I'd like to welcome Victoria Hamilton today! She writes the Vintage Kitchen Mystery series. Her next is Bowled Over, out March 5th!
To Romance or NOT
to Romance?
By: Victoria
Hamilton
First off, I want to thank Jim
and Joyce for having me here! I really appreciate their hospitality.
I am the happy and proud author
of three cozy series, though the only one with any books on shelves at the
moment is my Vintage Kitchen Mystery series. Bowled Over, Book 2, comes out on
March 5th.
Jaymie Leighton, a thirty-something happy small town girl
is the heart of the mysteries. She has, in the past year, been unceremoniously
dumped by her ex in favor of a young, slimmer, blonder woman. She’s coming to
terms with it and finds that when she least suspects it she has one and a half
men interested in her. I say one and a half, because one fellow, millionaire
Daniel Collins, is more than willing to declare himself, while the hunky
detective, Zacchary Christian, prefers to chuck her under the chin and tell her
what a cute girl she is.
As some bloggers before me have
pointed out, this is the dilemma that every cozy mystery writer ends up with:
to romance or not to romance? On the one hand, romance is a part of life,
right? And if we want our novels to reflect reality then there will be, on
occasion, romance and a love interest in the life of our protagonist and even
some of the secondary characters.
On the other hand, I read Agatha
Christie books for most of my youth, then moved on to Sara Paretsky and Sue
Grafton; quite frankly, the love lives of most of their characters (barring the
charming romance between Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence Beresford) is awkward
and faltering, to say the least.
I think many mystery readers would prefer we
exclude romance, while an equal number of others are rooting for the
protagonist and his or her fellows to have happiness, which often includes a
significant other.
So here’s what I think; murder
mysteries are, contrarily, about life not death, and life is a big, messy ball
of confusion. It’s all co-mingled: life and death, love and hate, jealousy and
serenity, greed and compassion, marriage and murder.
However romance, while
being a part of the books I write, will never take center stage, or they would
not be mysteries any more.
I used a tagline when I was still
straddling the worlds of being a romance author (which is where I got my
publishing start, though I had been writing unpublishable mysteries for years
before that) and mystery author. I said of myself that I ‘liked a little romance in my mystery, and a little mystery in my
romance.’ I still think that’s a good motto.
I would truly be interested in
the opinion of mystery readers. Do you, or do you not, like a spot of romance
in your mysteries?
~::~
Meet the author:
Victoria Hamilton is the pseudonym
for author Donna Lea Simpson. As Victoria she
writes the bestselling Vintage Kitchen Mystery series (Book 1 – A Deadly Grind
– May 2012) and the upcoming Merry Muffin Mysteries, also from Berkley
(Book 1 – Bran New Murder – September 3rd, 2013) Victoria
loves cooking and collecting vintage kitchen utensils, as well as reading and
writing mysteries. Check out her webpage for all the latest: http://www.victoriahamiltonmysteries.com
and find her on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/AuthorVictoriaHamilton
