Author Spotlight: Dorothy Love

Dorothy Love is an award-winning novelist who writes contemporary and historical fiction. She is the author of the Colinas County Mysteries. In this 1950s-era cozy mystery series, a resilient war widow who owns the local newspaper teams up with the county sheriff to uncover buried secrets in their small town.

Cozy Crime Reads Interview with Dorothy Love

What attracted you to the cozy mystery genre?

All of my previous historical novels have a thread of mystery running through them., especially The Bracelet and A Respectable Actress which reviewers called “an unforgettable novel with a Southern vibe”. I’ve always enjoyed giving my characters a secret to uncover. Writing a pure mystery series was a logical extension of that.

What are a few of the essential elements that make a cozy stand out to you as a reader?

The setting grabs my attention first. If I love the setting, and the characters, I’m all in.

Do you have a favorite amateur sleuth?

I love Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs. Right now I’m watching The Marble Hall Murders featuring a book editor, Susan Ryland, as the amateur sleuth. Miss Marple, of course.

What inspired your first cozy mystery?

I live in the Texas hill country near an escarpment called The Devil’s Backbone which has a lot of local lore and ghost stories attached to it going all the way back to the 1800’s. It seemed like a great place for a hidden crime to take place.

And I had lived with Sheriff Hutch Joyner in my head for several years. I knew I wanted Hutch to have a love interest and I created Ruth Harnett, a war widow raising her 12 year old son by herself. I set the series in the 1950’s because I wanted Hutch and his deputy to have to use old-fashioned police work—dusting for fingerprints, interviewing suspects, following their lawman’s intuition rather than relying on modern science.

As I planned the series, I realized The Devil’s Backbone would work best as the second book, after readers got to know Colinas County and my characters. So I started with A QUIET LITTLE TOWN which became an Amazon bestseller, followed it with THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE and now, ONE LITTLE FLAME concludes this set of stories.

How do you research and create the "cozy" elements in your books, like the settings and community?

What is one key step in your writing process that helps you transform an idea into a finished book? I’ve written 25 books across thirty years and regardless of the genre or time period I start with a fairly comprehensive outline. The story usually changes during the actual writing process but the outline keeps my thoughts organized and serves as a roadmap.

What advice would you give aspiring cozy mystery authors who want to start writing their first novel?

Read a hundred published books before you begin. Notice how the authors introduce setting and characters. How they set up the mystery. How the story is paced.

My books tend to be more immersive, taking time to develop setting and characters, even the secondary characters that appear in each book. Other authors cut to the chase and don’t spend much time on either. James Patterson for instance, jumps right in, and his chapters are usually very short.

How can readers connect with you online?

I’m easy to find.

My official website is www.dorothylovebooks.com‍ ‍

My Facebook page is www.facebook.com/dorothylovebooks.

My monthly newsletter INSIDE STORY comes out on the first Sunday of the month. It’s a mix of book news, author interviews, personal stories, photos, and usually a short history of some aspect of my books or some historical event. Subscribing is free, and new subscribers get instant access to CHRISTMAS IN PARIS, a short story featuring my main characters from A SEASON IN SAIGON, my most popular novel, about the women who worked as journalists in Vietnam during the war.

Find INSIDE STORY at https://dorothylove.substack.com

Dorothy Love’s Cozy Mystery Books

Use the arrows on either side of the book image shown below to see books in Dorothy Love’s Colinas County Mystery Series. Click on the image to see a book description, excerpt, and reviews on Amazon.