I’m one of the authors participating in the challenge to get a new 25-novel cozy mystery boxed set onto the USA Today Bestseller List. It’s called 25 Mysteries to Die For and will be available from December 27th. And it’s just 99¢/99p!
So if you’re interested in adding hours of cozy mystery reading to your ereader for a bargain price, and helping us to achieve our goal at the same time, you can pre-order it right now for Nook or Kobo. (Coming soon for iBooks and Kindle).
In the meantime, you can get to know all the participating authors here. Check back often, I’ll be posting a new interview every day until the boxed set is launched.
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In today’s interview, I welcome Frankie Bow whose Cozy Mystery, The Case of the Defunct Adjunct, is featured in the above mentioned box set.
Frankie, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Like my protagonist, I actually am a professor in a business school. But I did not model Professor Molly after me. I’m kind of a risk-averse person who lives a sensible life, and I wanted my character to be a little more out there. So I thought, let’s start with a normal person and then dial up the neuroticism, obsessiveness, impulsiveness, and social awkwardness. So of course now everyone thinks she is me.
Was there a certain time in your life you knew you wanted to write?
It started with reading. I love murder mysteries. Especially cozy mysteries. So one day I was reading a pretty well-known cozy while I was exercising on the elliptical machine. So as I’m reading, there’s some pun in the narrative and the author said something like “and everybody laughed and laughed” and I thought, this isn’t very funny and I could do better. So that was it, it was how it started. I thought, “I could do better than this. I could write my own murder mystery and it would be funnier.”
What are you currently working on?
Right now I’m finishing up my latest novella in the Miss Fortune world, Bayou Busybody.
Of the books you’ve written, which one is your favorite and why?
Maybe The Black Thumb, because of a funny plot element centered around Molly trying to make an important decision. I can’t say more than that without spoiling it.
What books have most influenced you as a writer?
If I had to pick, I’d say E.G. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia stories. What’s brilliant about them is that there’s all of this plotting and scheming over really trivial stakes. It’s a great model for writing about academia.
What do you find to be the most challenging part of writing? And the most rewarding?
The hardest part is taking the outline and building it into the first draft. The most satisfying is doing the final polish. The most painful is having to excise big chunks of perfectly lovely writing that you worked really hard on, because it slows down the action.
What book is on your nightstand?
The Sybil in her Grave, by Sarah Caudwell. I’ve read all four of her mysteries several times. They’re beautifully written and still fun to read even when you already know who the murderer is.
What can we look forward to seeing from you in the future?
I’m thinking of writing another Professor Molly mystery, tentatively titled “The Bundle of Joy,” but in the short term I’ll be working on the sequel to Bayou Busybody.
Is there anything you’d like to share with your readers?
Thanks to Sleuth Cafe for hosting me and spreading the word about our cozy mystery box set!
AUTHOR LINKS
Website – www.frankiebow.com
Facebook author page – https://www.facebook.com/AuthorFrankieBow
Twitter – https://twitter.com/Frankie_Bow
AUTHOR BIO
Frankie Bow teaches at a public university and writes the Professor Molly Mysteries. Unlike Professor Molly, she is blessed with delightful students, sane colleagues, and a perfectly nice office chair. She believes if life isn’t fair, at least it can be entertaining. In addition to writing fiction, she publishes in scholarly journals under her real name. Her experience with academic publishing has taught her to take nothing personally.
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The Case of the Defunct Adjunct by Frankie Bow is just one of the titles featured in a 25-novel cosy mystery collection called 25 Mysteries to Die For which aims to hit the USA Today Bestseller List at the end of the year.