A Nana, a Cozy, and a Muse by Susie Black #CozyMystery

I absolutely love hearing how authors get inspired to write, where their stories are born, and how they bring them to life. You're going to enjoy reading about how my guest, Susie Black, came to write cozy mystery.

My nana the letter writer gave me the tools to write cozy mysteries

If there is an inheritable gene for story-telling, mine came from my mother’s mother. My nana should have been a writer. No one could tell a story like her.

Like many families, once my nana’s siblings grew up and left home, they scattered across the country. Nana knew the importance of keeping her family together no matter how many miles separated them. As the oldest child, Nana was chosen to write letters to family members living far from home. With the same level of dedication as the postman; come rain, sleet, or snow, war or peace, prosperous times or the depths of a national depression, my blind-as-a-bat without her coke bottle-thick glasses nana sat every Monday night at her dining room table and wrote a letter to each of her siblings. Her letters sewed the thread that kept our close-knit tribe connected.

When I was in my sophomore year of college my family moved from Los Angeles to Miami. Despite their valiant attempts to persuade me to join them, I wasn’t interested in relocating to “God’s waiting room,” and remained out west. The good news was that Nana added me to her list of weekly letter-writing recipients. Lonesome for my family, Nana’s weekly letter was an eagerly-anticipated lifeline to my family’s heart and soul. For all of us, that letter was the glue that kept our family bound together no matter how far from home one of us wandered.

The designated town crier, Nana’s letters were more like a newsletter. A date with her friends at the movies? After reading her letter, I was in the seat next to her. She reported who went, what they wore, if they were late or early; where they sat, if they had a snack, what the snack was, editorials on how much the snacks and the movie tickets cost, and every detail of the movie that was so complete, the recipient of her letter could write a decent review based on Nana’s commentary.  If she described what an attendee was wearing, I could close my eyes and picture the outfit perfectly. Her descriptions were so detailed and rich, that if she was describing a meal, I could smell the wafting aroma and taste the food.

Out of sentimentality or maybe a sixth sense that someday I’d need them, I kept every one of those letters. Like Nana, they were strong-willed and hearty; surviving dogs, a child, countless moves, several major earthquakes, and a devastating house fire. I had no formal creative writing training when I decided to leverage my experiences as a successful ladies’ swimwear sales exec into a writing career and pen my first manuscript. I had a story to tell, but no clue how to tell it. I instinctively pulled the carefully wrapped packets of letters out of the storage box and re-read every one of them. I could picture Nana at the dining room table writing the letters. I heard her voice inside my head speaking to me. My long-gone, full-service nana had given me all the tools I needed. I re-packed the letters, started to write, and thanks to Nana, I never stopped. Death by Sample Size, my debut cozy mystery, won two awards. Death by Pins and Needles, book two in my Holly Swimsuit Series has already received rave reviews.  Somewhere in the great beyond, Nana is smiling with her approval.

Who wanted Lissa Charney dead? The list was as long as your arm….but which one actually killed her? The last thing Mermaid Swimwear sales exec Holly Schlivnik expected to find when she opened the closet door was nasty competitor Lissa Charney’s battered corpse nailed to the wall. When Holly’s colleague is wrongly arrested for Lissa’s murder, the wise-cracking, irreverent amateur sleuth sticks her nose everywhere it doesn’t belong to sniff out the real killer. Nothing turns out the way she thinks it will as Holly matches wits with a heartless killer hellbent for revenge.

Death by Pins and Needles Excerpt

I’d combed the place from one end to another and found no sign of Lissa. Where the Sam Hill was she? Not in the showroom. Not in her office. Not in the kitchen. Not in the copier room.  In the ladies’ room? Abducted by aliens?  Hiding in a closet? I was out of options and time; so, for giggles and squeaks, I pulled open the doors to the enormous sample closet that stretched across the back wall and peered inside. Good news. I found Lissa Charney. 

A dozen swimsuits picture-framed Lissa’s battered, bloody corpse like a museum exhibit. Ringed with matching black and purplish-blue shiners, her wide-open, sightless eyes stared into space as though surprised by her situation. No kidding. That made two of us. I was no doctor, but you didn’t need a medical degree for this diagnosis. No need to take her pulse. One thing was for sure, Lissa Charney had made her last sales presentation.

Naturally, I burst out laughing. 

Buy Links:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Death-Needles-Holly-Swimsuit-Mystery-ebook/dp/B0BPLHRWJ7

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/death-by-pins-and-needles-susie-black/1142836329?ean=9781509246779

Book Bub: https://www.bookbub.com/search?search=Death+by+Pins+and+Needles

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/search?q=Death+by+Pins+and+Needles&qid=GqIgEv6TpY

Susie Black biography

Named Best US Author of the Year by N. N. Lights Book Heaven, award-winning cozy mystery author Susie Black was born in the Big Apple but now calls sunny Southern California home. Like the protagonist in her Fashion & Foul Play Mystery Series, Susie is a successful apparel sales executive. Susie began telling stories as soon as she learned to talk. Now she’s telling all the stories from her garment industry experiences in humorous mysteries.

She reads, writes, and speaks Spanish, albeit with an accent that sounds like Mildred from Michigan went on a Mexican vacation and is trying to fit in with the locals. Since life without pizza and ice cream as her core food groups wouldn’t be worth living, she’s a dedicated walker to keep her girlish figure. A voracious reader, she’s also an avid stamp collector. Susie lives with a highly intelligent man and has one incredibly brainy but smart-aleck adult son who inexplicably blames his sarcasm on an inherited genetic defect.

Looking for more? Contact Susie at:

Website: www.authorsusieblack.com

E-mail: mysteries_@authorsusieblack.com