314: How to Write a Cozy Mystery (the rules are changing): Episode 314 with Mia Manansala

Shownotes up front—but scroll down, there’s an announcement! Mia P. Manansala (she/her) is a writer and book coach from Chicago who loves books, baking, and bad-ass women. She uses humor (and murder) to explore aspects of the Filipino diaspora, queerness, and her millennial love for pop culture. She is the author of 2 books so far in the Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery series: Arsenic and Adobo and Homicide and Halo-Halo . I was excited to talk to Mia because I read my way through hundreds of cozies well into my early adulthood, and I thought I knew the genre pretty well—but in coming back to it recently, I could see that things have changed. Just like in romance, there’s far more of an effort to balance reality with the deeply unlikely yet also deeply satisfying elements of the genre that are the reasons we come: Protagonists we love, puzzles to solve and justice to serve and peace to restore—until the next book! Links from the Pod Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder , Joanne Fluke #AmReading Mia: Like a Sister , Kellye Garrett Secret Identity , Alex Segura The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay , Michael Chabon Under Lock & Skeleton Key , Gigi Pandian Dial a for Aunties , Jesse Q. Sutanto Four Aunties and a Wedding , Jesse Q. Sutanto KJ: The Arc , Tory Henwood Hoen Find Mia at: Facebook , Twitter , IG = @MPMtheWriter or www.miapmanansala.com HEY! We’re gonna do a BIG DEAL SPECIAL THING THIS SUMMER: The #AmWriting Blueprint for a Book Challenge. 10 episodes, 10 weeks, 10 assignments—Fiction, Memoir and Non-fiction. Play along all summer, put in a few hours every week and you’ll be ready to take your book to the next level by fall, whether it’s a little baby idea or a big unwieldy draft that’s keeping you up nights. Details TK—sign up HERE to join in. The podcast—and the #AmWriting Blueprint for a Book Challenge—are sponsored by Author Accelerator, where you can get matched with the right book coach to help you move that project even faster—OR study to become a book coach yourself. To find out more, click HERE .