Writing a pie shop mystery
By Ellie Grant
I never thought that someday I’d be writing a mystery series set in a pie shop!
I enjoy making and eating pie. My mother and grandmother were both great cooks. I learned from the best. But writing a mystery series set in a pie shop sounds a little strange.
Or at least it DID at one time. Now there are mysteries set in beauty salons, retirement homes, zoos and cemeteries. Basically, you could have a cozy mystery set anywhere!
That’s one thing that I love about writing cozy mysteries—not much blood or sex—is that you can do anything with them. Under one name or another, I have written Renaissance Faire Mysteries, mysteries set in Duck, North Carolina with a woman who finds lost things, a garden mystery series, and a mystery series about a lawyer who became a sheriff. Oh, and a mystery series about a fire fighter who finds herself living with a ghost in a small town in Tennessee.
There is truly no end to the possibilities!
One thing I really enjoy about writing these mysteries is the people. I love the main characters and the quirky side characters that inhabit these worlds. Because that’s what they are to me: worlds of my making with people I love. I get to visit with them each day when I sit down to write.
That’s where Pie in the Sky, the little pie shop in Durham, North Carolina, comes in. Maggie, Aunt Clara, and Ryan are almost as real as my kids, grandkids, and friends sometimes. When they’re making Dangerously Damson plum pie and Pumpkin Pizzazz, it’s like they’re baking right here in my kitchen.
I can smell the aromas coming from the oven right now! Yum! And no calories!
Bio:
Ellie Grant writes award-winning, bestselling mystery fiction as themselves, J.J. Cook, and Joyce and Jim Lavene. They have written and published more than 60 novels for Harlequin, Berkley, Amazon and Gallery Books along with hundreds of non-fiction articles for national and regional publications. They live in rural North Carolina with their family. Visit them at www.elliegrant.net
