Sure enough, the village is charming, its residents amusingly eccentric, and widowed police chief Jack Carson is decidedly yummy (though probably as straight as he is stern). So when he learns he's inherited both a failing bookstore and a falling-down mansion in the quaint seaside village of Pirate's Cove on Buck Island, Rhode Island, it’s full steam ahead! Secret at Skull House comes out next month-in fact, I'm starting that one today (right after we rush to Costco to stock up on supplies-assuming the shelves are not already bare).Ellery Page, aspiring screenwriter, Scrabble champion and guy-with-worst-luck-in-the-world-when-it-comes-to-dating, is ready to make a change. I wouldn't ONLY want to write this kind of thing, but it's nice in between the more emotionally charged works. I mean, yes, of course murder abounds-and a bit of heartbreak too-but the point of a cozy is all's well that end's well. Now, it's only the first book, so there is drama and angst ahead, but my intention is for these books to be gentle stories.

Frankly, I really enjoyed the lack of.drama. It's nice writing a slow, quiet building of a relationship. I kept worrying about the lack of romantic content in this, but I suddenly remembered how much romantic content is in Fatal Shadows. (That and trying to remember what everyone's eye color is and what they all drive and whether you saw fit to give someone a food allergy). The initial thinking-even when working from an outline-is what takes so much time. In some ways rewriting is much, much harder than writing from scratch-and in other crucial ways, it's much easier, because you already did the initial thinking. Manuscripts did not, in his opinion, meet that criteria, so I have been having to relive my junior writing efforts-not to mention my junior typing efforts.Īnyway, Murder at Pirate's Cove is now launched and sailing out upon the dark and the rolling sea. I must be more sentimental than I'm willing to acknowledge, although I did give him the okay to toss whatever seemed to need tossing.

The most embarrassing part is seeing through his eyes the items I saw fit to keep for thirty years. I think it's a sign of trust when you let another person-even your SO-sort through your old journals, manuscripts, love letters, etc. I have a number of manuscripts like that which came to light when the SO was emptying out our old house. Because, yes, this was a book written *cough* a long time ago and reshaped into something quite different, even worth (IMHO) worth reading. A funny thing happened on the way to writing Murder at Pirate's Cove, but that's a story for another day-and maybe even a writing book.

Murder at Pirate's Cove by Josh Lanyon