Terrie Moran
I am so excited to be with you today to talk about how the first two pages of my cozy mystery novel, Well Read, Then Dead, came to be. I believe the story’s beginning enticed folks to read further and resulted in the book being recently nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Novel.
A few years ago I decided to write a cozy series set on the barrier island community of Fort Myers Beach on the Gulf Coast of South Florida. Now Fort Myers Beach is a real place, and I wanted to keep true to this fantastic beach and resort community, but I still needed to invent a fictional location within Fort Myers Beach for my characters to use as a base. It had to be a warm, welcoming place smelling of delicious food and filled with books and sunshine. So I invented the Read ’Em and Eat café and bookstore owned by protagonist Sassy Cabot and her “bestie” Bridgy Mayfield.