Writing Light Doesn’t Have to Mean Writing Fluffy

By Kassandra Lamb, @KassandraLamb

Part of The How They Do It Series 

JH: Serious topics don't always require serious treatment. Kassandra Lamb shares tips on how you can write light, and still tackle important topics in your novels. 

Kassandra Lamb is a retired psychotherapist/ psychology professor turned mystery writer. She is the author of the Kate Huntington Mysteries and the Marcia Banks and Buddy Cozy Mysteries, plus a non-fiction guidebook, Someday is Here! A Beginner’s Guide to Writing and Publishing Your First Book. She also writes romantic suspense under the pen name of Jessica Dale. 

Her specialty as a psychotherapist was trauma recovery, and today she brings us her insights into how the brain connects our past to our present, and the implications for writers regarding characters’ back stories. 

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Take it away Kassandra… 

My Unusual Take on Cozy Mysteries

By Glenn Nilson

Part of the How They Do It Series

JH: Cozy mysteries have well-loved formats and styles, but sometimes it's okay to bend those rules a little. Please help me welcome Glenn Nilson to the lecture hall today to share how he changed the rules of the cozy for his "sleuth on the road" series.

A native of California, Glenn grew up in the Sierra Nevada foothills, spending his time doing farm chores, hiking, and even panning for gold. After earning his doctorate, he moved east to teach sociology in Connecticut. Upon retirement, the West drew him back, this time to New Mexico, the setting for a novel and several short stories. He still revisits the West by motorcycle, camping and visiting old riding buddies. Currently Glenn divides his time between living in rural Florida and up-state New York, refurbishing an 1870’s era creek-side cottage and writing.

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Take it away Glenn...

Serious Themes in Cozy Mysteries

By Lesley A. Diehl, @LesleyDiehl

Part of the How They Do It series

Lesley is a country gal through and through, from her childhood on a dairy farm in Illinois to college in a cornfield in Iowa, Lesley creates sassy, snoopy protagonists who embrace chasing killers in country settings. Lesley writes several series: the Big Lake Murder mysteries and the Eve Appel mysteries both set in rural Florida; the Laura Murphy mysteries located on a lake in upstate New York; and short stories featuring a few of Lesley’s unique relatives from back on the farm (Aunt Nozzie and the Grandmothers). She is inspired by an odd set of literary muses: a ghost named Fred and a coyote as yet unnamed.

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Take it away Lesley...