Cozy Florida

Readers are often curious about how much an author puts of herself in the protagonist she creates. Am I anything like my amateur sleuths.? Well, yes and no. One thing I share with all of them is related to where the mysteries are set. Both my protagonists and I have split personalities. Eve Appel, the protagonist in the Eve Appel mysteries, a cozy mystery series set in rural Florida, is from the Northeast and has resettled in the Lake Okeechobee area. She lives there fulltime whereas I migrate from Upstate New York to rural Florida each October, having established a winter home there. When I relocated my winter residence from Key Largo to Lake Okeechobee, I moved from a Florida most Floridians and most visitors to the state find familiar to one most don’t know. Because rural Florida is untamed and so unusual, I knew I had to use the location for a cozy mystery series. What better place to hide a body than in the swamps!

As transplants, both Eve and I had much to learn about the people, the culture and the land, and we were excited to teach those who didn’t know the area about it. Through Eve my readers can come to appreciate a place they may never have experienced. An uppity Yankee gal, Eve can grow and change as her new home challenges her through beliefs different from her own. Important to both of us is food. Can one find food in rural Florida? Of course, but it won’t be the kind of dining one finds along either coast. Blackened gator replaces stone crab, and the sides you get with your entrée are likely to be coleslaw and fries rather than risotto. 

Eve has always been sensitive to environmental issues, and land use is one most significant in her life. Rural life gives a special spin to Eve’s interest in the environment. In Mud Bog Murder she finds herself at odds with locals over the economics of mud bog racing; she discovers another side to the glamor of polo play and the treatment of polo ponies in A Secondhand Murder.  Along with Eve I’ve come to realize that rural Florida is a different and special place. 

And yet much remains the same even for transplants, specifically love and the need for family ties. Family is something Eve yearns for. Can she create a sense of belonging in her new home? This issue becomes one of the most important themes in Eve’s life as she builds her own version of family, an extended one encompassing both friends and her new husband’s Miccosukee relatives. Included in this mix is an unusual individual, a mafia boss, or so he claims. So important is family to her that in her newest adventure, Murder in the Family, she risks her life to come to the mafia boss’s aid. Camel Press releases the book on April 14.

Like Eve, my sense of family includes people beyond relatives, and like many people, my husband and I consider our pets as family members. Come drop by for afternoon tea often enough, and we’ll make you a family member, and our cat will adopt you as one of his aunties.

As transplants, Eve and I share a unique position in our rural southern communities. We are outsiders and will probably never be looked at as part of the community in the way those born here are. But that’s an advantage. Outsiders are often those people locals feel more comfortable confiding in, kind of like a bartender who doesn’t need to judge you. The outsider position also allows for an unbiased point of view on many situations including—Eve’s ranching friend discovers through her—how to compromise when it comes to land issues. The meeting of insiders and outsiders allows them to share disparate views out of which can grow new opportunities. This happened when I first moved to Okeechobee and met a local also interested in writing. She and I put together a writers’ group. It gave me access to locals’ perspectives and provided them with feedback from other writers they hadn’t met before the group formed. Although the membership of the group has changed over the years, it continues to meet weekly.

So, yes. My protagonist Eve and I are alike. But we are so, so different. She is tall and slender and wears stiletto heels, wears her hair punked, gelled and dyed blond and loves designer clothes. I am short, chubby, much older, have long hair (Okay, okay. It is dyed blond) and buy my fashions from consignment shops, yard sales and outlet stores. While Eve owns a consignment shop, she trades in high end fashions and furnishings. She would be appalled to see what’s in my closet. And to be truthful, Eve rarely visits back north unless it’s to help solve a murder. I still retain a house in Upstate New York. I remain in love with my cottage on a trout stream there and have set several of my short stories and novel length works in the river valley where I live. I guess my personality is more split than Eve’s, but I need the strong attachment to the Northeast to be able to write authentically about life along the trout stream. Both settings are important to my writing and to my life. In my writing I strive to make each one believable to my readers. The splits in my personality and in those gals who love to sleuth in my work can work to our advantage. We hope you will join us for mystery, mayhem and murder in both locations.

Visit Lesley’s website to learn more about her books.