Spotlight on Maya Corrigan #SpotlightSunday #giveaway

Happy Thanksgiving! Each month one of us is in the spotlight to talk about our writings and our lives. This is my journey to publication. BOOK #1: When I thirteen, I wrote The Fabulous Four (several years before the Beatles were dubbed the Fab Four). The book was about a group of teenagers who go on a van trip across the U.S. After pecking out each chapter on a manual typewriter, I gave it to my best friend and then I watched her read it. It thrilled me to see her smile and laugh. Knowing I'd written an entertaining novel made me want to do that as a career. I recently ran across that manuscript. Here's the short synopsis I wrote of it.

Despite my initial career plan, I spent much of my professional life writing nonfiction, academic papers, technical manuals, and training materials—decidedly not entertaining, but that’s what people paid me to write. Now I’m delighted to be writing fiction again and hoping that my books are as fun to read as what I wrote when I was thirteen.

I put writing fiction on hold when I was in high school, college, and graduate school. As a break from the weighty literature I needed to read for a PhD in English, I read a lot of mysteries. When my children were young, I taught writing and American literature as an adjunct professor. I had night classes at the community college and day classes at Georgetown University, where one semester I taught a course in the literature of mystery and detection.

BOOK 2: My second stab at fiction was a mystery novel set on a cruise. A staged murder mystery game ends in a real murder. Though all of the agents and editors I queried about this book rejected it, some of them asked for to read the full manuscript. One sent me a two-page handwritten letter saying what she liked about the book (the twisty plot and the dialogue), and what didn’t work (pacing and description). And she told me that if my next book was as good as or better than the first, she'd be interested in buying it. That was enough to encourage me to write another book.  

BOOK 3: As I worked on my next book, The Murder Racket, I took courses and workshops on writing mysteries, read how-to books on fiction, and got feedback from a critique group. The book was a finalist for the Malice Domestic award. But with nothing but rejections from agents, I moved on.

My shelf of books on writing and publishing

BOOK 4: A cross between a whodunit and romantic suspense, my fourth novel involved the theft of a Renaissance painting and manuscript. Like Book 3, it was a finalist in Malice Domestic. It also won the Daphne Award and New England Readers’ Award for unpublished mystery / suspense. I was about to start the dispiriting task of querying agents when Edith (Maddie Day) and another writer shared their success with an agent who was looking for cozy mystery series proposals. 

I returned to Book 3 with an eye toward revamping it as a cozy mystery. I don’t have pets or do crafts, so I went with the only thing I knew well—cooking. I changed my sleuth’s backstory and her job to match the culinary theme. Then I wrote synopses for two more books and queried the agent, who took me on and negotiated a contract for me with Kensington. So my third book became the first of the Five-Ingredient Mysteries, By Cook or By Crook. And this month the eighth book comes out, Bake Offed. More about that below.

My journey to publication required, not just persistence, but also help and encouragement from mystery writers and fans, among the most generous and welcoming people I know.

Readers: What was your ambition when you were growing up and did you follow that path? 

I’m giving away a copy of my new book, Bake Offed, to one person who comments before November 24. (Paperback to a winner in the U.S., e-book outside the U.S.) Include your e-mail in your comment so I can contact you if you win the book. 

Café manager Val and her livewire grandfather volunteer to help a friend who’s running a weekend mystery fan fest. Besides panels and author signings, the fest includes a bake-off with contestants playing the roles of cooks to famous fictional detectives and baking a sweet the detectives would enjoy. Granddad, who cooks with no more than five ingredients, is assigned the role of Nero Wolfe’s gourmet chef Fritz, whose dishes use "scads of ingredients," as Granddad learns. He's up against stiff competition, Cynthia Sweet, in the role of Sherlock Holmes’s landlady, Mrs. Hudson. Granddad blames Cynthia for ripping off the five-ingredient theme of his Codger Cook column to use in her own recipe column and cookbook. When she’s found dead in her hotel room with a whistling teakettle next to her, he and Val sort through the festival goers to find out which of them had the biggest beef with Ms. Not-So-Sweet.

Reviews of Bake Offed

"This is a fun romp in an equally fun setting. If you are a fan of the genre or of mystery conferences—or both—this book should be right up your alley." - Mystery Scene Magazine.

"Granddad is a hoot, and a clever method of faking an alibi adds to the fun." - Kirkus Review"

"The mystery has enough hidden agendas, mistaken identities, and red herrings to give even Hercule Poirot’s little gray cells a workout.” - Kings River Life

Read the first chapter and find BUY LINKS at Kensington Books.

• Visit my website for easy recipes, mystery history and trivia, and a culinary mystery story. 
• Sign up for my newsletter. One subscriber wins a free book each time I send a newsletter.
• Follow me on Facebook.

ENJOY THE THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY!