Hello, please allow me to introduce myself. I am Susie Black, author of The Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series. I am going to share what writing cozy mystery series entails.
Like the protagonist in my Holly Swimsuit Mystery series, I am a ladies’ swimwear sales exec. From the beginning of my career, I have kept a daily journal that chronicles the quirky, interesting, and often challenging people I’ve encountered as well as the crazy situations I’ve gotten myself into and out of. The journal entries are the foundation of all my writing.
As a sales exec, I am a people person. So, naturally, my primary focus is on character development. Once the characters are created, the plot easily falls into place because it reacts to the characters in the story, not the other way around. I chose to write my stories as part of a series, but because I like to give options, each book can be read on its own out of order without the reader getting lost. Pretty cool, huh? So, how in the world did I accomplish this? By making references to the background of the story setting and the main characters. I make each plot, the murder method, the victim, the murderer, and the minor characters different in each tale. But I anchor the continuing main characters with consistent and distinct histories, personalities, and quirks that readers invest in and root for because they appear real.
Here are some of the important continuing main characters who appear in every book and a bit about them:
HOLLY SCHLIVNIK: Wise-cracking, irreverent Holly is the protagonist of the series who is patterned after yours truly…Holly is the me I always wanted to be. Loyal to a fault and fearless, Holly is a ladies’ swimwear sales exec/nosy amateur sleuth who can’t mind her beeswax and sticks her nose everywhere it doesn’t belong. Holly has a quirky personality trait. She inherited her nana’s fear of death. They both respond to death by laughing. And Holly does when she discovers a corpse. Holly is famous for this quirk and all her friends ask if she laughed whenever she has discovered a corpse. Holly’s pet phrases to describe her feelings are Yikes, Cripes, Holy Guacamole, and Merde.
QUEENIE LEVINE: A compact dynamo equipped with a razor-sharp wit and sharper tongue, Queenie is Holly’s close friend and professional colleague…and her erstwhile crime-solving sidekick. Queenie has a distinctive habit of pushing her index finger up on the tip of her nose whenever she’s thinking out loud. When trying to flesh out the murderer, Queenie is always the one who asks “Who has the most to lose?”
JOAN BINDER: Quick-witted, sarcastic Joan is the oldest of the Yentas- four of Holly’s colleagues she meets with for coffee every workday morning at a coffee shop in the California Apparel Mart lobby to kibbitz and compare notes and opinions. Joan has a habit of looking over her eyeglasses perched on the tip of her nose in her “kindergarten teacher” disapproving pose whenever she delivers one of her acerbic zingers.
Dr. Sophie Cutler: Los Angeles County Assistant Medical Examiner Sophie Cutler is Holly Schlivnik’s lifelong friend and not your typical Coroner. For a medical doctor, “Snip,” as Holly calls Sophie, has atrocious eating habits. She is a pizza and cheeseburger lover as well as a desertaholic. Sophie refuses to share any of her cheesecake and is known to use a fork as a weapon to fight off Holly’s attempts to swipe a bite.
Smart Alec Snip has caller ID on her phone. When Sophie sees it is Holly calling, irreverent Snip answers the phone with hilarious greetings: such as “Good afternoon. This is Los Angeles County Assistant Medical Examiner Dr. Sophie Cutler. You stab ‘em we slab ‘em.”
Sigmund Freud AKA Siggie: Introduced in book three of the series, lovable, nosy Siggie is Holly’s male standard-size Poodle/assistant sleuth, and Psychiatrist. Holly discusses everything with Siggie-her love life, her friends, how to deal with pain-in-the-patootie customers, as well as viable options to flesh out a killer with her four-legged companion. Siggie might not speak but he gets his points across just the same. If he likes Holly’s game plan, he barks his approval. He shows his disdain for some of Holly’s crazier sleuthing ploys by rolling his eyes or shaking his head from side to side.
The book cover Skeleton: Whodathunk that a skeleton wearing a swimsuit would ever garner such a huge amount of attention? I’ve had countless numbers of readers tell me they found the book cover with the skeleton so intriguing; they bought the book to see what kind of story was inside! The skeleton on every book cover was so popular it took on a life of its own and became the face of The Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series brand and became a successful marketing ploy.
Before the release of Death by Pins and Needles, the skeleton demanded she is given a name so I ran a contest to name the female skeleton and was inundated with hundreds of entries. So many great names were submitted that I ended up using several of them as a first name, middle name, and surname: Mizz Bone-ita Skelemina Bonz.
Before the release of Death by Surfboard, Mizz Bonz informed me she had a boyfriend and insisted he needed a name. So, to make our girl happy a second contest was launched and her boyfriend is now known as Mitzer Skeltor Bone-Jangles.
Writing a standalone book requires a goodly amount of character development and plot planning. Writing a series requires the same. But by having a cast of long-term continuing characters an author must create one with distinctive histories, personalities, and quirks for them to keep readers interested enough so the series successfully continues.
Reading Between the Crimes 
1 thought on “Writing a Series, by Susie Black”