RHYS BOWEN:
I’ve just been working on a Christmas short story (or rather
very long story) for my Amazon publisher. And my editor suggested that she
wanted a happy ending. It was Christmas. People expected happy endings. And I?
I didn’t want to make it into a Hallmark movie in which everyone sits around
the fire smiling with love on their faces and gratitude that the whole family
is together, returned from Iraq and from fighting Ebola and from battling a
rare disease to be in the beloved living room of the crusty patriarch who had
formerly driven them away.
Actually that wasn’t my story at all. I can’t tell you the
details but my two main characters are both offered what they really want for
Christmas and both have the strength to reject it, realizing that what they
really want and need is each other. For me that was satisfying enough, but I
have conceded to make it a little more heartwarming without being schmaltzy.
So this caused me to examine the books I read and enjoy and
yes, it’s true. I do like a happy ending. It doesn’t have to have a Disney
conclusion with the bells ringing out and the fawns and rabbits dancing for joy
as the happy couple go off to live happily ever after, but I do like to feel
myself smiling as I close the book. It can be bitter-sweet. A beloved character
can have died. But I want to feel satisfied.
That’s why I’ve never been a fan
of noir. Too often a crime is solved but you know for the characters there will
still be no peace in their souls.
I suppose that’s why some of us are cozy writers and others
are noir writers: it all comes down to the way we see the universe. I write a
universe that is essentially a good safe place but is fractured by a violent
crime. My sleuth’s task is to make that universe whole again.
For the noir writer the universe is a place of chaos. When
one small part of it is healed through the solving of a murder it remains an
unsafe place. I don’t want to live in that universe. I want my world populated
with people who are essentially good. Who maybe commit a crime because they
have been pushed to breaking point. And I want it to end in a satisfactory way.
Justice being served. Broken lives healed. This must mean I’m an optimist,
right?
When I started
writing mysteries I got all these reviews that said “This charming book. This
delightful story. This charming and delightful series….” And I wanted to be
taken seriously so I said to my editor, “In my next book there will be
cannibalism, Satanism and strewn body parts.” And she said, “And I bet they
will be charming and delightful body parts too.”
You can’t fight it. Your nature directs you to which books
you read and write. So it’s interesting that I’ve been fighting for a less
happy ending than my editor wanted. Oh no—am I becoming more noir in my old
age?
And I'd just like to add that I'm not thrilled about being dubbed a cozy writer. That somehow implies lesser, lighter, therefore not to be taken seriously. I don't understand why one would take a murder in an English village or country house less seriously than one in the backstreets of a city. Surely it is all the more shocking because it is unexpected.
What about you? Do you believe our own basic nature drives
us to see the world and write about it as cozy or noir? And what do you feel about the word COZY?
