Today’s featured author (the last of the year!) is Leah Dobrinska. With a background in small-town romance, Leah’s newest release is her first cozy mystery. Death Checked Out stars a librarian gets mixed up in a murder. Don’t you just love a mystery with a bookish theme?
In the interview below, Leah shares publishing tips, writing strategies, and plotting romances versus mysteries.
Connect with Leah on her website, Goodreads, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Bookbub. Be sure to subscribe to her newsletter too! Grab Death Checked Out today from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Hi Leah, it’s great to have you! Death Checked Out is book one in your new Larkspur Library Series, and features a library director who stumbles upon a dead body. In your opinion, what makes a good cozy mystery sleuth? Also, why do you think bookish cozies are so popular?
Thank you so much for having me! Yes, Death Checked Out stars Greta Plank, the library director in the small, lakeside town of Larkspur. She’s equal parts clever and kind. She’s a glass-half-full kind of person, but stumbling upon a dead body and getting caught up in a murder investigation definitely forces her to check some of her optimism.
A good cozy mystery sleuth can take many forms, but universally, I’m drawn to sleuths who have a true, recognizable desire to help those around them. They get embroiled in investigations and invested in the outcome because they’re trying to right a wrong and they want to see good prevail over evil. They’re innately curious, so they’re constantly asking questions. They don’t take no for an answer because they see the bigger implications of what they’re doing.
In my opinion, sleuths who are layered are especially compelling. I’m drawn to the sleuths who are not only working to solve the case in the book, but who are also undergoing some sort of personal transformation throughout the story. Maybe the sleuth is older and she’s having a sort of revival or coming into her own after life has knocked her down a bit. Maybe the sleuth is younger—she’s scrappy and working hard to build the life she wants. In any case, I think a good cozy mystery sleuth is someone we can root for!
And I think bookish cozies are so popular because book people are the best people! Books open up doors and worlds, so it tracks that a main character with a bookish background (or day job!) would have tremendous (fictional) fodder from which to draw on to help her solve the case. Likewise, bookish cozies automatically earn bonus points because the amateur sleuth immediately has something in common with the audience. To be able to see ourselves in a cozy mystery sleuth goes a long way in helping us to enjoy her adventures and the story as a whole.
Death Checked Out is your first cozy mystery, but you also write a small-town romance series. What do you love about writing in these two genres? Can you compare cozy mysteries with romance, and/or speak to where they might intersect?
I love happy endings! For me, that is the biggest tenet that connects these genres, and the main reason I plan to continue to write romances and cozy mysteries. There’s a lightness to be found in both genres that I appreciate. That’s not to say that romances and cozies can’t deal with tough stuff and have depth and grit, but just that there’s a happy resolution. That’s what I’m here for!
In both romances and cozies, I think we want to see a character’s motivations. This is something that’s crossed over for me between genres. Why is a character the way that he is? What inspires them to act how they do? These sorts of questions are universal and have helped me to write characters in romance books and cozy mysteries that (hopefully) land well with readers.
Likewise, several specific tropes can and do intersect between romance and mystery. For example, in my romance series, the Mapleton novels, and my mystery series, I’ve employed the small town trope. I’ve worked to build communities that readers will come to care about and grow invested in, complete with side characters who feel like friends.
Another trope I’ve used in both my romances and my mysteries is the grumpy/sunshine trope. Think Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet. One character is a consummate grouch; the other is the opposite. The interplay between the two gives me a lot of fun situations and moments to play with as an author. This trope works well in a lot of different genres.
From a story structure standpoint, both romances and cozies usually have a moment that some refer to as the “all is lost” beat. In a romance, this could be when the couple faces insurmountable odds and it doesn’t look like they’ll have any chance at their happily ever after. In a cozy mystery, this could be when the sleuth finds herself in real danger. While the moment will obviously be different in a romance versus a cozy, it exists in both!
I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that a romantic subplot can be found in many cozy mysteries, so that’s a very direct way these two genres intersect. Cozies are known for their love triangles. This is a hotly contested trope. Some people love it and some people don’t. I fall in the latter camp, so I don’t include a love triangle in Death Checked Out, but I definitely am working to set the stage for a romance to come! You can take the romance writer out of the romance genre, but . . .
While your small-town romance series is self-published, Death Checked Out is a traditional deal. Can you share your experiences with both publishing paths? Do you have advice for authors hoping to either self-publish or go the traditional route?
Self-publishing my small town romance series was a humbling and transformative experience, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I learned a ton about my craft, and I reveled in having complete control over the process. I hired professionals to help me along the way, including editors and a wonderfully talented cover designer, and I built a small following of readers who have provided me with tremendous support. I’m so grateful for the indie community, and I love being an indie author.
At the same time, I am thrilled to have found a home with a publishing house for Death Checked Out. Getting to benefit from the expertise and knowledge of the industry professionals at Level Best Books and having them back my cozy mystery series has been wonderful and a huge stepping stone for my career.
It was a definite adjustment going from being in total control of all aspects of the publishing process with the Mapleton novels to turning over that control to my publisher for Death Checked Out. Fortunately, I feel like I am very much in a partnership with my editor and the team at Level Best, and everyone there has been a pleasure to work with.
My advice for authors hoping to self-publish is to plug into the indie writing community. There are so many free resources out there and your fellow indie authors are a wealth of knowledge. It can feel overwhelming and intimidating when you look at everything that goes into publishing on your own, so keep in mind that you don’t have to do it alone.
That being said, remember that there is no one way to be an indie author. You’ll look around and see others publishing in different ways, at different paces. If what someone else is doing is not how you work, don’t worry. Don’t get bogged down in comparison. I like to remind myself and anyone else who needs to hear it that the world needs the story that you have to tell, and only you can tell it!
My advice for those hoping to go the traditional publishing route is to be prepared to be patient. So much waiting is involved in every step of the journey—waiting to see how agents respond to your queries; waiting to see how your book does on submission; waiting on feedback from your editor; waiting for the book to come out. The list goes on! What I’ve found to be the best way to combat all this waiting is to keep writing. You can’t control the traditional publishing timeline, in many cases, but you can control the words you put on the page.
Can you speak a bit about the process of writing your first mystery? How did you plan the mystery puzzle/plot the book? Were there parts that were easier or more difficult to write than others?
I read a ton of cozy mysteries as I was preparing to write my own. In several cases, I read with a notebook next to me and I documented, chapter by chapter, what an author accomplished and how she was crafting her story. It was helpful for me to begin to understand the nuance of the genre by reading within it.
When I was plotting Death Checked Out, I used the story beats outlined in Save the Cat Writes a Novel. It’s the first time I’ve plotted in that way, and I did it because I wasn’t as familiar with writing in the cozy mystery genre, and I wanted to make sure I was hitting those moments that readers expect.
When I set to work, I had my scenes and beats written out and organized on a giant stack of notecards, and I wrote the entire first draft based off those notecards. This helped me make sure I was dropping clues at the right times while not being too obvious.
For Death Checked Out, the hardest part of the mystery for me was the middle. I wanted my amateur sleuth to be following a couple different leads, but striking the balance between them and making sure I was being realistic throughout some of those early moments in the investigation (while keeping things interesting!) took a lot of fine-tuning.
I was always writing toward a specific scene. It was the scene that inspired the entire story, and I knew it would take place at about the seventy five percent point of the manuscript. If you read Death Checked Out, chapters 35 and 36 are what I’m talking about! Writing that scene (and the events that followed) was by far the easiest for me. The pace flew and the story spilled out from there.
Lastly, what are your current projects? Can you tell us anything about future books in the Larkspur Library Series, or anything else on the horizon?
I have a three book contract for the Larkspur Library Mysteries, so at least two more stories are forthcoming from Level Best Books. These books are scheduled to be published in December 2023 and December 2024. I can’t say much yet, but I have a partial draft completed of the second book in the series, and it centers on Larkspur’s fall festival.
I’ve also been working on a completely separate cozy mystery series. It needs some tweaking, but I’m thrilled with the concept and as soon as it’s ready to take center stage, I’ll see what my agent thinks and hopefully find it a publishing home.
I do plan to continue my indie author career, as well. I have more Mapleton novels in the works and have been writing a rom-com series that I can’t wait to share with my readers.
Thank you so much for having me and for asking such thoughtful questions! I’m so grateful for all you do to connect authors and readers in the mystery community.
Thanks so much to Leah 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.