her job as public relations manager for the Roanoke Garden Society. It allows her to combine her three loves, spinning the press, showing off her favorite town, and promoting her favorite activity. She's just achieved a huge coup by enlisting Garden Delights, the country's premiere gardening magazine, to feature the exquisite garden of RGS founder, Neil Patrick. She's even managed to enlist world-famous photographer Jean-Jacques Georges. Unfortunately, Jean-Jacques is a first-rate cad—insulting the RGS members and gardening, goosing every woman in the room, and drinking like a lush. It is hardly a surprise when he turns up dead. But when Cam's brother-in-law is accused and her sister begs her to solve the crime, that is when things really get prickly.

Alyse Carlson: Alyse Carlson is the pen name for Hart Johnson who writes books from her bathtub. By day she is an academic researcher at a large midwestern university. She lives with her husband, two teenage children and two fur balls. The dust bunnies don't count. This will be her first published book.


Links:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Indie Bound
Confessions of a Watery Tart