Peg Cochran — Mysteries to Cozy Up With

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Today I'm delighted to introduce Peg Cochran, author of Berried Secrets, the first in The Cranberry Cove series which will be published on August 4th. 

Congratulations on the new book and series, Peg, and welcome!

When Monica Albertson comes to Cranberry Cove—a charming town on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan—to help her half-brother Jeff on his cranberry farm, the last thing she expects to harvest is a dead body.

It seems that Sam Culbert, who ran the farm while Jeff was deployed overseas, had some juicy secrets that soon prove fatal, and Jeff is ripe for the picking as a prime suspect. Forming an uneasy alliance with her high-maintenance stepmother, Monica has her hands full trying to save the farm while searching for a killer. Culbert made plenty of enemies in the quaint small town…but which one was desperate enough to kill?

PEG COCHRAN: One of the fun things about being a writer is you get to do research on many varied topics.  And not just about police procedure and when does rigor mortis set it in and what’s the difference between a pistol and a revolver.  For my Sweet Nothings Lingerie series, I got to research vintage lingerie (and bullet bras!)  For my Gourmet De-Lite series it was healthy but delicious food (I was always hungry.)     

With my latest release, Berried Secrets, first in my Cranberry Cove series, I’m all about cranberries. Cranberries are one of three fruits native to North America (the Concord grape and blueberries are the other two) and are packed with vitamin C.  Whalers carried them on their ships to prevent scurvy.

Cranberries don’t grow in water as you might think if you pass a cranberry bog during harvest.  They grow on vines in sandy soil and most are “wet harvested.”  The bogs are flooded, the cranberries are beaten from the vine, and thanks to air pockets in the berries, they float.  Farmers use a boom to corral the berries toward a pipe which sucks them into a truck.

Cranberries are susceptible to frost and farmers combat that by flooding the bogs (which can be as much as 20 degrees colder than the surrounding area) when there’s a danger of frost.  The water freezing produces enough heat to protect the berries.

A man named Pegleg John discovered that good cranberries bounce. Folklore has it that he kept his berries on a loft in his barn, and unable to descend the stairs while carrying a basket due to his “pegleg” he poured the berries down the stairs.  The good berries bounced to the ground while the rotten berries stayed on the stairs.  This discovery gave rise to various sorting machines which are still used today to put the berries to the “bounce test.”

Most cranberries harvested go to Ocean Spray which is actually a cooperative owned by the farmers themselves.  Wisconsin produces the most cranberries with Massachusetts coming in second and my home state of New Jersey coming in third.  Cranberries are also grown in Oregon and Washington.

I was able to visit a cranberry bog in Michigan where I watched the harvest.  It’s a beautiful sight—the brilliant red cranberries bobbing in the water.  Their color can range from almost white to pink to the deepest red. 

The farmer was very patient, explaining everything to me and answering all my questions.  Except one.  When I asked him what he’d do if a body floated up in the bog, he didn’t know what to say!

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Um, call 911, right? Kidding... 

See the things mystery authors do for us? Learn about guns! Try on bullet bras! Visit cranberry bogs! 

Peg, Reds and lovely readers, how far would you go to research a mystery? What wouldn't you do? Tell us in the comments!

Mystery writing lets Peg indulge her curiosity under the guise of “work.”  As a kid, she read the entire set of children’s encyclopedias her parents gave her has been known to read the dictionary.  She put pen to paper at age seven when she wrote plays and forced her cousins to perform them at Christmas dinner.   She switched to mysteries when she discovered the perfect hiding place for a body down the street from her house.

A former Jersey girl, Peg now resides in Michigan with her husband and Westhighland white terrier, Reg.  She is the author of the Sweet Nothings Lingerie series (written as Meg London), the Gourmet De-Lite series, the Lucille series and now the Cranberry Cove series.  Her newest series, the Farmer’s Daughter, debuts in 2016.

Visit Peg's web site at pegcochran.com. 

It Takes a Village--Meg London aka Peg Cochran

DEBORAH CROMBIE:  This seems to be our double-barreled week! I wish these talented writers

who can manage to be two people at once would teach me their secret...  Although today's guest, Peg Cochran, actually manages to be four people at once.

Meg London is the pen name for writer Peg Cochran.  Peg grew up in a New Jersey suburb about 25 miles outside of New York City and now lives (on exile from NJ as she likes to joke) in Grand Rapids, Michigan. 

She has two cozy mystery series from Berkley Prime Crime— the Sweet Nothings Vintage Lingerie series, written as Meg London, set in Paris, Tennessee, and the Gourmet De-Lite series, under her own name, set in Connecticut.  Her Cranberry Cove series for Berkley Prime Crime will debut in August 2015.  She also writes The Lucille Series for Beyond the Page Publishing.

Here Peg gives us a hint--

PEG COCHRAN: To use an expression that has become something of a cliche…it takes a village to

create a writer. 

My relatives were the first supporters to join my team.  I had decided at the tender age of seven that I was going to be a writer (it’s been a long journey!).  I figured that since I didn’t have the time to write an entire novel (second grade is pretty intense, you know), I would write a short play.  Which I did. I then forced, er, coaxed, my cousins into performing the three minute skit at Christmas dinner.  When it was over, and everyone in the family shouted, “Author! Author!” I was hooked.

My high school English teacher (another cliché, I suspect) was my first supporter outside the family.  She very graciously worked with me after school on my short stories (which only further confirmed my extreme nerdiness to the rest of my class.)  She told me my writing was very “visceral.”  As soon as I got home, I ran to the dictionary and looked up the word “visceral” to confirm that that had been a compliment.  Apparently it was, and I took that as a
good sign.

My late mother-in-law was also a huge supporter.  She would send me clippings about Janet Evanovich.  Janet Evanovich!  In my dreams, right?

I even “came out” at work about my writing and found an unexpected source of support in my boss who read my manuscripts and encouraged me to keep going.  She also suggested I show them to John Russell, former art critic for the New York Times, and a very elegant writer, who was doing research at the art foundation where we worked.

He very kindly read several manuscripts and pronounced them “jolly good fun.” (I imagine they were compared to Kafka or Tolstoy or the other greats I pictured him reading.)  He said he particularly liked the ending of one of my manuscripts (a jet ski chase scene), and that it reminded him of

something his good friend would have written.  “Maybe you’ve heard of him,” he asked casually, “Ian Fleming?”  Believe me, I was both shaken and stirred!

Finally I found enormous support in the on-line mystery writing community.  Publishing is a hideously competitive business but instead of running into Tonya Harding type writers, I found wonderfully giving people without whom I never would have made it to publication.  I won’t do the whole Oscar speech thing and name names, but you guys know who you are!  Thank you!

Who has been supportive in helping you realize your dreams?

DEBS: Peg, I absolutely love your story. And the photos!  I wish I had one of my--yes, cliched but true--tenth-grade English teacher, who read a poem I submitted for a class assignment and told me I had "talent."

But I did NOT have my work critiqued by a the former art critic for the New York Times, who just happened to be friends with Ian Fleming.  Ian Fleming!!

And you, by the way, were adorable!

REDS and READERS, Peg would love to give away a copy of the upcoming A FATAL SLIP, and we'd both love to know who supported and inspired you.

(And one last thing--the winner of Daryl Wood Gerber's  ( or Avery Ames's) book is Pat D.  And the winner of Terry Shames's THE LAST DEATH OF JACK HARBIN is Joan Emerson. Pat D and Joan, if you will email me your addresses at deb at deborahcrombie dot com, I'll pass them along to the authors.

AND THE BEST NEWS, JUST IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY HEARD--OUR OWN JRW HALLIE EPHRON IS NOMINATED FOR THE 2014 EDGAR MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD FOR HER NOVEL,  THERE WAS AN OLD WOMAN!  We are over the moon, so raise your glasses--or your teacups--with us in a toast to Hallie!

How One Woman Tweeted her Way to Publishing Success

 
LUCY BURDETTE: One of our good friends at Jungle Red, Peg Cochran, has had an amazing run of good luck. Her first book, ALLERGIC TO DEATH, was published last week. And her second book, MURDER UNMENTIONABLE, written as Meg London will be out in September.

Except it isn't really good luck, it's INCREDIBLE persistence. And we invited Peg/Meg to share her story...we know you'll find it inspirational!

PEG COCHRAN: Does everyone remember Hester Prynne?  She was the character in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlett Letter who had to wear an “A” for adultery pinned to her dress.  There have been times during this writing journey that I have felt like Hester.  Only instead of an “A,” I’ve felt like I’ve had a big “R” burned into my forehead.  “R” for rejection. 

During one two-year period I kept track of all my rejections. I was circulating three manuscripts—two cozies and one young adult.  During that time I received FOUR HUNDRED rejections.  Not because I was hopelessly untalented, but because I hadn’t yet been in the right place at the right time with the right manuscript. 

I was lucky enough to join an internet chapter of Sisters in Crime—the Guppies.  Through the Guppies I learned a lot and made a lot of cyber friends.  One of them emailed me to tell me that her agent at BookEnds had been contacted by Berkley Prime Crime.  They were looking for an author to write a mystery series from a story line created by one of their editors.  My friend forwarded my contact info and I was invited to “audition” for the opportunity to write the Sweet Nothings Lingerie Series.  I wrote, rewrote and rewrote the first three chapters, and the agent submitted them to the editor.  And, believe it or not, I was chosen to be the author of the series.  One downside?  I had to use a pen name because Berkley would own the series, the concept and the author’s name.  So I became “Meg London” and got to work on finishing the first book.

Meanwhile, I had the cozy mystery I’d been circulating to agents sitting on my computer along with a hankering to see a book come out with my own name on it.  My manuscript was food oriented, and since I had been stalking, er, following, my editor’s tweets, I knew she was definitely interested in cooking and recipes.  One day I tweeted that I’d made a lovely low calorie fish dish.  She tweeted back asking for the recipe.  I sent the recipe, and, gathering up all my courage, mentioned I just happened to have this foodie cozy and would she be interested in reading it.  She said to send it along. I was floored when a couple of weeks later my agent called to tell me that I was going to be multi-published!  Allergic to Death came out on August 7 and Murder Unmentionable, written under my pen name, debuts on September 4.

How did I cope with all that rejection up till I became an overnight success (yeah, right)?  Here are a couple of things that might work for you.

Wine.  You can drown your sorrows, but also celebrate the smallest success.  The agent put your name on the rejection letter.   Score!  She spelled it right.  Score again!

Whine.  To your friends, family, the person next to you on the bus.  You’ll quickly discover they don’t understand at all.  That’s when it’s helpful to have some writer buddies who do understand.   I’ve found some wonderful on-line groups and a few local groups who have helped share my pain and celebrate my success.

Write.  Write some more.  The more queries you have out there, the more manuscripts you’re working on, the less painful the rejections will be because you’ll always have another iron in the fire.

Wait.  This business requires incredible patience.  Even the “overnight” successes weren’t.  They worked hard and long to get where they are.  As a friend said, “don’t quit five minutes before a miracle.”  That “yes” might be just around the corner.  Meanwhile, hone your craft and learn all you can.  And above all—enjoy yourself!

 THANKS PEG! JRW--Peg will be stopping in today to answer your comments and questions.