Book
Synopsis
‘Twas
the week before Christmas and all through the village, the night
settled in over swirling-smoke chimneys; the air was alive with pine
and holly, with sugar and cinnamon and cider, by golly!
Along
snowy lanes and through shadows it crept, past windows behind which
each villager slept, where sleeping dogs lie and cats rest a’purring—
Tonight,
in Christmas Village, a killer is stirring.
Welcome
to Christmas Village, a magical hamlet where even in December the
roses hold their luster and bees buzz among the bluebells. You’re
just in time for the week-long Christmas Festival, and nowhere is
Christmas celebrated with such unrestrained merriment as the village
which bears its name. Mayor Cobblestone and Sheriff Fell will be
somewhere nearby, doing all they can to make sure you’re safe
during your stay.
Provided
you haven’t booked a room at Plum Cottage.
Nestled
betwixt an opulent garden with meandering footpaths and an ancient
grove of plum trees, Rose Willoughby’s boarding house is plum-full
with lodgers. There are no vacancies, but just wait. Soon there will
be one…and another…and another.
Presently
lodging at the cottage are: the juggler, the acrobat, the magician,
the psychic, the strongman, the manager, and the pretty assistant. In
town as festival entertainment they’ve each brought their own bag
of tricks. And a closetful of skeletons.
When
the entertainers begin dying in inexplicable ways, some villagers
believe a beast from old village lore is the culprit. The sheriff
knows better, but he’s just as helpless to catch the invisible
killer as are the town folk with their eyes to the sky in search of a
flying creature. But our mysterious murderer hasn’t counted on yet
another lodger coming to the cottage: Maribel Claus.
Short
as a stump, round as a wheel, sweet as a candy cane, and a sharp as a
whip, Maribel loves a good puzzle. But has she finally met her match
at Plum Cottage?
Can
you figure out whodunit before Maribel does? If you’re up to the
challenge, here’s your first clue—the key to unlocking the secret
of the murderer’s identity lies in figuring out how the murders
were committed. Good luck!
Guest
Post: Why I Started Writing Cozy
Mysteries & Why I’ll Keep Writing Them by T.C. Wescott
Slay
Bells, the first of my Christmas Village Mystery series, is being
released this month. Last July my first cozy mystery book, Running
from Scissors, came out and its sequel, Running from Arrows,
will be unleashed in January. These two are part of the Running Store
Mystery series. All the books are full-length and were written back
to back which means I’ve been very busy this last year. And I
wouldn’t change a moment of it!
Slay
Bells introduces us to Maribel Claus who has lived her whole life
in the magical village of Christmas. It’s the week of the annual
grand Christmas Festival and all energy is devoted to the village’s
legendary week-long celebration. Maribel’s friend, Rose, owns and
runs Plum Cottage, a country inn, which is booked up by a circus
troupe in town as entertainment. But when the guests start dying in
inexplicable ways the village leaders realize that either a
diabolical criminal is in their midst or a village legend – the
Glockenvogel – has come to life and is terrorizing the village.
It’s up to Maribel and her friends to figure out how the murders
were committed so they can learn who is behind them. A howdunit and a
whodunit!
I’ve
been a reader since I was a small child and although I didn’t
realize it until I was much older, I’d always been a writer. As a
five-year-old I wrote my own version of Dracula, complete with
crayon illustration. While I’d like to think I’ve improved as a
writer since kindergarten, my drawing skills still look like a blind
mind trying to draw with his toes. In my twenties I tried writing
again, this time it was young adult horror novels, but it was just
for fun. This was the late 1990s and I’d bought into the dictum
that it was impossible to break into publishing unless you knew
somebody. I knew nobody. But I became interested in studying true
crime and began writing articles for specialist journals. This led to
the publication of my first history/true crime book in 2014. I
self-published the book, expecting it might sell 300 copies over the
course of a year or two. It sold that in a month and went on to win
three awards and continues to sell steadily, as did the follow-up
book I published in 2017. This led me to consider self-publishing
fiction.
I
researched the field. This wasn’t hard to do since I was already a
die-hard mystery reader. I knew mystery was the field I wanted to
publish in. And I love the idea of the cozy mystery. However, I’m a
huge fan of the classic mysteries of the Golden Age. I decided to
write two different series: The Running Store Mystery series would be
a contemporary cozy set in a small town with many of the popular
tropes of the cozy genre. There was no series on the market devoted
to running, so I decided that would be way to go so as not to be
derivative. The Christmas Village Mystery series, which had lived in
my head for years, is my attempt to take mysteries to the coziest
place they’ve ever been while also offering an added level of
mystery by resurrecting the ‘Locked Room’ mysteries made popular
in the 1940s and onward by John Dickson Carr and, later, Ed Hoch. The
series are also different in that the Running Store books are written
in the first person and Christmas Village in third person. I can’t
tell you how many paragraphs I’ve had to rewrite because I forgot
which tense I was supposed to be writing in!
It
was important to me that my books compete with the big publishers on
their own terms. This means good cover art. It turns out there are a
lot of talented cover artists out there for independent publishers.
It’s an expense, but a necessary one if you take your work
seriously and expect readers to as well. I was also blessed to have
an English professor in my circle and she agreed to work as
copyeditor and proofreader on the books. And believe me, she has her
work cut out for her!
I
dipped my toe into the audiobook market for Running from Scissors
and will again for its sequel, which is a Valentine’s Day book and
therefore a mystery cross-pollinated with romance, which I hope will
expose me to a new market. Having learned a thing or two through this
experience, I’m not diving into an audiobook with Slay Bells.
Instead, I’m going to let the Kindle and paperback editions pay for
themselves and then put the profits towards an audiobook edition next
year or the year after. By then, the series should be three books
strong and they can all be recorded and released at once.
One
of the best things that’s come from publishing Running from
Scissors is the feedback I’ve received from fellow mystery
readers. They totally ‘got’ what I was going for in doing a
mash-up between the modern cozy and the more Golden Age style of
storytelling. Most not only ‘got’ it but said they wanted more of
that, so I know I’m onto something. The publishing label I’ve set
up for myself, Better Mousetrap Books, will someday be expanded to
find and publish other authors with a similar goal in mind – to
elevate and advance the cozy mystery into its next phase. Sometimes
to go forward you need to look back. By asking myself what made me
fall in love with the mystery genre I’ve learned what elements are
important to me to include in my books. To see others reacting in the
same way to my material is a dream come true.
Whether
you’re a budding writer like myself or simply someone who loves a
good mystery well told, I invite you to stop by Better Mousetrap
Books’ Facebook page or head over to Amazon to pick up Slay
Bells and Running from Scissors. Then let me know what you
think and what YOU’D like to see happen to the cozy mystery genre
over the next few years. It’s readers who decide the market, not
writers and publishers, so what are things you’d like to see
change, improve, or stay exactly as they are?
Author
Bio
T.C.
Wescott was born in Missouri but has lived in Oklahoma most of his
life. Like pretty much every author who has ever breathed, he is an
avid reader. His favorites are classic mysteries from the Golden Age,
as well as just before or just after that period (which is
widely considered the period between the two World Wars). His
first mystery novel, Running
from Scissors,
was published in July 2018 and will be the first of at least three
books in the Running Store Mystery series.
The
Christmas Village Mystery series will launch in November of the same
year with the debut title Slay
Bells.
The formula for his books is simple – mixing the classic,
traditional detective fiction standards with all the trappings of the
modern cozy mystery.
Wescott is
also (under another name) the author of two award-winning non-fiction
books as well as a slew of essays and articles.
Follow
on GoodReads
– https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18176277.T_C_Wescott
Purchase
Link – Amazon
Giveaway
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