Sunday Spotlight on Vicki Delany, The One Woman Crime Wave

 Hi, all. 

I’m Vicki Delany, the One Woman Crime Wave, and I have the honour of being spotlighted today at Mystery Lovers Kitchen.

First, thanks so much everyone for following us at MLK.  It’s such a great blog and I was delighted when Daryl Wood Gerber invited me to join several years ago.  I love to cook and particularly to bake, but I live alone these days, so it’s often difficult to get inspired to try something new and different.  But knowing I have a blog post to do, makes me dig through recipes and try exciting new things.

As for me – my writing career has been long and varied. I began writing psychological suspense novels for Poisoned Pen Press and then wrote the eight book Constable Molly Smith series, again for PPP. At the same time, I wrote the Klondike Gold Rush books for the Canadian publisher Dundurn, and novellas for adult literacy.

I started my writing career when I was working as a systems analyst for a major bank.  I’d previously been a computer programmer, a career I absolutely loved. But the tech world was moving fast and I found I had little or no interest in keeping up. So, I thought I’d try my hand at writing a book.  I took some creative writing courses at Sheridan College, in Oakville, Ontario, where I was living at the time. (Shout out to Linda Simmons and Sylvia McNicoll). My idea at first was to write for children; I quickly decided I didn’t want to do that, but I enjoyed the course and wanted to stay.

So – I started a novel. It was a rather turgid effort called WHITEOUT, which is still lurking around at the fringes of online bookstores.  The rest, as they say, is history, and I wrote three books while still working at the bank, which were published by Poisoned Pen.

I was lucky enough to be able to take early retirement, which I did. I travelled around North America for a year with my dog, Shenzi, and then bought a small country home in Prince Edward County Ontario. And became a full-time writer.

It really is the best life.

How, you ask, did I transition to cozies?

I had an idea for a lighter series and I asked my good friend Mary Jane Maffini, if she’d show my proposal to her agent. She did, the agent replied saying she liked it, but she wouldn’t be able to find a home for it.  so sorry.

Then – when Berkley Prime Crime was looking for a writer to take on a work for hire series set in a lighthouse in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Kim Lionetti at Bookends, remembered me.

And thus the Lighthouse Library series began. 

When the series ended at PRH due to the ‘great cozy massacre’, it was picked up by the good people at Crooked Lane Books. There are now nine books available in that series, then tenth is completed and submitted (look for DEATH KNELLS AND WEDDING BELLS next Spring), and I have contracts for another three.  Those books are published under my pen name of Eva Gates. Which, BTW, is the only use of a pen name. Vicki Delany is my real name.

Once I had my foot in the door writing cozies, I decided I loved it and wanted to continue.  So writing cozies is now what I do and I have five series:

• The Lighthouse Library Series by Eva Gates now published by Crooked Lane Books
• The Sherlock Holmes Bookshop Series published by Crooked Lane Books
• The Tea by the Sea Series published by Kensington Publishing Corp
• The Year Round Christmas Series, moving to Crooked Lane in 2023
• The Catskills Summer Resort Series published by Penguin Random House (finished)

I’m often asked why I’ve switched to cozies, and here’s my reply:

The essence of a cozy mystery, as I see it, is real life, with some components stretched and exaggerated for effect.

Cozy writers take the things we love – families, friends, hobbies, crafts, even places – and write them with a loving hand to be slightly larger than life. And then, we thrust murder and sometimes mayhem into the mix.

Cozies are intended to be nothing more than an entertaining read. You won’t learn many lessons about the human condition, there is no one suffering from angst or threating to kill themselves because of depression. No PTSD. No terrorist attacks or serial killers. Just people with friends and lovers and community. And the occasional enemy. And a murder of course.

I’ve dealt with human angst and tragedy, and now I’m happy on the lighter side.  I hope you'll continue to follow me on my journey. 

You can find me at www.vickidelany.com or www.lighthouselibrarymysteries.com. I’m on Facebook at www.facebook.com/evagatesauthor. Twitter @vickidelany @evagatesauthor Instragram: @vicki.delany

If you’d like to receive my quarterly newsletter with news about forthcoming books and my travels, you can sign up on my web page here: Vicki Delany – Canadian Author of Mystery Novels and Suspense Novels » Contact

To thank you for being a loyal follower of Mystery Lovers Kitchen, I’d like to give away a signed hardcover book to TWO readers. Either the newest Tea by the Sea mystery, MURDER SPILLS THE TEA or the most recent Lighthouse Library book, DEATH BY BEACH READ.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on your reading habits. Do you stick to cozies or prefer something deeper and darker? Do you vary your reading? Do you always read mysteries or switch between genres? Any non-fiction readers out there?