FOODIE FRIDAYS: Art as Growth in Cozy Mysteries: Guest Post by Amber Royer

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Amber Royer: Art as Growth in Cozy Mysteries

In my latest cozy mystery, A Shot in the 80% Dark, my chocolate-maker sleuth learns about treating chocolate as an art medium. I hadn’t really thought about what that would do to Felicity as a character or to the structure of the book. Rather, I was just focusing in on a different aspect of what can be done with chocolate. Felicity doesn’t see herself as creative or artistic. And that’s probably my fault, as her author. I had given her so much to deal with in life that I hadn’t really let her have the breathing room to sit down and reflect on her creative side.

Her artistic instincts are there, from the way she handles chocolate to the way she has decorated her business, to the labels she’s done for her chocolate bars.  She just assumes that because she doesn’t have talent for drawing or painting, she can’t do art with a capital A. But then the gallery she’s been commissioned to do a chocolate sculpture for wants to host an immersive exhibit surrounding the photographs of cacao trees that Felicity has taken in her visits to the origin of the beans she uses in the chocolate she makes. Felicity has thought about those photographs as stock for her social media – but having someone see the beauty in the images makes Felicity realize that maybe her whole social media account has been a creative outlet that has been serving her as a lifeline all along.

I’m big about writing characters with sound psychological responses, and if you look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Self-actualization is at the top. Felicity has been dealing with grief (she lost her husband prior to the first book) and has been gradually realizing that she needs to empathize more and to take more time listening to her friends if she wants to have the deep connections you that will get you steady on the rung of Love and Belonging. But over the first three books, she’s been building those connections, so now, it’s psychologically plausible for her to reach up towards that higher rung.

By moving her upwards, I let her have more positive energy in her life, which does wonders for the people around her.  It also helps keep it from feeling like the series is stagnating.  With cozies, so much of it has to stay the same in order not to confuse readers coming in at the middle of the series, or alienating readers who loved the first books. Giving Felicity’s outlook an arc, and her artistic side aspirations helps keep it interesting to write, too.Now that I’ve included Felicity’s artistic side, I feel like I need to lean into it in later books in the series.  The book-after-next is going to be titled A Study In Chocolate.  There will be a chocolate portrait involved in the plot. Painting with chocolate or on chocolate is actually more common than you might think. (I took a class a couple of years ago where I got meta and painted a cacao tree on a chocolate bar.  I’m not the best with a paintbrush, but I do like to tinker with art forms that require that kind of skill. I’m better with photography and graphic design – or words – but you don’t have to be objectively “good” at a specific form of art to have fun doing it.) 

Felicity doesn’t even have a favorite artist at this point. (There is mention in the first couple of books in the series that she appreciates the local sculptures that have been carved out of dead trees as a symbol of resiliency, and the sculptures of endangered sea turtles – one of which is practically on her business’s doorstep. But I don’t think this really counts as a favorite artist, since she connects more with the reason for the art.) I need to spend some time thinking about WHY she doesn’t have a deeply personal favorite.  After all, everyone connects to art in some way. It may be an overly popular choice, but my favorite artist is Van Gogh. I did a project on the impressionists, and I kept coming back to his Café Terrace at Night, because it was so warm and inviting.  As I learned more about the artists, I kept feeling a connection to Van Gogh more than to the others. His struggles with his art, the way he felt like an outsider in many situations, his tumultuous changes in career – these all mirrored things I had felt, but in a magnified way.  He knew what it was like to pour himself into a project only to have it crash and burn. He kept creating art in the face of that, kept trying to move forward despite the breakdown that held him back, doing painting after painting of that tree he could see out of his window, because he needed his creative outlet. I’ve been much the same with words. I find that when I don’t write, I’m more prone to anxiety and depression, because I lose both my sense of routine, and my ability to use my creative side to put order to my life and help process emotion.

Felicity is familiar with a number of painters. When she finally has to choose a favorite artist in A Study in Chocolate, I don’t think Van Gogh is going to wind up being hers too. As research for that book, my husband and I recently visited Galveston’s Art Walk Event. (The books are set on Galveston Island, with Felicity’s fictional shop on the Historic Strand.) We got to see images of local landmarks, and some of my favorite marine animals, done in different scales and styles. Given all of that, and the vibrancy of the local art scene, I’m beginning to think that Felicity’s favorite painter might turn out to be a local artist.
It will be fun to have the excuse to experience more art to find out.

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Amber Royer writes the Chocoverse space opera series, and the Bean to Bar Mysteries. She is also the author of Story Like a Journalist: a Workbook for Novelists, and has co-authored a chocolate-related cookbook with her husband. She also teaches creative writing and is an author coach.

 

Chocolate Maker vs. Chocolatier: How Choosing a Protagonist’s Focus Changes the Parameters of Cozy: Guest Post by Amber Royer

AMBER ROYER:

Chocolate Maker vs. Chocolatier: How Choosing a Protagonist’s Focus Changes the Parameters of Cozy 

When you think of cozy mysteries set in a chocolate shop, you probably picture someone making bonbons and fudge, dipping candied oranges in coverture, and stacking toffee into glass cloches. These chocolatiers can be true artists, working with flavor, design and texture to create memorable experiences. And there are a number of excellent mystery series with chocolatiers at their centers. But when I decided to write a mystery about chocolate, I wanted to do something different. I wrote a science fiction trilogy about chocolate first, and while researching and publicizing those books, I met a number of people in the craft chocolate industry. These artisans have much in common with coffee roasters and wine makers. Many of them travel to the countries where chocolate is grown, or work with farmers to increase the quality of cacao beans. Chocolate makers often build or repair their own equipment, and some have developed the ability to judge bean roasts by smell alone. 

I chose a craft chocolate maker as my sleuth for the Bean to Bar Mysteries for several reasons. Obviously, I didn’t want to waste all that research. I’ve taken bean to bar chocolate making classes from some of the founders of the craft chocolate movement, winnowed cacao beans with a hairdryer on my patio, visited chocolate shops in multiple countries, taken a jeep down a dry-ish riverbed river to visit a cacao plantation, even started growing cacao trees as houseplants. 

But having a passion doesn’t make a good book – unless you have a protagonist who uses that passion to fulfill the needs of the plot. I needed this character to be a chocolate maker, because she has to feel a bit larger than life for some of the plots I have planned for later books – while at the same time being a 32-year-old widow who owns a lop-eared bunny and lives with her aunt and uncle. The drive to problem solve, and the innate taste for adventure I’ve seen in many of the real-world craft chocolate professionals I’ve interviewed seemed like a perfect fit. 

Every novel has a scope and a scale. Scope is the amount of time and space covered in a story. Scale is the magnitude of what is included (like the budget for a film – more characters, more settings = larger scale productions). Scale also includes the sweep – the grandness of the events at hand. In the cozy starring a character working in a shop, both of those elements are usually very small. Small scopes allow for a sense of intimacy, which is why the majority of these are written first person (the confessional voice, after all) and some of them are present tense (throwing the reader into the midst of the events). Limiting the number of settings and the size of the cast (at least as far as suspects) allows for a shorter book with a tighter focus. 

NOTE: With cozy series, there tend to be cameo appearances from characters that were important to earlier books who still live in the setting, but this doesn’t necessarily broaden the scale, as their stories have already been explored. 

I wanted to stick with a tight scope (most every book I’ve ever written takes place in less than a week), but I want to gradually broaden the scale. I tried to imply that with the plot of the first book, where the conflict turns out to be over more than a single murder. Almost immediately, Felicity finds herself teaming up with a guy who used to be private security to the stars – and who has a muddled past. As the series progresses, this is going to develop into larger scale conflicts, as his world starts colliding with hers – and she has to start making decisions about the scale of the world she’s prepared to live in. 

Several aspects of Felicity’s life make chocolate maker a better fit for her than chocolatier, because that different lens of looking at what chocolate is changes her way of looking at everything – and everyone. Her being a chocolate maker changes the parameters of what potential plots can fit into her ‘verse, because suddenly she’s dealing with import laws and international influences. It becomes a different KIND of cozy, than if she was ordering and working with pre-made chocolate. That difference is subtle in the first book, when she is still struggling with fitting back into the island community she left a decade before. But it will become more pronounced later on. 

The most important aspect of her character is her need for reinvention. Out of all the chocolate makers I’ve spoken with, not one of them said they grew up wanting to be Willie Wonka. This is a career that people fall into because something sparks a passion, and often they are giving up a career doing something only tangentially related. A number of the chocolate makers I’ve met started out as computer guys or engineers – so they geek out over the process or the machines. So it makes perfect sense to have Felicity give up a career as a physical therapist because she can’t stand being around people in pain due to her own grief – to turn to something that involves chemistry, which she excelled at in school, and also makes people happy. 

It has become a trope to have a cozy character returning home because of a job failure, often combined with a bad breakup. I wanted to step away from that, and explore other reasons for homecoming. Felicity’s move home doesn’t have failure at its root at all, but rather loss – her husband passed away, which prompts her move/career change. Which, ironically, gives her a less negative place to start from. This isn’t about re-building her self-esteem while others continually underestimate her (which is what the job loss trope lends itself to) – but rather, it is about her figuring out how to build a life that means something to her, since her compass has been stripped away. 

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Amber Royer writes the CHOCOVERSE comic telenovela-style foodie-inspired space opera series, and the BEAN TO BAR MYSTERIES. She is also the author of STORY LIKE A JOURNALIST: A WORKBOOK FOR NOVELISTS, which boils down her writing knowledge into an actionable plan involving over 100 worksheets to build a comprehensive story plan for your novel. She blogs about creative writing technique and all things chocolate at www.amberroyer.com.