Supernatural Cosy Mysteries

I have liked cosy mysteries for a long time already, yet there is one big problem with them: keeping it believable that a regular person would get drawn into several murder investigations. In more recent years, I’ve found myself drawn more towards supernatural cosy mysteries and those where the profession of the main character makes it easier to explain them being drawn into murder investigations. Quite often, those overlap in my book collection. Why the draw to the supernatural, though?

Suspension of disbelief is probably one of the main reasons. With a supernatural story, I am already doing more suspension of disbelief while I’m reading it — I have to believe in witches, demons, or other supernatural beings. It’s easier to move on from that to the idea that a regular person (well, a regular supernatural being) could be drawn into several criminal investigations.
I am already stepping away from ‘real’ life when I’m opening a book where the main character is a witch or a fury or can speak to ghosts. From there, the idea that they are also stumbling over dead bodies and get drawn into solving the mystery of the dead isn’t that far-fetched. Especially someone who speaks to ghosts would be a draw for every ghost who needs a wrong righted — and what bigger wrong is there than being murdered?
Things also might work differently among supernatural beings. Perhaps they don’t have the same government structure. Perhaps they are much more tight-knit and need to keep the whole case from regular law enforcement. There are options and with that, it is easier to keep believing for longer.

In addition, of course, quite some of my favourite supernatural cosy sleuths, such as Eden Fury, are already working within the legal system or are at least researchers by profession and character.
Of course it is only natural for a law-enforcement agent to investigate a murder in their town. It’s their job when all is said and done. Of course a reporter and editor will not allow themselves to be send away from the scoop that will make people buy the next edition of the local newspaper. Of course the defence lawyer of the town will look into a crime their client is accused of.
This works without the supernatural element, too, of course. Yet, it helps explaining why someone is stumbling over corpses and needs to figure out how the murder happened and who did it for what reason.

It’s not that I need for magic to be present in every moment of the story or only want to have supernatural beings all around. Most of the stories I’ve read have supernatural people mingle discreetly with normal people, so there’s also humans who are completely unaware that there is something like magic or vampires or whatever. Yet, supernatural elements play their part and usually play it well.
With Eden Fury from the Federal Bureau of Magic, it’s often less about the case as a such (although the case will be solved by the end of the book) and more about the shenanigans which happen with her family made up of witches, demons, vampires, angel-hybrids, and other supernaturals. With Jayne Frost, it’s about the daughter of the ruler of the North Pole stumbling over cases while she’s just trying to manage a toy shop and decide which one of the two possible lovers she should choose (she chooses a third one in the end, by the way).
Human life and supernatural elements mingle in those stories and I love that very much, because being a witch or a vampire or a fury or Jack Frost’s daughter doesn’t mean you’re not also, deep down, a human being with a love live and your own wants, needs, and fears.

World-building is another aspect for me. Every book has to build a bit of the world, has to give the reader a framework of how things are, of what to expect. There is a world someone lives in — a town or village in most cosy mysteries —, which needs to take on shape so the audience knows where the characters are going, who is living and working where, and how they are connected. It’s about the streets and landmarks as much as about the families and friends.
One big world-building problem with all cosy mysteries is that cosy mysteries are usually set in a small town or a village (US authors seem to favour the town whereas UK authors seem to favour the village) where not that many murders should be happening. That takes some serious suspension of disbelief of its own — which I also find easier to do when supernaturals are involved. It seems to me that in a village or town filled with supernatural beings, there is a higher chance that things might heat up and end in a murder or other serious crime. A fight between two regular men in a bar will most likely lead to a few black eyes and other bruises. A fight between a vampire and a werewolf, on the other hand, could very well leave one of them dead as they’re much stronger and have predatory instincts.
A book with supernatural content has more world-building to do to integrate the parts which are not ‘real’ with the parts which are. Often, it is much more detailed for this reason and gives me a better feeling for the town it’s all set in. It’s a town with werewolves and vampires in it, so there are going to be things which are different and things which are as you’d expect them to be. It’s fun to find out more about that as I dive into the stories.

Cosy mysteries will always have problems when they reach a certain number of stories. In the end, it might be easier to believe that someone has just stumbled over their tenth (or seven-hundredth — looking at you, “Murder, She Wrote”) body if they also have witchcraft at their disposal or live in a town full of supernatural creatures. If they’re in a profession where contact with crimes is a thing, it’s even more believable for them to stumble over several murders over time. I love cosy mysteries in general and find I can follow series with supernatural aspects for longer without getting all ‘she’s found another body again?’ about it.

Mr. Straight White Dude

Over the course of the last one-hundred-and-twenty or so years, a standard hero has emerged in storytelling: the straight white man. Or, as I call him, Mr. Straight White Dude. Even in many stories not written by white men, the hero is a straight white man or seen as one because nothing is said otherwise and he’s the standard hero figure. Why is that and why is that bad?

I could blame “The Hero With A Thousand Faces” for this, but that would not be true. While the book has had an influence on many writers, it’s not that influential. Yet, the western world as a such is.
As most of what amounted to ‘literature’ and later on storytelling in other media such as stage plays, movies, TV, or computer games was created by people from either Europe or North America, the overwhelming majority of main characters fit with the creators or whom the creators pretended to be: straight white men. The only literature genre where the straight white man normally is not the main character is romantic literature. Here, it is the straight white woman, which is not much better (but a little).
The problem with this is that everyone who is not a straight white man, everyone who can’t immediately see themselves in Mr. Straight White Dude, does hardly feel represented. With the large majority of heroes being incarnations of Mr. Straight White Dude, other people aren’t considered regular hero characters. They can take other roles, such as the damsel (usually the straight white woman), but not the main spot, not outside specific genres.
We can do better than that and we should do better than that. Mr. Straight White Dude has worked long and hard and deserves an extended holiday now.

The overwhelming presence of Mr. Straight White Dude is not doing the stories any favour, as it were. By narrowing down the idea of who can be the hero, the stories limit themselves. Mr. Straight White Dude has a certain set of regular skills (usually martial ones) and a certain way of dealing with his problems. He also has a limited amount of different faces — mostly those of a handful of white male actors who regularly play the action hero.
Diversity doesn’t just mean different skin colours, genders, or sexual orientations. It means filling up the ‘toolbox’ of the author. A fighter has a limited reservoir of skills, as does a healer, a diplomat, a spy, or any other character class (to dip into RPG jargon). Yet, a group made up of all of them will have a wide range of possible solutions for any kind of problem which might crop up in a story. A fighter can defeat a group of thugs. A healer can patch up someone who has important information. A diplomat can get the group past a guarded roadblock. A spy can creep ahead and spy on the evil mage in their lair. Imagine overcoming all of those problems with just one of them.
Mr. Straight White Dude has proven over and over again that he can handle saving the day (or the world). Considering there’s many other people in the world, it is time for him to take a break and let others get to the day- (or world-) saving.

There is no change, however, until people make it happen. This means that instead of relying on Mr. Straight White Dude, authors would do well to choose other heroes for their stories. Every story which is not focused on him is a story which broadens the idea of what a hero can look like or what it means to be a hero in the first place.
There are authors (and especially production companies) who shy away from that, rather going with what ‘has always worked.’ They play it safe. Don’t be one of them, though. A lot of people will enjoy books with a more unusual hero, with a hero who, perhaps, is closer to them than Mr. Straight White Dude. There is a market for it and it’s easier for your story to stand out that way as well.
Replacing the standard hero with another one — someone who has not been through a million stories already —, not only gives the author something new to work with, but also gives the audience something new to get into and enjoy.

One argument against using someone else than Mr. Straight White Dude is often ‘there were no [enter other social groups here] in this place,’ especially in historical fiction. Yet, even changing one aspect of Mr. Straight White Dude (the straight, the white, or the male) helps. A straight white woman is a step in the right direction. A straight black man is a step in the right direction. A gay white man is a step in the right direction. There are choices, even if some might be minor ones.
The more aspects you’re able to change, the better — and every fantasy or science-fiction setting should allow you to change many aspects. Yet, every change is good. Using a female main character makes changes to the story. Using a POC character makes changes to the story. Using a gay character makes changes to the story. Each of them also makes different changes to the story.
Every change undermines the idea that Mr. Straight White Dude is the only hero out there and nobody else can take his place. Every change makes it more likely for Mr. Straight White Dude to be able to take a much-deserved sabbatical.

First and foremost, even if it’s the last point here, remember that characters are characters. Not male, not female. Not white, not POC. Not straight, not gay. They are characters and should be created to fit with the story. Or they are characters and the story should be created to fit them, depending on what comes first for you, the story or the main character.
Don’t make stereotypes but fully-realised characters and you’re already mostly in the green. The more you step away from the standard, the more you will take your character and your story in the right direction.
Mr. Straight White Dude deserves a long holiday.

Mr. Straight White Dude has had a long and successful career. He still can have a lot of work in the future, too, but it is time to move past him and discover a wide world of other heroes who do things differently and are part of different social groups. Expand your writer’s toolbox and dive into a more diverse set of heroes. Expand the range of your stories and allow them to stand out.

My Writing Process

First of all, a disclaimer: This is my writing process, it doesn’t have to work for everyone. It probably won’t work for everyone. It might not even work for me in a few months or years. Things change.
Currently, though, it works well for me and allows me to write quickly (in most cases) and efficiently, to plan out my stories and get them done well.

For quite a while, I was a discovery writer or ‘pantser’ (I like the first term better). I just set out writing without a real plan. I had an idea where the story was going, I had a character or a scene or a basic plot I wanted to incorporate and the story would just grow out of it.
This isn’t a bad way of writing per se — I have completed quite some stories that way. It is, however, a way which means a lot of revising afterwards to get contradictions and continuity errors out of the story. Plotting makes that part easier.
These days, my process includes a lot of steps before the writing (and just one afterwards), which makes the writing as a such easier to do. Yet, when I started out, I wouldn’t have been able to get the stories written after that much preparation. Life can be weird.

My writing process goes like this: first, I gather ideas, then I draw up a rough outline, then I plot the scenes and sort them into chapters, then I write the story, and finally I revise and edit it. In addition to that, there’s research which can come in at any point in the story. I do most of it during the plotting process, but sometimes I do it earlier and sometimes I still have to do it while I’m already writing or in the editing process.
The process is longer, but also means that by the time I have to sit down and do the writing — the longest part of it —, I know exactly what will happen when. That doesn’t mean I never make changes to the scenes as they’re plotted, never change them, move them, or break them up into two or more smaller scenes. It means that I have a good idea of how the story will run and can see any problems with the plot long before I start the writing process. It saves me a lot of time in revision and editing.

My writing starts in Scapple, a whiteboard software from the same company which also does Scrivener, my writing software. That’s not the main reason why I use that one, though. I simply like quite some of the features such as easy stacking and transfer of formatting.
In Scapple, I open a new file and simply throw down my ideas for the story as notes — whatever I have, be it characters, scenes, specific plot ideas, a summary of what the story should be about. Once I have them all down, I can then sort them out.
I make notes for the main characters and, perhaps, give them names already. Sometimes, I work with descriptions like ‘detective,’ ‘murderer,’ ‘damsel,’ or ‘villain.’ For finding names all through the process, I love using the Random Names Generator online. There are a lot of different settings and you can get five suggestions at once, too. I do take more time with main characters, but there’s also a lot of side characters to name and there the generator definitely comes in useful. I might also make notes of what to research if I need to get deeper into a topic (such as, for instance, the exact wording of how to get Baba Yaga’s house to turn around and open for you).
Once I know the characters and have sorted out the basic plot, I sit down and write a rough outline of the story, putting down what I want or need to happen when and sort it out until I have a narrative, unpolished as it might be.

At this point, I usually switch from Scapple to Scrivener (or at least I also open Scrivener). For a stand-alone project or a project which might become a series, I open a new project and put everything in. I have my own template for Scrivener which offers all I need and nothing I would have to delete anyway. If it’s going to be part of a series I’ve already worked on, I simply add it to that project. That’s one thing I love about Scrivener — the possibility to make large projects with a lot of data work.
In Scrivener, I put down all I have in Scapple, usually starting with the characters. At this point, if not earlier, at least the important characters get their names. Those get a character sheet of their own from me whereas side characters get a space on a list. I make notes for my research or put down what I have already. At this point, I might also download pages I need for reference — like monster pages from the Lovecraft wiki for “The Crew”. Like this, I begin to fill up my notes and research folders.
After that, or sometimes parallel to it, I write down the scenes, referencing the rough outline as I do. Every scene gets a short description in the synopsis and a place in the narrative. I sort the scenes into chapters and build up the structure of my project like that. By the end of this, the story is ready for writing, even if I might not get to it immediately.
At this point, most projects get a bit of rest, whereas I usually go through the process so far in a relatively short time of either days or hours. Not all research might be done, but I’m mostly clear on what I will be writing.

The longest and most tedious part of the process comes next: Actually writing the story, of course. I can write reasonably fast and I write full-time, so I can definitely get a project done in a good time, provided all goes well (with “DI Colin Rook” it didn’t).
I usually try to write one to two chapters a day — my chapters are between 2,500+ (novellas) and 3,000+ words (novels). I normally take the weekend off for other things, so that’s five days a week and usually eight to ten chapters per week, too. In a week, I can write between 24,000 and 30,000 words of a project.
Most of my projects clock in at between 60,000 and 90,000 words as the target and usually a few thousand words above that once written. I can, therefore, produce a book in a month if nothing bad happens. That doesn’t mean it always works. I usually calculate two months for a project, what with real life and other things happening. Some days, I don’t get down to writing, some time every month I don’t really feel like it (other women may understand why).
I end the writing process by compiling the first draft for personal use and then letting the project rest some. It is never a good idea to go into a big project and edit it right after you’ve finished writing. Distance is good for the judgement.

The last step then is the revision, editing, and release of the book. After a few weeks or months (the latter is better), I pick the book up for the last part. I release a book four times a year and use the months in question (February, May, August, November) to edit the project in question.
First, I go over the text in a content edit and revise what needs to be revised. Usually, there’s only small things coming up, but I’ve had a few cases where chapters had to be added or rewritten.
Once this is done, it’s time for three rounds of copy edit to check for wrong words (misspelling usually isn’t a problem because of the spellchecker in Scrivener), weird sentences, and other grammatical issues. I have to keep an eye on my sentence length as well and I know it. I do the copy edit backwards, starting with the last scene and working my way to the first. Like this, I’m less likely to be distracted by the story and can focus on the actual words much better.
Afterwards, the book gets another general check and the release version is compiled. As I only do digital books, I don’t have to do a line edit. Somewhere within the editing process (or sometimes earlier), I also produce my cover design which is then added to the release.

This is my current process for writing my books. It’s not set in stone, of course, in a year it might be completely different again. Yet, for the moment, this split between Scapple for the early work and Scrivener for the rest works well for me, as does doing a rough outline and then the synopsis for all scenes so I can see the development of the story. Nothing is set in stone there, either, though, as I might find I need another scene or need to move a scene during the writing or the editing process.

Choosing a Project

Right now, I’m between projects — the release of “The Haunting of Winterthorne Hall” is done and I have not yet started a new book. By next week, I’ll have started it, of course, but right now, I’m not quite sure what to write next. For me, that is a common problem once I’m done with a book this way or that, either with writing or with releasing.

It’s not that I’m out of projects — quite the opposite. I have a long list of projects which are fully plotted and prepared, but do still need to be written. That’s of course the longest part of the process, even with my high output.
Even if I finished writing a project each month (not editing and not taking time off), I would have to write for the next 26 months to finish the projects I think I could release — and some more if I add stuff that is either fan-fiction or erotica. Given that I regularly have more ideas for new stories, both within and without my established series, there is always a lot of choices.

It’s always a bit of a challenge to choose the next project. I wouldn’t go through the long process of plotting and planning and preparing a project (more on that next week) unless I want to write that story, so I am motivated to tackle each of my projects. Yet, the motivation isn’t always a guarantee for swift work.
“DI Colin Rook”, for instance, was a project I wanted to write, so I chose it several months ago. Yet, the writing was drawn out, because I found myself hard-pressed to get down to it on many days. It took me a long time to finish the story — both because of me not being able to stay focused on it and because of things in real life.
Burning for a project, as I often am at the beginning of it, doesn’t mean I will breeze through — although on the other hand, I managed to write the novel “Changing Plans” within three weeks of focused work. Writing can be a strange craft.

My strongest contender at the moment is another collection of short stories which might, in time, become a series: “Scholomancer”.
It’s one of several sets of shorts I’ve plotted recently and I do like the basic idea and the characters I will have to work with. Anne is interesting on her own, a powerful mage trained as one of ten Scholomancers of her generation (based on the legend of the ‘Devil’s School’). Necro, her cat, is actually an elder abomination caught in the shape of a fat red tabby. They tend to squabble a lot and Necro’s laziness (which might or might not be connected to his current body shape) means he’s no easy Deus Ex Machina for the story which would make it boring.
Another book high on the list would be “Sword and Dagger”, a fantasy police procedural novel which might as well turn into a series, too.
It’s a buddy-cop situation in which Greg, an assassin who has too many morals for his job, has to team up with Javier, the guard captain, to prove his innocence and solve two murders. It does have a few nice situations and a budding friendship (not to mention a possible career change for Greg). I could expand it into a series of fantasy police procedurals, which could be fun to write as well.
Both of those books will be written in time, no doubt. I plan to finish all my projects at some point (even though there probably will be new ones by the time I’m through with those 26+ ones). Yet, the big question is ‘what shall I write next?’ and that one I can’t answer that easily.

There is no logical way to determine what I should write next.
It’s not about working my way through the projects as they’ve been planned and plotted. Quite some came about around the same time, so which one to choose in such a case?
I want to write all of the stories, too, so there’s no ‘do the least-wanted first’ or ‘do the most-wanted first.’ It’s hard to judge the intensity of motivation and it changes day by day. I was very motivated for “DI Colin Rook”, but often found myself unable to work on the story afterwards — and by that I mean I was sitting in front of the project for hours without getting anything written.
Because of Colin, I do want to write another set of short stories, but there’s more than “Scholomancer”, too. I could write “The Crew” which is a clear stand-alone, as is “Fallen Angel”.
I could get back to Maddie and write her second set of scoops or I could write a third set of missions for John Stanton. I have two more novella collections lined up for Isadora Goode and a novel and a set of short stories for Gabrielle Munson.
I could write one of the many stand-alone novels I’ve plotted. “The Black Friar of Milton Manor” would be fun to write, I’m sure. “Sun and Shadow” would allow me to step into the world of cultivation novels.
A lot of different choices and no logical way of choosing — that’s anything but fun, but I have to get through it every time and I will do so, too, this time.

It’s not always easy to choose a new project. Sometimes, it’s easy because there’s one you want to write more than all others. Sometimes, you simply want to continue a series or you want to go by the age of the project and do the old ones first. Sometimes, you’ve promised to write a book next — to yourself or other people. There’s no way that always works and choosing the project you’re most motivated to write doesn’t always mean smooth sailing and a quick success. It can take a lot longer than you think or it could be over in a heartbeat…