Ask the Author: Maya Corrigan
Answered Questions (13)
Maya Corrigan
Hi Tina. Sorry I missed your message. Gmail doesn't deliver Goodreads messages to my inbox, so I have to hunt for them. Please send me the link to the discussion, if it's not too late.
~Maya
~Maya
Maya Corrigan
I would go back to the world of Pride and Prejudice and attempt to keep Darcy from meeting Elizabeth so that he would fall in love with me instead. This would be a doomed effort, of course, because he and Elizabeth are perfectly suited and meant for each other. And, though I have "fine eyes," I am definitely not handsome enough to attract him and not nearly as witty as Elizabeth.
Maya Corrigan
In the latest Five-Ingredient Mystery, S'MORE MURDERS, my sleuth Val is asked to cater a meal aboard a yacht on the Chesapeake Bay, re-creating the final dinner served on the Titanic. I got the idea for the mystery when I came across a book called "Last Dinner on the Titanic." It described the meals served on the Titanic based on souvenir menus survivors had tucked into their pockets, not knowing they'd be a lifeboat later that night. I thought a Titanic memorial dinner would make a good setting for a murder.
Maya Corrigan
Hi Deborah,
Book #6 is scheduled to come out in September 2019. It's a Halloween-themed mystery called CRYPT SUZETTE. Thank you for asking about it.
Maya
Book #6 is scheduled to come out in September 2019. It's a Halloween-themed mystery called CRYPT SUZETTE. Thank you for asking about it.
Maya
Maya Corrigan
I will read a lot of nonfiction related to the book I'm writing, the fifth in my five-ingredient mysteries. Though it takes place in the present, the plot relates to a significant event that occurred in the 1910s, so I'm doing research on that era. When I'm in the middle of writing a cozy mystery, I avoid reading other cozies because I don't want another writer's "voice" in my head. Instead, I read historicals. On my shelf are LADY COP MAKES TROUBLE, the second Kopp Sisters novel by Amy Stewart. Her heroine is the first female sheriff's deputy in early 20th century. Next on my list is GIRL IN DISGUISE by Greer Macallister, a book centered on the first female Pinkerton detective, hired in 1850s. See a pattern here?
Maya Corrigan
I'm working on the 5th book in my Five-Ingredient Mystery series. The murder takes place during the recreation of an elaborate dinner connected to a famous event that took place 105 years ago. Can you guess what that event is?
Maya Corrigan
Join a writing group. Feedback is essential to a writer and giving feedback to other writers can sharpen your own skills. Without the help of a writing group, I would have never gotten a publishing contract.
Maya Corrigan
When my husband recently cleaned out the house where his parents had lived for fifty years, he found an IOU that was dated 1895. The IOU was made out to someone with a last name that matched the maiden name of my husband's grandmother, but we don't know exactly who that person was or who owed him money. Typically, IOUs were torn up when the money owed was paid back. This intact IOU means the debt was never paid. Why not? To me as a mystery writer, that suggested either the borrower or the lender was murdered. The book plot would involve tracking down who was murdered and whodunit, more than a century after the crime took place.
Maya Corrigan
Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy. They complement each other, each with strengths the other one lacks. And they have such lively conversations.
Maya Corrigan
Mysteries have a lot of similarities to cakes. Cakes start with the same basic ingredients—flour, eggs, fat, and sugar. Different proportions and more ingredients produce variations like pound or sponge cakes, chocolate, lemon, or carrot cakes. Similarly, mysteries start with the same essential ingredients—a crime, characters affected by it, clues, and closure. Endless variations in the mystery plot derive from an emphasis on one or another of the basic elements and the added ingredients.
A mystery starts with questions about a crime, usually who committed it and why. A professional or an amateur detective arrives at the answers by gathering clues from physical evidence and through interactions with the characters. Because crime is a traumatic event, it changes everyone involved: the victim’s family and friends, the culprit, the suspects, and the detective. Most mysteries end with some type of closure: the crime solved, the truth revealed, and some form of justice, not always within the confines of the law.
Depending on the writer, the emphasis in a mystery can be on the puzzle element, character development, or even the social milieu in which the crime occurred. Some added ingredients that I appreciate in a mystery are humor, irony, and wit to leaven the serious subject of crime.
Thank you for asking this question, Mina.
A mystery starts with questions about a crime, usually who committed it and why. A professional or an amateur detective arrives at the answers by gathering clues from physical evidence and through interactions with the characters. Because crime is a traumatic event, it changes everyone involved: the victim’s family and friends, the culprit, the suspects, and the detective. Most mysteries end with some type of closure: the crime solved, the truth revealed, and some form of justice, not always within the confines of the law.
Depending on the writer, the emphasis in a mystery can be on the puzzle element, character development, or even the social milieu in which the crime occurred. Some added ingredients that I appreciate in a mystery are humor, irony, and wit to leaven the serious subject of crime.
Thank you for asking this question, Mina.
Maya Corrigan
I discovered the best thing about being a writer while writing my first "novel" at age twelve and thirteen. As I finished typing each chapter (on a manual typewriter), I handed it to my best friend to read. Then I watched her as she read each page. It delighted me when she smiled and laughed. Knowing I'd created a story that entertained someone gave me a huge high. That's why I went back to fiction after years of writing academic papers and technical manuals that entertained no one.
The second best thing about being a writer is not having to sit in traffic while driving to work as I did for many years.
The second best thing about being a writer is not having to sit in traffic while driving to work as I did for many years.
Maya Corrigan
As author Peter De Vries said, “I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning.” Inspiration comes to me through the process of writing; it doesn't precede writing.
Maya Corrigan
A blank page is frightening. Staring at it would give anyone writer's block. Putting words on the page is my first step in overcoming writer's block. I can always change the words later.
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