Possible to Cozy w/o Cutesy or Cat?

I'm not sure I agree with you that the term "cozy" was meant to be derogatory. However, there are many mystery sub-genres. I've included a link to a site that may satisfy your curiosity.

http://www.cluelass.com/Guide/FAQGenre.lasso

As far as cozies are concerned, I've been told that a cozy is a mystery that wouldn't offend you blue-haired grandmother.

Best of luck during NANO.

-rick
http://www.muse-needed.blogspot.com/

-rick bylina
The only rule: writers write! Everything else is a guideline.
http://muse-needed.blogspot.com/

I honestly never connected cats with cozies. I mean... both of the mystery series I read most have cats in them and both would be classified as cozies, but I never thought that it was a requirement. I like them because I like cats and I like mysteries and I don't like graphic violence or sex.

I'd always heard that cozies referred to the fact that the person trying to solve the crime was either an amateur or, occasionally, a professional who seemed to stumble into a crime - rather than actually being called in to solve it (like a private detective).

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NaNo 2006: Steel Bars - 59,233 words
Screnzy 2007: The Enchanted Forest - won
NaNo 2007: Turning Beetles into Buttons - 51,949 words
Screnzy 2008: Simple Gifts - 43 pages total & Butterfly - 9 episodes

So, would you consider Diane Mott Davidson's books to be cozy mysteries? No cat that I can tell, and the main character works for a living. No knitting needles to be seen!

What mysteries have you read that you enjoyed? Gather together a few of those and write something similar. I'm going to go ahead and recommend Sue Grafton and Faye Kellerman (not Jonathan Kellerman, who is a bit freaky) if you haven't already read their work. It's very middle ground.

I don't think cozy was ever meant to be derogatory. And now a days with gathered in the drawing room Christie-type murders out of fashion, cozy has come to mean amateur sleuth with low violence content. I've seen cozies with main characters who are publishers, burglars, coffee shop owners, you name it. Just because you've read a lot of cozies that are poorly written and contain cats does not mean yours has to be that way. Not that there's anything wrong with cats.

I think Diane Mott Davidson is considered to be cozy, at least in general terms. I know one agent I spoke to viewed her that way and generally viewed her audience as being the same as a cozy audience. In general, a cozy is a mystery with little or no blood or gore. The "detective" is an amateur detective, but this doesn't mean they can't be professional at something else. And usually with a cozy, the setting plays an important part of the mystery in that it provides a bit of a closed environment and a limited pool of characters. This doesn't have to mean the characters are stranded on a deserted island. It could be a NY apartment building where everyone knows the murderer had to be one of the residents. This allows the reader to play along and try to solve the mystery since they know all the players in the game.

One important thing to realize about genre and sub-genres, is that in the end, the publisher will categorize a book into the genre that's likely to drive the highest sales and not pay any attention to the "rules" of the genre. Diane Mott Davidson would once have been cozy but she turned "culinary mysteries" into a marketable sub-genre. Suddenly everyone wants recipies in mystery novels. Just write and let the agents and publishers sort out the details.

Marie

From http://www.cluelass.com/Guide/FAQGenre.lasso :
1. A cozy must include at least one cat...
(meant to be humorous). The page continues with another definition which includes "mildly romantic subplot".

That makes sense; but if there is no gore and no cat, will it be rejected out of hand because no one knows what to do with it? That's the question... :-)

Oh, it'll be rejected for all sorts of various reasons, but probably not for the lack of a cat. Gore, well, depends on the industry. Lately serial killers have been popular with publishers. I know of one author who had her first forensic mystery picked up by a major publisher. The publisher then rejected book 2 because there was no serial killer. Though they did accept a second book with more gore. But trends change. Hobby mysteries have been making the rounds. There's a subgenre now of lighthouse mysteries. Almost anything with a hint of psychics, vampires, ghosts, Wicca or a reference to the Tarot is being dropped into the Paranormal subgenre because that's selling. But agents and publish will find all sorts of reasons to reject the story. Being rejected is just part of the process.

The thing is that worrying about "what's selling" before you start writing just really doesn't guarantee any more success or fewer rejections. For me Nano is a month of freedom when I really can write anything I think of and then worry later whether or not it's marketable or even worth finishing. If I always worried about what would sell and what would get me rejected, I'd never get anything out there. During my 2004 Nano efforts one of my mystery characters decided to write his own book. So whenever I hit a block on the mystery, I'd have someone pick up a chapter of Patrick's contemporary gay vampire romance story. It was just a way to keep the word count moving and nothing I every expected to ever show to anyone, much less submit to a publisher. After Nano, my mystery editor heard me joke about it to someone and fussed at me to do submit it a few places. So I pulled it out, expanded it a bit and sold it as an erotica novella. Something that never would have happened if I'd been worry about being rejected during Nano because I really didn't think the world needed another vampire story.

November is for writing because you never know what might happen.

Marie

Marie is correct. In a way, you are putting the cart before the horse to borrow an old, but true, cliche. The lack of a cat will not exclude it from being a cozy. The boundaries for a cozy are flexible. Maybe the animal in it is a bird or a dog or a fish with telepathic powers. Gore in a cozy is another matter.

In a cozy, it would be written: Miss Proudfoot wrinkled her nose at the stench from the rotting corpse. Her initial shock at finding the decomposing body gave way to action. She turned away and called 9-1-1.

Not in a cozy: Miss Proudfoot wrinkled here nose at the stench of the rotting corpose, brain matter splattered like a dropped bowl of oatmeal. His eyes were clouded over, but she saw a hint of blue, not something she'd expect to see on the reservation. Whatever smashed his head came from straight overhead. She bent closer, pulling out her cell phone as she did, hoping to get a signal this far into the back-country. She fingered the blood-encrusted hair, auburn, something else she didn't expect, and noticed the splinteres of steel imbedded in the scalp. She dialed 9-1-1. The local cops would never figure this out. This was for the tribal police force.

If this is your first, just write it. Along the journey, you may just figure out what it is you're writing.

-rick bylina
The only rule: writers write! Everything else is a guideline.
http://muse-needed.blogspot.com/

Thanks, I was wondering about "category" since everyone seems to know their "category." My outline has battling relatives, no murder, and no psychic fish. Maybe it's boring. I guess I'll know by the end of November!

Scene:
As the murderer pull the knife from her victim she looks over her shoulder.

"Mein Gott!" she says. "Not another cat!"

If you're worried about making a sale, you could always bite the bullet and add in a cat ;). Kidding. Just as an aside, I think cats are out. The fact that you're seeing them in every book is probably a good sign that they are getting passe. Generally, you want to be ahead of what's already in the stores. And this is coming from a major cat lover who will use any excuse possible to add a cat in any story possible. Styles go in and out. You could be at the cusp of starting your own trend. Go for it!

As someone who has gloriously failed nano three times already, I wouldn't write something with any dreams of publication. But that's just my personal advice. Maybe that's the push you need. Me, I choke and seeing my favorite ideas going down in the flame of the quality that comes with 2K a day does not help.

To make another recommendation, the burglar series from Lawrence Block. There's no graphic sex, no violence, and not a cat, chocolatier, vampire, or psychic parrot in sight.

I hate to be a nitpicker (or knit-picker as the case may be) here, but I think there has been a general misconception about the origin of the whole `cozy' term. A cozy, as defined by Merriam-Webster's unabridged is "a padded covering for a teapot to keep the contents hot" - and that is where the reference comes from. Cozies are originally English country house mysteries a la Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, where the means of murder is more apt to be poison in the tea than, say, a semi-automatic weapon - genteel mysteries. They don't necessarily involve cats or cutesiness at all. Hercule Poirot and some of Ms. Christie's other detectives abhorred `cute.' But tea cozies are a standard feature in the sort of houses where `cozy' mysteries take place.

The `Malice Domestic' series of `cozy' mystery short stories always features a tea pot, or steaming cup of hot tea as part of the cover illustration by way of a tribute to the term. And last year I made my own tribute in my nano novel by including a drugged pot of tea toward the end, even though my mystery was of the Horror/Thriller category. It isn't a derogatory description at all - just very, very British!

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Thanks, Martian! That's the description I remember.

Oh dear. My story has no cat and is most certainly NOT cute. Part of it involves the Civil Rights era and that might offend someone! However while there is a murder and a fire there is no graphic violence. The racists in this novel are more likely to manuever to make someone loose their job rather than toss a brick through a window (although there is some tire slashing!)

But it is set in a modern day small southern town and the sleuth runs a bed and breakfast and of course the prime supsects are all her guests!

I couldn't figure out where else to put it!

lol

Totally apart from nano, I'm writing a cozy for my mother - not blue-haired, but definitely a grandmother.

It's sort of turning into a polic Procdural / paranormal.

It's got a cat, but he's a familiar. The heroine/amatuer detective is a witch.

Suelder

Well, Cats only entered the "Cozy" about 25 years ago with Lillian Brauns popular Cat Who... books which were then copied by a bunch of "copy cats". Okay, not the best, but it's 4 a.m.

The term cozy actually comes from "Country Cozy" used to describe a genre of fiction that would include detectives like Sherlock Holmes (to a certain extent), Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Father Brown, Father Dowling and to keep up the churchmen Brother Cadfael among others. And I can't even imagine Poirot with a cat. Too disorderly for him. The term came from the tendency for such stories to take place in a manor house in the country. Of course, that wasn't always the case, but enough of them did that the term made sense. It was cozy in the sense that the setting and execution of the story was handled in a genteel and subdued manner focusing on character and problem solving more than on detailed descriptions of the gory details of the crime.

The characteristic elements of a Cozy usually include:

An amateur sleuth or a non-official investigator like a private detective, insurance investigator, lawyer, etc.
A small town or small community setting
An emphasis on the gathering of evidence primarily through interviews and some observation of the crime scene
A de-emphasis of detailed description of the ugliness of death.
An emphasis on the use of logic and reasoning to solve the mystery. It's sort of like a puzzle wrapped in a story.
The slueth solves the crime through the use of reasoning rather than by brute strength and about the only violence is the initial murder and possibly a couple of others to cover up the first one. But there is rarely any duking it out detective vs. criminal.

Of course, any one of these might not be present. The "country cozy" might have all the elements above, but the crime could take place in a Manhattan high-rise and still be a cozy.

I like them better than your hard-boiled PI or police procedural. I live in a small town and love the intricacies of small town life. But that's just me.

Terri

Dark Side of the Moon (2007)
Website: http://www.wayfarersjournal.com
Nano Blog: http://moonlightnovel.blogspot.com/

In response to the genre of "cozies", I believe it was Raymond Chandler who said his goal was to "take mystery stories out of the drawing room and put them in the street where they belong." Or some such.

Good luck with nano.

History is inherently fiction and fiction is inherently history.

So I can't have a cat in my story? Darn! Back to the drawing board... or drawing room... oh wait, drawing rooms are out of style too.

What about dogs? Are dogs okay? The dog in the alleyway with the revolver .... no, make that a shotgun, more gore! It tripped the trigger with it's tail.... the crack dealer was just a red herring, you could tell because he was wearing a "Hello Kitty" t-shirt, the cat motif was a dead giveaway.

- Davian

You can have cats, dogs, drawing rooms and anything you damn well want - this is Nano! This is YOUR novel! So let your creativity do its thing!

It's hard enough to write an entire novel in one month without hedging yourself in by the labels. Heck, including cats, dogs AND drawing rooms is probably a dare for all I know! And who's to say you can't have a trebuchet either? Though heaven knows what Miss Marple would do with one . . . .

But the main thing I think is, take your inspiration from a genre if it makes it easier for you, but write the book you want - have fun with it. And a lot of cozies are fun - some of my favorite writers include Elizabeth Peters, Charlotte MaCleod and Jill Churchill, who know how to have a bit of merry murder.

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Mysteries with dogs are their own subgenre these days. From Alaskan malamutes to show poodles. Amd everybody is murdering someone at a dog show.

MartianMenace is right. Don't worry about "can I include this" or "is this over done" or "will a publishe want this." It's Nanowrimo. Throw in anything you like. Including anything that sounds interesting. Don't worry about rules or what might sell. The thing is -- mystery readers are a large and varied bunch. If you want to write a mystery about psychic yorkie who solves murders while wearing a tea cozy, there's a mystery reader somewhere who would like that. For those who think cozies aren't realistic and want to set their murders in the streets with guns and gore, there are mystery readers who want that.

After November, well, there are big presses and small presses. Places like Poisoned Pen Press who search out the little stories that the big boys miss.

Marie

I don't equate Cozy with Cats and Tea. I think "feel good" mysteries with romance. Spenser has a dog and Eve Dallas has a cat but they are a long way from Cozy. Kinsey is a bit hardboiled for Cozy, but she can be "feel good". I agree DMD is definitely cozy but is a petless espresso drinker.
This site was posted on the Cozy Central thread. http://www.cozy-mystery.com/index.html
Cozy is as cozy does.

Aly in OR