Episode 037 - How Cozy is Cozy? with Diane Vallere
July 28, 2020
Diane Vallere, author of over twenty-five traditionally and indy-published cozy mysteries, discusses reader expectations for different genres and when and how authors can push those boundaries. We also talk about ways to engage fans, including the promise of a story that extends beyond a single book, an email newsletter that connects on a personal level, and a holiday surprise!
Diane Vallere is the author of over twenty-five traditionally and indy-published titles, including the Material Witness Mysteries, the Costume Shop Mysteries, the Madison Night Mad for Mod Mystery, the Style in a Small Town series, Space Case Cozies, and Mermaid Sister Mysteries. She has contributed short stories to several anthologies, most recently MURDER-A-GO-GO’s: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of the Go-Gos. Diane served as president of both local and national boards of Sisters in Crime. She was born in Pennsylvania, where she has returned after stints in Dallas and Los Angeles.
"When I was traditionally published, I actually had a description in chapter one that the publisher said that's a little too graphic for our readers, and so I had to pull that out. So they had a line, they just said, yeah, that description has to go." -Diane Vallere
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Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is this Diane Vallere. Hey Diane, how are you doing?
[00:00:07] Diane: How are you, Matty?
[00:00:08] Matty: I am doing great, thank you. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you.
Diane Vallere is the author of over twenty-five traditionally and indy-published titles, including the Material Witness Mysteries, the Costume Shop Mysteries, the Madison Night Mad for Mod Mystery, the Style in a Small Town series, Space Case Cozies, and Mermaid Sister Mysteries. She has contributed short stories to several anthologies, most recently MURDER-A-GO-GO’s: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of the Go-Gos.
Diane served as president of both local and national boards of Sisters in Crime. She was born in Pennsylvania, where she has returned after stints in Dallas and Los Angeles. And we were saying just before we started recording that if it were a different time, Diane and I are pretty close to each other, so we could have done this in person, but all things considered, we are doing it via Zoom.
[00:01:06] I think you can tell from Diane's bio that she is the right person to talk about the topic for today, which is How Cozy is Cozy? And we're going to talk about all sorts of things cozy, many of which I think are going to apply to authors regardless of whether you're in or interested in the cozy genre or not, but before we dive into that, Diane, just talk a little bit about what led you from a career in the retail fashion industry to a career as a cozy writer.
[00:01:37] Diane: I was always creative in my jobs in retail management. And as I continued to take positions in retail management always had a lot of creativity and started writing while I was in that job. And in fact, my first character was actually retail buyer. So I joke I must've been having a really bad day because the first book starts out with her leaving her job, moving back home to her house at Pennsylvania where she grew up and then finding her boss dead in an elevator on her way to work the first day.
[00:02:03] So I was writing, I was working, I really started to realize that I wanted to explore this creative side. And I really had this passion for writing and did both together at the same time for a while, until I realized my passion was really in the writing, to a point where after I had a few books out that I was able to make that jump and just funnel all of that into the writing.
[00:02:26] But I have to say, I really am happy that I had the business background in working in retail because so much of that comes into play when you're an author, especially when you're an indy author and you're a small business person.
[00:02:36] Matty: Yeah, absolutely. It's a creative endeavor and a business endeavor, so having come from a business background has a lot of value.
[00:02:44] So I want to start out asking, what is your definition of a cozy?
[00:00:07] Diane: How are you, Matty?
[00:00:08] Matty: I am doing great, thank you. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you.
Diane Vallere is the author of over twenty-five traditionally and indy-published titles, including the Material Witness Mysteries, the Costume Shop Mysteries, the Madison Night Mad for Mod Mystery, the Style in a Small Town series, Space Case Cozies, and Mermaid Sister Mysteries. She has contributed short stories to several anthologies, most recently MURDER-A-GO-GO’s: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of the Go-Gos.
Diane served as president of both local and national boards of Sisters in Crime. She was born in Pennsylvania, where she has returned after stints in Dallas and Los Angeles. And we were saying just before we started recording that if it were a different time, Diane and I are pretty close to each other, so we could have done this in person, but all things considered, we are doing it via Zoom.
[00:01:06] I think you can tell from Diane's bio that she is the right person to talk about the topic for today, which is How Cozy is Cozy? And we're going to talk about all sorts of things cozy, many of which I think are going to apply to authors regardless of whether you're in or interested in the cozy genre or not, but before we dive into that, Diane, just talk a little bit about what led you from a career in the retail fashion industry to a career as a cozy writer.
[00:01:37] Diane: I was always creative in my jobs in retail management. And as I continued to take positions in retail management always had a lot of creativity and started writing while I was in that job. And in fact, my first character was actually retail buyer. So I joke I must've been having a really bad day because the first book starts out with her leaving her job, moving back home to her house at Pennsylvania where she grew up and then finding her boss dead in an elevator on her way to work the first day.
[00:02:03] So I was writing, I was working, I really started to realize that I wanted to explore this creative side. And I really had this passion for writing and did both together at the same time for a while, until I realized my passion was really in the writing, to a point where after I had a few books out that I was able to make that jump and just funnel all of that into the writing.
[00:02:26] But I have to say, I really am happy that I had the business background in working in retail because so much of that comes into play when you're an author, especially when you're an indy author and you're a small business person.
[00:02:36] Matty: Yeah, absolutely. It's a creative endeavor and a business endeavor, so having come from a business background has a lot of value.
[00:02:44] So I want to start out asking, what is your definition of a cozy?
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[00:02:50] Diane: To me a cozy is really a traditional mystery in a small town. There's no gratuitous violence, there's no gratuitous sex, and there's minimal cursing. And that's how I define a cozy, I know different publishing houses have really niched that down to quirky characters and hobbies of the protagonist. But I really think that becomes sort of hallmarks of individual authors or individual publishing houses. But what it really means to me, it's just a traditional mystery where it's fair play, you meet the suspects, you can solve the crime along with the amateur sleuth, and you're generally in a town that you feel the sense of what that town is.
[00:03:30] Matty: So one of the criteria you had said was no gratuitous violence, and since I think by definition cozies are murder mysteries, and you're going to have a murder, how do you get around the gratuitous violence consideration in that area?
[00:03:44] Diane: It's a funny thing because people most often describe cozies as, Oh, they're light mysteries or they're humorous mysteries, but then you have to add in the fact that, well, there is a murder, so people who don't read the genre get a little confused by it. But the murder happens off the page, meaning your sleuth will stumble upon a body and then solve the crime from there. You generally don't see the violence. You don't see the murder taking place. You don't see blood and gore. You don't see descriptions of anyone being tortured, anything like that. So there is a body, you can usually find out how that person died. They might have been shot. They might've been bludgeoned. And they might have been, you know, whatever that murder is. The body is usually dead when we find it. It's always dead when we find the body--he or she is.
[00:04:30] Matty: And the sleuth is always or usually an amateur, correct?
[00:04:35] Diane: I would say usually. There are occasions where the sleuth isn't, but I would say predominantly the sleuth is an amateur sleuth. And that's why in a cozy, you have these very developed other lives. They run a knitting shop or a coffee shop or a bread shop, or they're in business for themselves. They have another skillset and they're able to rely on that skillset to help solve this mystery. They have an inquisitive sense, they have an ability to ferret out information or problem solve. They have those skills in whatever job they do on the side. So when they're presented with this challenge, they're able to rely on the skills that they already have, but apply them in a whole different way in order to find information and solve this puzzle.
[00:05:16] Matty: The reason I think that this topic is so interesting is I have a group of fellow authors that I get together with frequently, all of whom I think are members of Sisters in Crime, even some of them Misters, and none of us are generally writing very violent or very profane-laced or very sex-steeped books, and so I think there's this question about where is the dividing line. Because if you think of cozies, as I did for many years, as it's not a cozy unless there's a recipe for muffins in the end, and then you're thinking crime fiction, you think to, I don't know, Silence at the Lambs or something like that, there's a big spectrum.
[00:05:58] And there's some point at which you violate one of those conventions that you talked about for cozies and you can't market to cozy readers anymore, but have you thought through how to define that line for yourself, either when you're writing, where you need to draw the line, maybe you're tempted to go further and you pull yourself back because of reader expectations, or you've written the book and it's out there and now you have to decide who to market it to, and can you market it to your cozy audience?
[00:06:26] Diane: It's a really interesting question. And I think a lot of authors do get to that point because you write enough, you don't want to do the same thing over and over again. So I think you start to try and push your own boundaries and by nature, you end up against some of those constructs of the genre and you start to question, how far can you push against them? So I think, yes, it's natural to get up to those lines and maybe toe those lines a little bit, especially if you're trying to challenge yourself as a writer, but .I don't think I'd ever put a graphic sex scene in a book, just because I know that that is not something that cozy readers are looking for.
[00:07:00] Romance, yes. I enjoy reading cozies that have a romantic thread storyline through them and I definitely include that in mine. But any intimacy happens off the page. So I don't pretend it doesn't happen, but I don't describe it. Same thing with violence. In fact, the one I'm writing now, it keeps wanting to go dark and I keep having to think about the language I'm using. It's book seven, so readers have an understanding of what that series is, and I think they know that it's a murder mystery. But I think there comes a line at which, if you mentioned how the body was found, that's one thing, but when you keep describing things about this body and then certain words that you could go into descriptions about a corpse can start to get a little disturbing. I've noticed as I'm writing I keep thinking, I have to find a way to say this without using words that I think are going to be offensive or descriptives that I think are going to be offensive.
[00:07:49] So that is definitely something that I keep in mind. When I was traditionally published, I actually had a description in chapter one that the publisher said that's a little too graphic for our readers, and so I had to pull that out. So they had a line, they just said, yeah, that description has to go. So there are those spots.
[00:08:08] Matty: It's interesting to think about if you're an established cozy author who is complying quite strictly to the no on-screen violence, no profanity, no sex, and you start veering in a different direction, I think it would be dangerous to do it in the same series because you have set an expectation, you owe your readers, sticking with the expectation that they've developed. But would you consider spinning up a separate series to accommodate something that was a little darker, like it sounds like you were tending toward in your last book?
[00:08:37] Diane: I do think that's a way to go. I do also think, though, that sometimes readers get comfortable with what they know they get from you as your brand. They know that they're going to get humor when they read your book, or if there's going to be certain things that they can come to expect from you. And I don't know that that's always planned. I think that sometimes it's your voice that comes through and it's the way an author tells a story. And after a while readers read enough of your work and they start to notice these commonalities and these things that they get from your books.
[00:09:03] So I think if you go completely darker or if you go completely into something very, very different, it might be worth looking at a pen name, or just being very clear with your readers that this is different. This has a different tone. This is a thriller, or this is romantic suspense or whatever it might be. So you're not selling what you've been doing and then they read it and think this is completely different. I think that's where you have a problem.
[00:09:27] Matty: Especially when you're going more graphic, because if you were going the other way, if you've been writing horror and now you're writing cozy, you're liable to disappoint your readers. But if you've been writing cozies and you decide to write horror, you risk upsetting and traumatizing your readers.
[00:09:43] Diane: Exactly. I think, you know, my experience is readers are smart and there are things that like about the cozy world, but a lot of cozy readers are fans of mysteries in general. So they don't always just limit themselves to cozies. There are some people who are just pure cozy readers and love that genre, but most readers I've found, they read cozy, they read traditional, which is more Agatha Christie, kind of really focused on the puzzle more than maybe this additional small town setting or this community setting. There are people who like crime fiction in general and will read darker things, will read police procedurals. They are really reading across the spectrum. So I think while you might have a few people who will comment if you use one curse word and they'll be offended by that, you also have a lot of readers who understand that this is more how the world is, and that is not necessarily breaking any conventions.
[00:10:36] Matty: What do you think are some changes that are happening in what people expect from cozies over time that they wouldn't have seen 10 or 20 or 30 years ago?
[00:10:45] Diane: One of the interesting things I'm seeing is as cozies are really exploding from an indy published world, I think that indy cozies I'm seeing are very, very true to that small town, quirky community and clean environment. The sleuths might be doing different things that are not specifically linked to crafting or cooking or bookshops, which we saw a lot of that from the traditional world.
[00:11:12] So while that's happening, I think in traditional publishing, we're starting to see a little bit of swing toward different kinds of careers and different kinds of backdrop and maybe pushing things a little bit more. One cozy series that I love is Cleo Coyle's Coffee Shop Mysteries, and they're set in New York City. So that kind of flies in the face of the convention of small town because it's New York. So she's been able to find a way to do that, different mysteries you know, something fresh every time.
[00:11:36] Matty: It would be an advantage to putting it in a larger community, because in a smaller community, at some point, even people who are willing to suspend disbelief are going to say, this is like the 20th body they found in this tiny town. Do you face that in your own books, making it relatively realistic for the purposes of the read?
[00:11:54] Diane: Yes, it's always a challenge to figure out like, in one series, how could a fashionista keep finding dead bodies? This is really starting to get a little crazy, but I tried to start trying to write that into the series a little bit, that crime is on the rise in that town.
[00:12:09] In another series, there's a police detective who's now the captain, who's a main character. He's not the protagonist, but he's one of the main characters. So because of my sleuth's connection to him, relationship with him, friendship with him, she happens to constantly be calling him and she gets involved in his cases.
[00:12:27] So I have found that explaining that helps a series have longevity, because otherwise you do get this sort of Cabot Cove syndrome or you could just try and have a murder rate that there's not going to be much of a town left.
[00:12:43] Matty: They're all dead. There'll be the zombie version.
[00:12:46] Diane: Exactly. I mean, I brought in the mafia for one book. I had a local mafia. I have had books set in other cities. I have a Vegas book and I have a Palm Springs book in a different series just to get the characters out of town because I thought, also, there people go on vacations and sometimes things happen when you're on vacation. So just to give a different setting.
[00:13:06] Matty: I think you had said that it was the traditional publishers who liked the idea of having a theme.
[00:13:12] Diane: Yeah, there was a period of time when there were a lot of cozies that were related to cooking, related to books, related to crafts. Those three categories really exploded in the traditionally published cozy world. There would be a librarian series and that would do really well. So then from that there would be, okay, let's do bookshop. Let's do book club. Let's do bookmobile. Let's do all different things. Because obviously readers liked to read about people who love books, which makes sense because readers like books.
[00:13:46] Then there would be the cooking world. So there might be somebody who owned a restaurant and that did really well. So that then publishers are thinking, what else can we do in cooking? Now we want to bake shop, a bread shop, a coffee shop. And so we started seeing these central themes that were really popular. And so then there were a lot of different series that fit within those couple of worlds.
[00:14:06] When I did my Costume Shop series, they said it doesn't really fit neatly into any of our categories, so we're not sure how this is going to work. And I think ultimately it slotted into the crafting world, but it still wasn't a direct crafting thing. So there was definitely thought about that that went in, like where does it fit within this world? But I see that loosening up a little bit, or maybe it's just that as the boundaries of those categories get pushed, creative, new things were coming out of that.
[00:14:37] I don't know the thinking behind the traditional publishers, but I am starting to see that the boundaries are getting pushed a little bit within cozies that we're starting to see some different protagonists now.
[00:14:49] Matty: Another challenge that's along the same lines as the lots of murders in a tiny town is the murders happen pretty frequently, right? Because I think that cozy readers have a different expectation about speed of production. Can you talk about that a little bit? How frequently do you put out a new book?
[00:15:09] Diane: When I was first publishing, I was trying to do every six to nine months per series. And I had a couple of series, so I thought I'll do a book here, then a book here, and I'll just alternate. Then I had a traditionally published contract and I was told six to nine months is really what they want. They prefer six months because readers don't forget your series then. Your next book comes out fast enough. Now, what I'm seeing a lot of is, especially in the indy world, is a book a month.
[00:15:37] So readers are really bingeing on these series and they're finding a series and their thrilled because they can just dive into book one and they can just keep going. And by the time they're finished with however many books are out, there might be three more on preorder. So they know that the series is going to continue.
[00:15:53] I am seeing that. I know it used to be that if you could write a couple of books a year, you were considered a really fast writer, and now that's considered about average. So that's changed a little bit as writers have found ways to write faster.
[00:16:08] Matty: Do you feel as if an author who's pursuing the indy route and they are interested in writing cozies should have a number of them ready before they launch so that a potential reader will see that there's a set? Or do you think that there's no harm in publishing them as they're completed?
[00:16:27] Diane: I think it's always easier to write when you don't have distractions of anything else. All of us who have books out remember what it was like when we didn't have deadlines, when we weren't worried about sales and we were just writing our books. So I think it's actually, it is easier to just write before you're thinking about things. I understand the enthusiasm about wanting to have that book out and start marketing it. But I think if a writer can have more than one book, even if there's a second book up for preorder, that's going to benefit them. If their goal is sales and building that series, having something new next for the reader to go to is going to help them in the long run.
[00:17:08] Matty: Do you have a recommendation for how many you would think would be beneficial for them to have in the queue?
[00:17:15] Diane: I definitely think having at least two, so a reader has someplace to go for the second one. If somebody can put up a third for preorder, I think that's great because then you're telling the reader, even though that book isn't done, it's going to be coming. So a reader, when they discover a book, can automatically see that they have a place to go. It's not a one off.
[00:17:35] It's a tricky thing, because I also know that it's sometimes hard to write when you've set this deadline. And some people are very good at this. Some people can have a cover, they put it up for preorder. The book, they haven't even thought about the plot yet. I met other people ... I liked to at least finished draft before I'd put something up for preorder, because I know once the draft is done, I know what it takes to get that draft into shape so it's ready to go and can plan on exactly how long it takes. But we all know some days the words flow, and some days we struggle with the sentence. So that's the balance that somebody has to figure out is how comfortable are you with that abandon.
[00:18:14] Matty: If you're publishing a book every six to nine months, is that reflective of how long it's taking you to write it? Or do you write it in a shorter period of time? Like, let's say I've heard people who, let's say they're on a six-month schedule and they're taking three months to write the book, but then they're spending three months focused on marketing activities and then they switched back to writing. How does that schedule work for you?
[00:18:37] Diane: I should say the six to nine months is for a series. So I might alternate series in there. I can usually, if I'm focused, have a draft in a month. And then after that draft is done, it goes into revision, editing, beta read, that kind of workshopping, takes two weeks to a month, depending on who I send it out to or what feedback I get.
[00:18:59] While that is happening, I might be writing something else. I might be doing all the admin work on getting that book up and listed and starting the marketing on it. But once I finish the draft, I can pretty much set a publication date of two months later because that gives me two weeks to a month to workshop it and get it publish-ready, and then do the proofreading and any final tweaks to get it up, ready to go. So that's my tightest window, I would say, is three months from start to finish. I sometimes build an extra month in there just to give myself that cushion to do a little bit more marketing or a little bit more advance ahead of time.
[00:19:32] I did a surprise book this past December where I didn't do preorders. I didn't tell anybody I was writing it. I just did the whole thing and I dropped it on Christmas day. I sent out a newsletter to everybody and just said, "Surprise, there's a new Samantha Kidd book." It was totally fun because it was my little secret and I knew this was happening. But it also was the first time I've ever done anything like that, just to test what's it like when you just don't tell anybody that you're doing it, you're just focused on getting this thing done and see that process too.
[00:19:59] Matty: That's really fun. Would you do it again in the future based on your experience?
[00:20:03] Diane: I would do it again because it actually was really great not having that pressure looming. The whole time I knew if I don't get it done, I don't get it done, but I also had a date in mind that I wanted it to happen. So that was a whole different experience than having this date set and knowing, Oh, that means I have to upload my final files five days ahead of time and then they get locked in preorder. There's a lot of other considerations. So all of that went off of my plate when I was doing this and it just became get it ready, and then pull the trigger. So it was a different experience.
[00:20:33] For me, pre-orders have been great. It gives me something to talk about before the book's out. It gives me a chance to do behind the scenes stories and talk to my newsletter readers about what's happening and kind of tease, especially because when you're writing, you're completely in that story, so you want to talk about it. So once I'm in that preorder window, I can do that a little bit. I don't think I'm ever going to walk away from that part of the process completely, but I would still do another surprise book because that was fun.
[00:21:00] Matty: Have you found that you need to change your approach to interacting with your followers and fans that's different than what people would hear just generically for fiction work in general.
[00:21:12] Diane: I don't know that I've changed it for those reasons. I started focusing on a newsletter because that's something that's comfortable to me. And I send it weekly, I send it every Sunday, and I just chat with my readers. It's girl talk, book talk, and life talk. So I usually tell them about the book that I'm working on, or if there's a book on sale or something about the book. I always share stuff about my life with them. So it's very chatty. I feel like they're getting to know me, we're getting to know each other, and I write it like I'm writing to a friend and that's more comfortable to me than social media.
[00:21:43] I am not a huge fan of Facebook or Twitter. I do all the things, but I don't think I do them particularly well, but I think I do the newsletter. That just feels more natural to me. Once I sank into that and I said, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it consistently, because that feels right to me. That's really where I talk to people. So I do think my voice in my newsletter is very similar to my voice in my books. That becomes how they'll get to know what they get when they read a book of mine.
[00:22:09] Matty: I like the idea of just having it be a chat because for my fiction platform my current schedule is once every other week, I keep changing it, but I struggle with wanting to let people know about new books or new activities, but not having it become a marketing newsletter that people are going to unsubscribed from, so I like that approach of just having it be like you're dropping a note to a friend.
[00:22:36] Diane: I realized when I first started doing it, I had that same thought that everybody else has of, I don't want to annoy people. I think that's a really natural response, but I think when you start thinking you don't want to annoy people, that by nature is saying whatever you're saying to people is probably not the right content. Because if you think your content is annoying someone, then you're not communicating with them in a way that they're seeing value. That doesn't mean that your newsletter doesn't have value. It just means that you don't believe that you're giving them something of value.
[00:23:07] So I read some place your newsletters should really be 80% you're giving and 20% you're asking. And that stuck with me. What am I giving? And I don't think it means giving a book. I think it means giving content, giving stories. Once I flipped how I thought about it that way, it became so much more natural, because then I thought, I'm sending a note to a friend. I'm sharing. There's always something about books because ultimately I'm a writer and that's why I'm in this relationship with the people who are subscribing, but I think it changes the view of it so I feel if someone's getting it and they're annoyed by it, that's okay. Because they're probably not the reader for my books. So I'm fine with that. And unsubscribes now become perfectly fine.
[00:23:50] Matty: And if you've established the relationship that you're describing with the reader, then they want to know when the new book is out. It's not like you're forcing unwanted information on them. You're giving them information they want anyway. And I think that the other nice thing about having a theme to one's books like cooking or gardening or whatever it might be is it provides an automatic topic for your newsletter. The people who are reading the gardening-themed cozy are going to want to hear about what's happening in your garden and what you're having luck with, what you're not having luck with, whatever that might be.
[00:24:23] Diane: I do think readers love knowing the writer's connection to the theme in their books. So to that point, if you write a baking series and you then talk to your readers about something you were baking, I think they really enjoy those kinds of behind the scenes stories because they understand, Oh, you actually do this, you like baking and your character likes baking. So it feels like they know something special.
[00:24:47] Matty: I'm imagining that it's advice that don't pick a theme that you don't do yourself. Like if you don't bake, don't pick baking as a theme because the readers will see through it.
[00:24:57] Diane: I think that's good advice. Readers know if you're faking it. So I think if you don't know that, your character probably needs to be learning it as you're learning it. So there's some clumsiness to that information, but then at least it's charming because your character is figuring it out too. So I think that can work, but I think, yeah, the readers will call you on it if you're trying to pull something off that you don't know.
[00:25:22] Matty: So Diane are you publishing both through traditional publishers and indy now?
[00:25:27] Diane: Right now my current series that I have are all indy. I am shopping some things to traditional again. So I'm looking to keep a foot in the traditionally published world to remain a hybrid author. But right now, I fulfilled the contracts of the traditionally published books, continuing one series on my own that was traditionally published, and I have some new series that I'm looking for homes for.
[00:25:49] Matty: What did you do in order to enable you to continue in an indy format with a book that had originally been traditionally published?
[00:25:58] Diane: The original books, the first books in the series, are still with the traditional publisher. So I just got permission from them to continue because it was under my name, it wasn't under a pen name, they didn't own the name. So I just said, I'd like to write an additional book in the series and they said, that's fine, you can self-publish. So we were okay with that. So once I got their green light, I proceeded with it.
[00:26:19] Matty: It's probably a good tip for people who are reading a contract from a traditional publisher to try to bake that in ahead of time so that they own the books they've published, obviously, but you still have the rights to continue with that character, that set of characters, the town.
[00:26:35] Diane: Right. And in the contracts that I've seen so far, most publishers want first right of refusal. So if there's an additional book in the series, they want that opportunity to say yes or say no, if they want to continue the series, which is partially why I went to the publisher and said, I'm not under contract for this book, but I think I want to write it. I think I'm going to continue this series. So I just thought it was best to just be upfront about everything.
[00:26:57] Matty: There's another conversation I had a couple of episodes ago with Julie Mulhern who had a somewhat similar scenario where she'd started out traditional as a platform to go indy, but then after she'd had the experience of both, she really saw the benefits of both. So it's not like she stopped doing one and moved to the other. She was taking advantage of the best of both worlds. It sounds like that's the model you're following as well.
[00:27:24] Diane: People always say, well, what do you like better? And I always feel like they're not same. So they both offer strong positives. And for me, I don't know if this is right for everybody, but for me, I really liked what I got from both. So I would be fine if somebody said you a hundred percent have to choose one, I would go with one or I would go the other, I wouldn't lament not having that other option, but I do, with choice, I like having both options because they do both do something different.
[00:27:54] Matty: Well, Diane, thank you so much for sharing that information with us. Let people know where they can go online to find out more about you and your books.
[00:28:02] Diane: Well, thank you for the invitation Matty. This has been great. You can sign up for my email and can sign up for my newsletter. I call it The Weekly Diva because Diane Vallere, that's my Diva, that's my J.Lo name. I send it every Sunday and sign up is on my website at dianevallere.com. I am also on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram as consistently as I can find motivation to be. So it's kind of intermittent, but I am on all those locations.
[00:28:29] Matty: Great. Well, thank you again. This has been really helpful.
[00:28:32] Diane: Thank you. Thanks again for inviting me. This has been great.
[00:03:30] Matty: So one of the criteria you had said was no gratuitous violence, and since I think by definition cozies are murder mysteries, and you're going to have a murder, how do you get around the gratuitous violence consideration in that area?
[00:03:44] Diane: It's a funny thing because people most often describe cozies as, Oh, they're light mysteries or they're humorous mysteries, but then you have to add in the fact that, well, there is a murder, so people who don't read the genre get a little confused by it. But the murder happens off the page, meaning your sleuth will stumble upon a body and then solve the crime from there. You generally don't see the violence. You don't see the murder taking place. You don't see blood and gore. You don't see descriptions of anyone being tortured, anything like that. So there is a body, you can usually find out how that person died. They might have been shot. They might've been bludgeoned. And they might have been, you know, whatever that murder is. The body is usually dead when we find it. It's always dead when we find the body--he or she is.
[00:04:30] Matty: And the sleuth is always or usually an amateur, correct?
[00:04:35] Diane: I would say usually. There are occasions where the sleuth isn't, but I would say predominantly the sleuth is an amateur sleuth. And that's why in a cozy, you have these very developed other lives. They run a knitting shop or a coffee shop or a bread shop, or they're in business for themselves. They have another skillset and they're able to rely on that skillset to help solve this mystery. They have an inquisitive sense, they have an ability to ferret out information or problem solve. They have those skills in whatever job they do on the side. So when they're presented with this challenge, they're able to rely on the skills that they already have, but apply them in a whole different way in order to find information and solve this puzzle.
[00:05:16] Matty: The reason I think that this topic is so interesting is I have a group of fellow authors that I get together with frequently, all of whom I think are members of Sisters in Crime, even some of them Misters, and none of us are generally writing very violent or very profane-laced or very sex-steeped books, and so I think there's this question about where is the dividing line. Because if you think of cozies, as I did for many years, as it's not a cozy unless there's a recipe for muffins in the end, and then you're thinking crime fiction, you think to, I don't know, Silence at the Lambs or something like that, there's a big spectrum.
[00:05:58] And there's some point at which you violate one of those conventions that you talked about for cozies and you can't market to cozy readers anymore, but have you thought through how to define that line for yourself, either when you're writing, where you need to draw the line, maybe you're tempted to go further and you pull yourself back because of reader expectations, or you've written the book and it's out there and now you have to decide who to market it to, and can you market it to your cozy audience?
[00:06:26] Diane: It's a really interesting question. And I think a lot of authors do get to that point because you write enough, you don't want to do the same thing over and over again. So I think you start to try and push your own boundaries and by nature, you end up against some of those constructs of the genre and you start to question, how far can you push against them? So I think, yes, it's natural to get up to those lines and maybe toe those lines a little bit, especially if you're trying to challenge yourself as a writer, but .I don't think I'd ever put a graphic sex scene in a book, just because I know that that is not something that cozy readers are looking for.
[00:07:00] Romance, yes. I enjoy reading cozies that have a romantic thread storyline through them and I definitely include that in mine. But any intimacy happens off the page. So I don't pretend it doesn't happen, but I don't describe it. Same thing with violence. In fact, the one I'm writing now, it keeps wanting to go dark and I keep having to think about the language I'm using. It's book seven, so readers have an understanding of what that series is, and I think they know that it's a murder mystery. But I think there comes a line at which, if you mentioned how the body was found, that's one thing, but when you keep describing things about this body and then certain words that you could go into descriptions about a corpse can start to get a little disturbing. I've noticed as I'm writing I keep thinking, I have to find a way to say this without using words that I think are going to be offensive or descriptives that I think are going to be offensive.
[00:07:49] So that is definitely something that I keep in mind. When I was traditionally published, I actually had a description in chapter one that the publisher said that's a little too graphic for our readers, and so I had to pull that out. So they had a line, they just said, yeah, that description has to go. So there are those spots.
[00:08:08] Matty: It's interesting to think about if you're an established cozy author who is complying quite strictly to the no on-screen violence, no profanity, no sex, and you start veering in a different direction, I think it would be dangerous to do it in the same series because you have set an expectation, you owe your readers, sticking with the expectation that they've developed. But would you consider spinning up a separate series to accommodate something that was a little darker, like it sounds like you were tending toward in your last book?
[00:08:37] Diane: I do think that's a way to go. I do also think, though, that sometimes readers get comfortable with what they know they get from you as your brand. They know that they're going to get humor when they read your book, or if there's going to be certain things that they can come to expect from you. And I don't know that that's always planned. I think that sometimes it's your voice that comes through and it's the way an author tells a story. And after a while readers read enough of your work and they start to notice these commonalities and these things that they get from your books.
[00:09:03] So I think if you go completely darker or if you go completely into something very, very different, it might be worth looking at a pen name, or just being very clear with your readers that this is different. This has a different tone. This is a thriller, or this is romantic suspense or whatever it might be. So you're not selling what you've been doing and then they read it and think this is completely different. I think that's where you have a problem.
[00:09:27] Matty: Especially when you're going more graphic, because if you were going the other way, if you've been writing horror and now you're writing cozy, you're liable to disappoint your readers. But if you've been writing cozies and you decide to write horror, you risk upsetting and traumatizing your readers.
[00:09:43] Diane: Exactly. I think, you know, my experience is readers are smart and there are things that like about the cozy world, but a lot of cozy readers are fans of mysteries in general. So they don't always just limit themselves to cozies. There are some people who are just pure cozy readers and love that genre, but most readers I've found, they read cozy, they read traditional, which is more Agatha Christie, kind of really focused on the puzzle more than maybe this additional small town setting or this community setting. There are people who like crime fiction in general and will read darker things, will read police procedurals. They are really reading across the spectrum. So I think while you might have a few people who will comment if you use one curse word and they'll be offended by that, you also have a lot of readers who understand that this is more how the world is, and that is not necessarily breaking any conventions.
[00:10:36] Matty: What do you think are some changes that are happening in what people expect from cozies over time that they wouldn't have seen 10 or 20 or 30 years ago?
[00:10:45] Diane: One of the interesting things I'm seeing is as cozies are really exploding from an indy published world, I think that indy cozies I'm seeing are very, very true to that small town, quirky community and clean environment. The sleuths might be doing different things that are not specifically linked to crafting or cooking or bookshops, which we saw a lot of that from the traditional world.
[00:11:12] So while that's happening, I think in traditional publishing, we're starting to see a little bit of swing toward different kinds of careers and different kinds of backdrop and maybe pushing things a little bit more. One cozy series that I love is Cleo Coyle's Coffee Shop Mysteries, and they're set in New York City. So that kind of flies in the face of the convention of small town because it's New York. So she's been able to find a way to do that, different mysteries you know, something fresh every time.
[00:11:36] Matty: It would be an advantage to putting it in a larger community, because in a smaller community, at some point, even people who are willing to suspend disbelief are going to say, this is like the 20th body they found in this tiny town. Do you face that in your own books, making it relatively realistic for the purposes of the read?
[00:11:54] Diane: Yes, it's always a challenge to figure out like, in one series, how could a fashionista keep finding dead bodies? This is really starting to get a little crazy, but I tried to start trying to write that into the series a little bit, that crime is on the rise in that town.
[00:12:09] In another series, there's a police detective who's now the captain, who's a main character. He's not the protagonist, but he's one of the main characters. So because of my sleuth's connection to him, relationship with him, friendship with him, she happens to constantly be calling him and she gets involved in his cases.
[00:12:27] So I have found that explaining that helps a series have longevity, because otherwise you do get this sort of Cabot Cove syndrome or you could just try and have a murder rate that there's not going to be much of a town left.
[00:12:43] Matty: They're all dead. There'll be the zombie version.
[00:12:46] Diane: Exactly. I mean, I brought in the mafia for one book. I had a local mafia. I have had books set in other cities. I have a Vegas book and I have a Palm Springs book in a different series just to get the characters out of town because I thought, also, there people go on vacations and sometimes things happen when you're on vacation. So just to give a different setting.
[00:13:06] Matty: I think you had said that it was the traditional publishers who liked the idea of having a theme.
[00:13:12] Diane: Yeah, there was a period of time when there were a lot of cozies that were related to cooking, related to books, related to crafts. Those three categories really exploded in the traditionally published cozy world. There would be a librarian series and that would do really well. So then from that there would be, okay, let's do bookshop. Let's do book club. Let's do bookmobile. Let's do all different things. Because obviously readers liked to read about people who love books, which makes sense because readers like books.
[00:13:46] Then there would be the cooking world. So there might be somebody who owned a restaurant and that did really well. So that then publishers are thinking, what else can we do in cooking? Now we want to bake shop, a bread shop, a coffee shop. And so we started seeing these central themes that were really popular. And so then there were a lot of different series that fit within those couple of worlds.
[00:14:06] When I did my Costume Shop series, they said it doesn't really fit neatly into any of our categories, so we're not sure how this is going to work. And I think ultimately it slotted into the crafting world, but it still wasn't a direct crafting thing. So there was definitely thought about that that went in, like where does it fit within this world? But I see that loosening up a little bit, or maybe it's just that as the boundaries of those categories get pushed, creative, new things were coming out of that.
[00:14:37] I don't know the thinking behind the traditional publishers, but I am starting to see that the boundaries are getting pushed a little bit within cozies that we're starting to see some different protagonists now.
[00:14:49] Matty: Another challenge that's along the same lines as the lots of murders in a tiny town is the murders happen pretty frequently, right? Because I think that cozy readers have a different expectation about speed of production. Can you talk about that a little bit? How frequently do you put out a new book?
[00:15:09] Diane: When I was first publishing, I was trying to do every six to nine months per series. And I had a couple of series, so I thought I'll do a book here, then a book here, and I'll just alternate. Then I had a traditionally published contract and I was told six to nine months is really what they want. They prefer six months because readers don't forget your series then. Your next book comes out fast enough. Now, what I'm seeing a lot of is, especially in the indy world, is a book a month.
[00:15:37] So readers are really bingeing on these series and they're finding a series and their thrilled because they can just dive into book one and they can just keep going. And by the time they're finished with however many books are out, there might be three more on preorder. So they know that the series is going to continue.
[00:15:53] I am seeing that. I know it used to be that if you could write a couple of books a year, you were considered a really fast writer, and now that's considered about average. So that's changed a little bit as writers have found ways to write faster.
[00:16:08] Matty: Do you feel as if an author who's pursuing the indy route and they are interested in writing cozies should have a number of them ready before they launch so that a potential reader will see that there's a set? Or do you think that there's no harm in publishing them as they're completed?
[00:16:27] Diane: I think it's always easier to write when you don't have distractions of anything else. All of us who have books out remember what it was like when we didn't have deadlines, when we weren't worried about sales and we were just writing our books. So I think it's actually, it is easier to just write before you're thinking about things. I understand the enthusiasm about wanting to have that book out and start marketing it. But I think if a writer can have more than one book, even if there's a second book up for preorder, that's going to benefit them. If their goal is sales and building that series, having something new next for the reader to go to is going to help them in the long run.
[00:17:08] Matty: Do you have a recommendation for how many you would think would be beneficial for them to have in the queue?
[00:17:15] Diane: I definitely think having at least two, so a reader has someplace to go for the second one. If somebody can put up a third for preorder, I think that's great because then you're telling the reader, even though that book isn't done, it's going to be coming. So a reader, when they discover a book, can automatically see that they have a place to go. It's not a one off.
[00:17:35] It's a tricky thing, because I also know that it's sometimes hard to write when you've set this deadline. And some people are very good at this. Some people can have a cover, they put it up for preorder. The book, they haven't even thought about the plot yet. I met other people ... I liked to at least finished draft before I'd put something up for preorder, because I know once the draft is done, I know what it takes to get that draft into shape so it's ready to go and can plan on exactly how long it takes. But we all know some days the words flow, and some days we struggle with the sentence. So that's the balance that somebody has to figure out is how comfortable are you with that abandon.
[00:18:14] Matty: If you're publishing a book every six to nine months, is that reflective of how long it's taking you to write it? Or do you write it in a shorter period of time? Like, let's say I've heard people who, let's say they're on a six-month schedule and they're taking three months to write the book, but then they're spending three months focused on marketing activities and then they switched back to writing. How does that schedule work for you?
[00:18:37] Diane: I should say the six to nine months is for a series. So I might alternate series in there. I can usually, if I'm focused, have a draft in a month. And then after that draft is done, it goes into revision, editing, beta read, that kind of workshopping, takes two weeks to a month, depending on who I send it out to or what feedback I get.
[00:18:59] While that is happening, I might be writing something else. I might be doing all the admin work on getting that book up and listed and starting the marketing on it. But once I finish the draft, I can pretty much set a publication date of two months later because that gives me two weeks to a month to workshop it and get it publish-ready, and then do the proofreading and any final tweaks to get it up, ready to go. So that's my tightest window, I would say, is three months from start to finish. I sometimes build an extra month in there just to give myself that cushion to do a little bit more marketing or a little bit more advance ahead of time.
[00:19:32] I did a surprise book this past December where I didn't do preorders. I didn't tell anybody I was writing it. I just did the whole thing and I dropped it on Christmas day. I sent out a newsletter to everybody and just said, "Surprise, there's a new Samantha Kidd book." It was totally fun because it was my little secret and I knew this was happening. But it also was the first time I've ever done anything like that, just to test what's it like when you just don't tell anybody that you're doing it, you're just focused on getting this thing done and see that process too.
[00:19:59] Matty: That's really fun. Would you do it again in the future based on your experience?
[00:20:03] Diane: I would do it again because it actually was really great not having that pressure looming. The whole time I knew if I don't get it done, I don't get it done, but I also had a date in mind that I wanted it to happen. So that was a whole different experience than having this date set and knowing, Oh, that means I have to upload my final files five days ahead of time and then they get locked in preorder. There's a lot of other considerations. So all of that went off of my plate when I was doing this and it just became get it ready, and then pull the trigger. So it was a different experience.
[00:20:33] For me, pre-orders have been great. It gives me something to talk about before the book's out. It gives me a chance to do behind the scenes stories and talk to my newsletter readers about what's happening and kind of tease, especially because when you're writing, you're completely in that story, so you want to talk about it. So once I'm in that preorder window, I can do that a little bit. I don't think I'm ever going to walk away from that part of the process completely, but I would still do another surprise book because that was fun.
[00:21:00] Matty: Have you found that you need to change your approach to interacting with your followers and fans that's different than what people would hear just generically for fiction work in general.
[00:21:12] Diane: I don't know that I've changed it for those reasons. I started focusing on a newsletter because that's something that's comfortable to me. And I send it weekly, I send it every Sunday, and I just chat with my readers. It's girl talk, book talk, and life talk. So I usually tell them about the book that I'm working on, or if there's a book on sale or something about the book. I always share stuff about my life with them. So it's very chatty. I feel like they're getting to know me, we're getting to know each other, and I write it like I'm writing to a friend and that's more comfortable to me than social media.
[00:21:43] I am not a huge fan of Facebook or Twitter. I do all the things, but I don't think I do them particularly well, but I think I do the newsletter. That just feels more natural to me. Once I sank into that and I said, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it consistently, because that feels right to me. That's really where I talk to people. So I do think my voice in my newsletter is very similar to my voice in my books. That becomes how they'll get to know what they get when they read a book of mine.
[00:22:09] Matty: I like the idea of just having it be a chat because for my fiction platform my current schedule is once every other week, I keep changing it, but I struggle with wanting to let people know about new books or new activities, but not having it become a marketing newsletter that people are going to unsubscribed from, so I like that approach of just having it be like you're dropping a note to a friend.
[00:22:36] Diane: I realized when I first started doing it, I had that same thought that everybody else has of, I don't want to annoy people. I think that's a really natural response, but I think when you start thinking you don't want to annoy people, that by nature is saying whatever you're saying to people is probably not the right content. Because if you think your content is annoying someone, then you're not communicating with them in a way that they're seeing value. That doesn't mean that your newsletter doesn't have value. It just means that you don't believe that you're giving them something of value.
[00:23:07] So I read some place your newsletters should really be 80% you're giving and 20% you're asking. And that stuck with me. What am I giving? And I don't think it means giving a book. I think it means giving content, giving stories. Once I flipped how I thought about it that way, it became so much more natural, because then I thought, I'm sending a note to a friend. I'm sharing. There's always something about books because ultimately I'm a writer and that's why I'm in this relationship with the people who are subscribing, but I think it changes the view of it so I feel if someone's getting it and they're annoyed by it, that's okay. Because they're probably not the reader for my books. So I'm fine with that. And unsubscribes now become perfectly fine.
[00:23:50] Matty: And if you've established the relationship that you're describing with the reader, then they want to know when the new book is out. It's not like you're forcing unwanted information on them. You're giving them information they want anyway. And I think that the other nice thing about having a theme to one's books like cooking or gardening or whatever it might be is it provides an automatic topic for your newsletter. The people who are reading the gardening-themed cozy are going to want to hear about what's happening in your garden and what you're having luck with, what you're not having luck with, whatever that might be.
[00:24:23] Diane: I do think readers love knowing the writer's connection to the theme in their books. So to that point, if you write a baking series and you then talk to your readers about something you were baking, I think they really enjoy those kinds of behind the scenes stories because they understand, Oh, you actually do this, you like baking and your character likes baking. So it feels like they know something special.
[00:24:47] Matty: I'm imagining that it's advice that don't pick a theme that you don't do yourself. Like if you don't bake, don't pick baking as a theme because the readers will see through it.
[00:24:57] Diane: I think that's good advice. Readers know if you're faking it. So I think if you don't know that, your character probably needs to be learning it as you're learning it. So there's some clumsiness to that information, but then at least it's charming because your character is figuring it out too. So I think that can work, but I think, yeah, the readers will call you on it if you're trying to pull something off that you don't know.
[00:25:22] Matty: So Diane are you publishing both through traditional publishers and indy now?
[00:25:27] Diane: Right now my current series that I have are all indy. I am shopping some things to traditional again. So I'm looking to keep a foot in the traditionally published world to remain a hybrid author. But right now, I fulfilled the contracts of the traditionally published books, continuing one series on my own that was traditionally published, and I have some new series that I'm looking for homes for.
[00:25:49] Matty: What did you do in order to enable you to continue in an indy format with a book that had originally been traditionally published?
[00:25:58] Diane: The original books, the first books in the series, are still with the traditional publisher. So I just got permission from them to continue because it was under my name, it wasn't under a pen name, they didn't own the name. So I just said, I'd like to write an additional book in the series and they said, that's fine, you can self-publish. So we were okay with that. So once I got their green light, I proceeded with it.
[00:26:19] Matty: It's probably a good tip for people who are reading a contract from a traditional publisher to try to bake that in ahead of time so that they own the books they've published, obviously, but you still have the rights to continue with that character, that set of characters, the town.
[00:26:35] Diane: Right. And in the contracts that I've seen so far, most publishers want first right of refusal. So if there's an additional book in the series, they want that opportunity to say yes or say no, if they want to continue the series, which is partially why I went to the publisher and said, I'm not under contract for this book, but I think I want to write it. I think I'm going to continue this series. So I just thought it was best to just be upfront about everything.
[00:26:57] Matty: There's another conversation I had a couple of episodes ago with Julie Mulhern who had a somewhat similar scenario where she'd started out traditional as a platform to go indy, but then after she'd had the experience of both, she really saw the benefits of both. So it's not like she stopped doing one and moved to the other. She was taking advantage of the best of both worlds. It sounds like that's the model you're following as well.
[00:27:24] Diane: People always say, well, what do you like better? And I always feel like they're not same. So they both offer strong positives. And for me, I don't know if this is right for everybody, but for me, I really liked what I got from both. So I would be fine if somebody said you a hundred percent have to choose one, I would go with one or I would go the other, I wouldn't lament not having that other option, but I do, with choice, I like having both options because they do both do something different.
[00:27:54] Matty: Well, Diane, thank you so much for sharing that information with us. Let people know where they can go online to find out more about you and your books.
[00:28:02] Diane: Well, thank you for the invitation Matty. This has been great. You can sign up for my email and can sign up for my newsletter. I call it The Weekly Diva because Diane Vallere, that's my Diva, that's my J.Lo name. I send it every Sunday and sign up is on my website at dianevallere.com. I am also on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram as consistently as I can find motivation to be. So it's kind of intermittent, but I am on all those locations.
[00:28:29] Matty: Great. Well, thank you again. This has been really helpful.
[00:28:32] Diane: Thank you. Thanks again for inviting me. This has been great.
I'd love to know how you plan to put Diane's advice into practice! I'd especially love to hear from authors of books other than cozies to find out what advice you feel will translate effectively to your own genre.
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