Fresh FIction Box Not To Miss
Amber Royer | Keeping Readers with You Over a Long-term Character Arc
Author Guest / September 12, 2023

I’ve gotten to the sixth book in my cozy mystery series, and one of the most common questions I get is whether each book stands alone.  Yes, the mysteries in my books do each stand alone.  However, there’s character development that happens over the course of the series, as well as relationship building of both friends and romantic interests. I do my best to make the books enjoyable for a reader picking up in the middle, which means giving enough pieces of backstory and context for someone unfamiliar with the previous books to be able to keep up, without slowing down the pace of the current story.  It isn’t that different from what you do to introduce backstory in an initial book, and I think most readers are able to pick it up and move forward, as they would pick up any standalone that had a richly developed cast of characters.  And it doesn’t hurt for established readers to get little reminders of the hows and whys of the character relationships, in case it has been a while since they read the previous books.  One thing that helps is that, with a book set in a specific location with a…

Pets in Cozy Mysteries by Amber Royer
Author Guest / January 23, 2023

People really get attached to animals in books.  Some authors even get concerned e-mails from readers, asking if the animals are getting fed enough between chapters or offering advice on how to model better care for the fictional animals, so that other readers have better examples to apply in real life. In some areas of the bookstore, readers get attached to fictional animals, knowing that there is an element of risk.  As Gordon Korman pointed out in his hilarious YA novel, No More Dead Dogs, if there’s an award symbol on the cover of a book and a dog on it, chances are the pooch isn’t going to make it to the end.  That makes it difficult to completely attach to the canine character in question. I think that’s why so many animal companions wind up on the covers of cozy mysteries.  Cozy readers know that the animals are going to be safe, because it’s an un-written rule that you don’t kill the dog – or the cat or the cockatoo – in a cozy.  They can be put in danger, or even cat-napped (as happens in my current release, A Study in Chocolate) but these companions are always going…

Amber Royer | ROMANCE IN COZY MYSTERIES
Author Guest / July 19, 2022

When I decided to write a cozy mystery involving a chocolate maker, I knew that a lot of it would involve second chances.  After all, I started writing the books after meeting real world chocolate makers while researching and publicizing my chocolate related science fiction.  Not one of them had grown up wanting to be a chocolate maker.  Craft chocolate wasn’t even a thing most people knew about ten years ago.  They’d all started out as engineers who liked to tinker with machines, or chefs who wanted a deeper understanding of ingredients, or people who’d gone to a chocolate tasting event and gotten hooked, turning a hobby into a passion into a career. In addition to giving my character, Felicity, a second chance at a career, I wanted to give her a second chance at love.  It really reinforces the theme of the books and forces her into deliberately choosing the life she wants, instead of just focusing on one aspect of it. That’s one thing I enjoy about cozy mysteries.  Readers expect a continuing series surrounding a single sleuth, and the community she is a part of.  They want to see her have a well-rounded life (even if parts…

Amber Royer | Top Ten Things About Cruise Ships
Author Guest / February 3, 2022

I love the chance to get to explore fun settings in my fiction.  That’s one of the reasons OUT OF TEMPER: Bean to Bar Mysteries Book 3 is set Aboard a cruise ship.  The ship in my fictional cruise line is sailing out of Galveston, from the terminal just down the street from where I placed Felicity’s shop.  In the book, she’s still active in her role as chocolate maker: this time she’s been asked to do demos of her work aboard the ship. I’ve been on a number of cruises, even done enrichment lectures aboard ships myself.  And there are so many things that make me want to go back.  Here’s my top 10. 10–Eggs Benedict.  Because I’m not going to get up early enough to make Hollandaise for myself at home. I’ve found Eggs Benedict on the breakfast menu of every ship I’ve been on. (Though I’ve by no means been on all cruise lines, so your mileage may vary.)  The fictional cruise line in my book offers a Texas-themed menu, so Felicity gets Chicken Fried Steak Benedict. 9–Shore excursions!  You never know where you will be able to go. (Bonus: It is always warm in the Caribbean.)…

Amber Royer | People Change
Author Guest / July 29, 2021

People change.  It’s one of the oldest adages in the book.  And yet, there’s a deeper truth: people RESIST change, even change they ought to embrace (because often change equals opportunity). For example, we moved in December 2020, because the company my husband works for relocated to a different part of North Texas.  I did not want to move, and the re-location was close enough that – in theory – we could have stayed where we were, and Jake would have just had a longer commute.  Much longer, but still doable, especially since he was partly working from home.  So much had already changed during the pandemic.  I had started teaching my continuing education writing classes from home.  I’d even had to have a virtual book launch party. But by wholesale saying no more change, I was missing out on an opportunity.  Jake and I were living in a one-bedroom apartment, which had worked until suddenly we were both working from home – with different work styles.  I have to have noise on in the background.  Jake needs quiet to focus.  We needed a change – just to function.  Once we committed to the move, we found a place that…

Amber Royer | Eight People In My Protagonist’s Life
Author Guest / January 28, 2021

You know one thing I like about writing cozy mysteries?  They’re series, centering around the life of the protagonist.  Which means they need a large cast of friends, family, and business associates, all with the potential to get developed as the series progresses.  Of course, some of these people will be developed into murder suspects – and victims.  But the people closest to your protagonist are generally safe bets for readers to get attached to. Cozies also allow for elements of romance, as new people come into the character’s life as a result of the murder investigation.  Which gives a whole other layer of tension to the plot. I’ve taken advantage of all of that in GRAND OPENINGS CAN BE MURDER, the first book in my Bean to Bar Mysteries.  My protagonist, Felicity Koerber, moved home to Texas after her husband died.  She’s made some new friends, and her old friends – especially her best friend Autumn and her Aunt Naomi – have rallied around her, to help her through this time of grief.  And Naomi is a bit of a matchmaker, determined to get Felicity dating again, so there’s bound to be some cute guys dropping into her world,…

Amber Royer | Five Things I Love About Chocolate + Giveaway!
Author Guest / April 17, 2020

Somebody asked me the other day if I ever get tired of chocolate, since my funny, romantic Sci-Fi series revolves around it.  And I Instagram about it.  And post recipes, and cooking videos, and have a whole chocolate-themed cookbook.  And – I’m growing it. Don’t tell anybody, but yes, I go through phases where the last thing I want to do is think about another piece of chocolate – let alone eat one.  But when we travel, I’ll check out the shops in town, to find craft chocolate makers and mom-and-pop candy shops, and unique chocolatiers marching to the beat of their own kazoos. Talking to someone about their passion for chocolate as an art form, or for blending flavors the way a wine-maker does, or teaching kids about food or using chocolate to connect with the local community – or to communities of farmers around the world — is some pretty heady stuff.  And getting to taste the chocolate they’ve put all that passion into – that’s the kind of thing you can’t get tired of. There’s an almost universal connection that people have to chocolate.  Often, when I go to handsell the Chocoverse books I say, “The aliens…

Amber Royer | Developing the Chocoverse
Author Guest / April 18, 2019

When I started developing the Chocoverse, I wanted to tell a story without easy answers, where nobody was exactly in the right, and they are all trying their best despite difficult circumstances.  I mean, come on, my heroine commits treason to her home planet within the first few chapters of the first book – because she believes stealing a cacao pod from one of Earth’s heavily guarded plantations will actually prevent war.  (The basic premise for the series is that the aliens have made first contact, they took samples of Earth’s commodities, and now the best coffee is grown on the other side of the galaxy – only, they missed chocolate, which becomes the only unique thing Earth has, and therefore one of the most sought after substances in the galaxy. And in a messy ‘verse that runs on secrets and conflict, love obviously wouldn’t be simple either.  The books have a strong (sweetly written) romantic subplot between Bo (the aforementioned heroine who steals chocolate to share with the aliens) and Brill (an alien of the species that made the clandestine first contact and stripped Earth of commodities.)  There’s societal prejudice on both sides – the long-lived Krom view Earthlings…