My problem with cozy mysteries

Oh my god, okay, I'm supposed to be going to bed right now but I just have to write a quickie post.

I've been really getting into cozy mysteries lately, sort of by accident, in the sense that I guess I'd always loved a good mystery but I didn't really realize how much I loved this particular genre until I got on a Murder She Wrote binge and now I'm reading all kinds of Agatha Christie and other cozy mysteries.

Which is, of course, giving me all kinds of ideas for writing one of my own. A genre that is so wildly outside of what I have ever written before that I feel like I just might have to try it. I've got a solid set-up in mind for a series, and I've managed to find a way to fit in my other loves as well -- history and sauciness.

But I must say, I'm having a hard time finding other contemporary cozies that I like, and right off the bat I can pin point why -- too much exposition from the first paragraph.

It seems to be a formulaic part of this genre, but they all seem to start, mostly in the first person, with these huge info dumps of our sleuth's background and the full history of that one pesky personal problem that will be their main quirk throughout the series and how they grew up and how they lost their mother at a young age...

Listen. That's just bad storytelling. Don't do it.

Set your sleuth down in a cozy coffee shop or bookstore or boutique in a tiny little town with charming and rascally residents, but please...please...refrain from telling us every single thing about her backstory in the first page. No story needs that. Ever.

Also, I'm not a huge fan of pets as characters in these things, but I can forgive that if it's well done. And that's for another blog post.

Off to bed!

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