Author Interview: Iris March

Today’s featured author is Iris March, who is soon to celebrate the launch of her first cozy mystery (cue applause!). The Broken Bridge hits shelves on May 24th. Those of you on #MysteryBookstagram may know Iris as Maureen, a.k.a. @searchingformysteries. I have to say, the pen name “Iris March” is so perfect for her new cozy series about a gardening center!

In the interview below, Iris chats plants and gardening, self-publishing, writing cozies, and more. Any aspiring authors and self-publishers in the crowd? You’ll love her tips for assembling a group of ARC readers, thoughts on establishing a publishing imprint, and online resources for new publisher-authors.

Sleuths! You can connect with Iris on Facebook, Instagram, and her website. Pick up The Broken Bridge today on Amazon, Kobo, or Barnes & Noble.

Hi Iris, thanks for joining me! Your debut novel, The Broken Bridge, book one in your new Succulent Sleuth cozy mystery series, launches May 24. The Broken Bridge features succulent-savvy sleuth Molly Green, who runs an eco-friendly garden center (and, of course, runs into mysterious trouble). In your opinion, what makes for a great cozy sleuth and theme? Where did you get the inspiration for Molly and this gardening theme?

I have always adored plants and trees but am just not great at keeping houseplants alive! Houseplants have about a 50 percent survival rate in my care, unfortunately. I figured if I was going to write a main character, I should really like her and she should have some qualities that I want to have myself, including being skilled at tending plants. The Succulent Sleuth name hit me one day on a run and I knew I needed to use it for my entire series. 

I think the best amateur sleuths are the ones not looking to get involved but are just shoved into the job. They also need to have some capacity to investigate and knowledge that not just everyone has. I enjoy a cozy mystery with a unique theme and haven’t seen a garden center yet, although there are a few flower shops. I also threw in a lot of green living tips through Molly’s lifestyle choices. I’ve worked in sustainability my entire career and just can’t write anything without that stuff in it. For a while, I thought about editing them out but was told to lean into who I am and embrace it, so I did!

Where I work, at AuthorImprints, we take publishing imprints very seriously, and believe they are an important component of self-publishing. So, naturally, I loved seeing that you’ve established an imprint for your books—Wandering Ginkgo Press—as well as a logo. Can you share your reasons for creating your imprint and any tips for selecting a name and crafting a logo?

A few months ago, my husband ordered a book from Amazon and I could tell right away that it was self-published because there wasn’t an imprint logo on the spine or the back. It looked sloppy to me. I knew I wanted my books to appear as professional as possible and having that detail of the imprint and an imprint logo makes them look more polished. All sales pages also list the imprint name. I’ve already mentioned my love for trees. Ginkgos are so unique, so old, and can withstand a lot of pollution—they’re my favorite and I wanted to use them somehow. We planted one in our front yard and it’s still alive! I also wanted a verb in the imprint name and went around and around for so long about what to use. Wandering is a nice descriptor of what happens when writing a book. I’m thrilled with the name. A graphic designer friend of mine came up with a dozen different logo options and I chose my favorite. I really couldn’t be happier with the outcome. There is a Gingko Press but they do not wander, and they use the other spelling so we won’t be confused.

Another big topic for new authors is getting readers. I know that you’ve been hard at work assembling an ARC team to read and review your book before its release—can you explain how you reached out to potential reviewers, and share your experience with this process?

I found ARC readers through other cozy mystery author friends, real life friends, other bookish people I know, as well as cozy mystery readers that I found on Instagram. I put a call out on social media for ARC readers and found a few that way. Mostly, I asked people directly and very few turned me down. I knew I was asking people who liked to read the sort of book that I was writing.

I asked everyone who was interested to fill out a form so that I had all the info together. This also demonstrated that they were interested enough to do a tiny step for me online and hopefully they’d do something else in the future. I was going to make a Facebook group so that they’d all sort of meet each other, but I have since been told that being too connected with people who leave reviews for you on social media might work against you on Amazon. So instead, I’m sending group emails to all of them. I’ve got about 40 ARC readers—I have no idea if that’s too many or too little!

What have you learned as a new author? Can you share any resources and/or advice for those looking to embark on a writing and publishing journey? And/or, could you talk about how you planned the mystery and your writing process?

When I started writing my first book (see below), I struggled with knowing how to introduce characters and how much to reveal about them from the start, as well as how to pace the story. These issues got me searching online for answers and I found the ladies at Write Publish Sell. Since, I’ve attended three of their online conferences and at least a dozen of their webinars as well as their Book Launch in a Box class. I also love Joanna Penn’s podcast, The Creative Penn. Dallas Woodburn is my book coach and helped me iron out some details and figure out some of my insecurities. Finally, the info produced by New Shelves Books and their weekly Free Advice Friday book publishing Q&A sessions are great.

There’s so much to learn and do as an author (self-published or not!) and I think that the pace of writing a book lends itself to allowing authors to also learn what they need to know along the way. Certainly, I barely know enough to make it work, and have a lot more to learn.

For both of my completed books, I knew how the story opened and how they ended. The gaps needed to be filled in. I tried to outline the entire story, but as authors often say, the characters did what they wanted to and my outlines kept getting thrown out. I think having that outline still helped me at least have an idea of where I wanted to go and tricked my brain that I knew what would happen next (even if that’s not what really happened). That kept me writing. In the murky middle of both books, I keep a spreadsheet of daily words written to keep myself accountable. You have to be a bit obsessed with a story to finish it. 

In a cozy mystery, you need some red herrings and a plot twist. I knew who my suspects would be from the start and some problems Molly would face. It’s funny—I didn’t know she was a twin until I was into the second chapter and had to go back and add her sister, May, into the start. I also didn’t know who my baddie was until I was well into writing it. Knowing some of those major components of a story helped me move it forward even if I didn’t know the whole thing.

You have a second book launching in September 2022 (so soon, yay!). What can readers expect in this next story? I’m hoping you can share some fun bits about your upcoming projects!

My second book is not a sequel to The Broken Bridge but is set in the same fictional town and the garden center is mentioned. It’s the book that pushed me into being an author and tells the story of my sister’s experience of having Hodgkin’s Lymphoma while being pregnant with twins. The story is told through her fictional male nurse who becomes obsessed with an abandoned building on his running route. (I have a very similar building on my own running route but it’s much less exciting!) He ropes my sister’s character into helping him do some research and she makes phone calls and web searches from her hospital bed. It’s a story of teamwork and finding inner strength and courage. I’m really excited to publish it, but it’s not as easy to market as a cozy is. It is a clean read with a mysterious building, but it’s not a cozy mystery.I am still noodling and outlining the sequel to The Broken Bridge and am really hopeful it will be in the world in 2023. Honestly, I’m having a harder time coming up with believable suspects this time around! Molly has a lot more mysteries to solve, though, for sure.

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Thanks so much to Iris for the interview. Sleuths, I hope you enjoyed it! If you aren’t already subscribed, please be sure to sign up for the Cluesletter and get author features like this alongside other mystery goodies, delivered to your inbox every other Tuesday.