Can you believe it?  I’ve been posting on this site for about six months already, keeping fingers crossed that others would stumble upon my blog and find it entertaining enough to keep coming back.  I want readers to tell their friends about me, and build my “author’s platform.”  Challenges with this include:

• I don’t visit or recommend other author sites enough (this blog-sharing is a two-way street after all)
• I haven’t bothered to ask you, my dear reading friend, what I’m doing right or wrong for your needs
• I haven’t provided so much as ONE short mystery, just for fun!
• We haven’t shared the names of good mystery authors.

Well this changes now.  Ta-Dah!  New Year’s Resolution be dog-goned.  People are allowed to create new visions and new attitudes whenever they feel like it.

So, here are a few new things I’m adding to my blog, and I hope you’ll like them:

1. A mystery review each month — I will try to recommend new (and established) cozy mystery writers I enjoy, and hope you’ll add to my area of interest by recommending some of your own.
2. There’s a “poll” feature to WordPress, the software I use for my website.  I’m going to explore how it works and actively seek your feedback.  No more passive Daisy for me-heh, heh, heh.
3. I have several friends who are either published, self-published or aspiring to publish novels.  I hope to interview them and post more from other authors here.  Mostly, I’ll try to stick with mystery writers, but reading all kinds of work is great stuff, don’t you think?  And several of my friends write outside the mystery genre, but you may want to get to know them, so I’ll invite them to share their personal writing stories too.
4. A short “Daisy Mystery”once a quarter.  Look for the first one in January.  Don’t expect a murder each time.  That’s reserved for the Daisy novels. But Daisy has adventures of the every-day kind too. She might stumble into situations like, “Where did Thunder go?” or “Why is Kitty dressed in black?” or “Who stole Ginny’s cell-phone?”  I hope you like them.

A few of my “friends” in the mystery world.

To start things off in a new–and hopefully better–direction, today I’d like to share the names of three favorite cozy mystery authors.  A cozy mystery definitely has a murder in it, but most of the gruesomeness happens “off-stage,” left to the reader’s imagination.  The main character is usually an amateur-sleuth, someone who has a life beyond police work.  If you like a warm, fuzzy, murder, then be sure to check these out:

• M.C. Beaton – The Agatha Raisin series.  This set of stories centers around a retired public relations specialist who is often crankly and delightfully “rough around the edges.”  Agatha lives in a cozy English town called Carsley, has a thing for the handsome next door neighbor and keeps life in an uproar by being delightfully inept at many social opportunities.
• Carrie Bebris – The Mr. and Mrs. Darcy Mysteries.  Okay. I admit it.  I love Jane Austin, and have read, and re-read and watched the movies of her romances.  What a delight to find a twist on Ms. Austin’s stories in the well-crafted mysteries by Carrie Bebris. Practically swallowed these books in one-sitting each.  If you’re an Austin fan with an appetite for mystery, don’t miss these–they’re great fun.
• Susan Albert Wittig – The Garden Mysteries.  When I grew tired of Regency Romances about ten to fifteen years ago, I sought out a new form of reading, and stumbled upon the cozy mystery. Susan Albert-Wittig provided a wonderful introduction into this new genre because she showed me a world of herbs (and I had just started a herb garden) and set her stories in Texas, where I was living at the time.  I love the herb trivia sprinkled through-out the mysteries and China Bayles’ Thyme and Seasons herb shop.  Hope you like it too.

I could go on and on for several posts about the different cozy mystery writers I enjoy, but I’m running out of space for today.  Tell you what.  I’ll keep slipping in “It’s a Mystery” every now and then, with more mystery writers I like.  I hope you’ll suggest a few more–I can always use a good read.

Have a great day, my reading friend.  I hope you find just the right words to suit it.