Not only does a cozy mystery need a crime to be solved, I think it also needs a bit of romance. Since cozies are often series books, this means the author can develop the relationship slowly. The question is how slowly? One book? Two? Or more?

 

Looking over the series I have written, I like to take my time with romance, and I like to create characters who don’t come together easily. In fact, I count on the pending romance to create almost as much tension in the story as I do putting my protagonist in harm’s way as she attempts to track down the killer. I like writing relationships that have their ups and downs. This is true in life, so why shouldn’t it be true in my fictional characters?

 

Here’s how I create romantic tension in my cozy mysteries:

 

Past relationships:

 

Since most of my protagonists are in their thirties or older, they have past love lives. Some of them are divorced; most have significant past romances. I use these past involvements to establish how they approach possible love interests. They all have baggage and how they bring this to bear when they meet a man interested in them creates tension, sexual and interpersonal. For example, in the first Eve Appel book A Secondhand Murder, we find that Eve has left the Northeast and her marriage to move to Florida. She is not eager to get involved so soon after her disastrous marriage. She knows she chose the wrong man to marry. She was warned about him by her friends and family. Now she has no confidence in her ability to pick a partner. Enter a hunky private eye. She falls for him, and he for her, but it may be that Eve has chosen the wrong man again. The ins and out of her affair with the PI make for excitement over the next three books? Will she marry him?

 

Love triangles:

 

These are always fun and create the kind of friction that keeps the reader interested. For Eve Appel, her attempt to leave her philandering husband behind doesn’t work. He follows her to Florida and becomes part of the Eve/PI/husband love triangle. The presence of the former husband allows the reader to more to see why she left him. It provides not simply Eve’s perspective on him, but also allows the reader to get to know him first hand. He has become a major character in the series and is responsible for introducing Eve to the mob boss who becomes one of her closest friends.

 

In another series, my protagonist, Emily Rhodes, is a retired preschool teacher turned bartender whose first encounter with the man she falls for occurs when he arrests her for murder. Enmeshing romance and murder is a nice way to amp up the excitement. The introduction of yet another man to vie for her affection makes additional conflict.

 

Trouble in Paradise:

 

No love relationship should be smooth sailing if the writer wants to make it realistic and interesting. All my protagonists have sassy temperaments, and their men are no pushovers. The path of love is strewn with more than just stones. Try boulders or, in the case of both my series set in rural Florida, there are swamps, alligators, mud bogs, drug dealers, drug traffickers to interfere with love. I’m certain you can think of other impediments to love in the moonlight besides being threatened by an alligator.

 

Tossing in natural disasters can make for opportunities for rescue and the inevitable kiss of gratitude for saving the protagonist’s life. I like wild fires, floods, hurricanes, and tornados. As the man vying for Emily’s affection learns, that kiss does not mean commitment, so the triangle with her, the detective and the rescuer does on. Natural disasters are the kind of events to bring lovers closer together. Woven into the plot line, they also add to the mystery’s overall tension.

 

I’ve used these three approaches to romance in a cozy mystery. While the external environment may change, protagonists may begin to develop trust in themselves and in a significant other and a triangle becomes a twosome, the writer now must ask the question: How do I keep the tension, excitement and mystery in the resulting relationship? I’d be interested in your thoughts on this because I sometimes find that working out a romance can leave a void in the series and some of the pizzazz is gone. Is all the fun and excitement in the courting? What do you think? How do you keep the relationship both fresh and vibrant for the reader? I think I’ll make that the topic of my next blog.

 

Look for it soon. Coming in September. Book 3 in the Big Lake Murder Mysteries.