If you’ve been around for a minute, you’ll know we’ve been working on this book series for a long time. We have sent the series out for query, and gotten a rejection, which did not discourage us that much. We would like to keep the series in constant rotation during 2023, but keep getting derailed by family emergencies, surgeries, illnesses, and so on. However, we do seem to be on track for getting everything together by the end of this first quarter, and then onward with the querying!
Since none of us have enough on our plates (**hahahaha**), we are venturing into trying our collective hands at cozy mysteries set in PCEarth. We have not abandoned the Perfect Coven Series – far from it! – but we know there is more to PCEarth than the GLU campus and our coven. We want to find it and show it to everyone. Therefore, we have decided to expand the scope of PCEarth by expanding our world beyond the GLU campus. To that end, we’ve chosen to introduce an entirely new set of characters and move the cozies south – down to the Tennessee River Basin. In fact, we’re calling the cozies – collectively – the Tennessee River Basin Mysteries. So far, we have two series planned. One is set in Georgia, and involves an Earth witch farmer, called The Gentleman Farmer Investigations. This series can also be classified as a brozy mystery series, as the protagonist is a man. The second series is set in Tennessee, and is called The Grey Feather Investigations. It also involves an Earth witch sleuth and her African Grey parrot familiar. The protagonists are an older woman, retired and happily married, and her parrot who thinks he’s actually the one solving the mysteries.
Moving the setting and introducing characters who are quite a bit older than our main characters in the Perfect Coven Series has given us more room for creativity in our world…and more headaches as well. We’ve gotten very used to looking at things from the POV of young witches, and in the context of a college campus where things are pretty routine day-to-day – there will be classes, social interactions, studying, dating…things that don’t work with the cozies. Our new characters’ lives are less structured, and their focuses and mindsets are different than our other young adult characters. We’ve had to come up with the little towns where our cozies happen, and populate them with witches, familiars, orthos, deva…and we’re still adding to the population. Also, there are things about small towns that are radically different from college campuses and college towns – and double that when the small towns are Southern. (Yes, Southern, capital “s” intentional, because if you’re from the South, you know.)
The dynamics of the townships are different, as are the relationships of the characters. It’s a lot to explore, and we keep finding new bits as we go along with these projects. It can make for a wild shift in perspective when writing – even the weather is completely different at GLU and the Basin, even if the stories are set at the same time of year.
We’re also expanding the scope of PCEarth in our anthologies (the plan is to publish a new one in 2023). The anthologies focus on aspects of PCEarth that we don’t have the room to explore within the novels – legends and folktales, for instance. Again, this takes us out of our comfort zone at GLU and gives us even more to work with in our world.
PCEarth is constantly growing, and we haven’t even really ventured out of the United States (except for a couple of brief excursions into the People’s Confederation via Charlie’s family). We have had some discussion of Pre-Pact European history, but there is so much more of the PCEarth world to explore. I’m looking forward to what we create next.
Mickie says: I think I got an anxiety attack just from reading this. Boy, are we ever ambitious! However, I feel like a human being again for the first time in years, so I think I’m up to tackling it (O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!), which means, I need to come up with the third series in our Tennessee River Basin Mysteries. I’m thinking of having it centered around an Alabama winery.I hope we are all up to the challenge and that life will stop tossing us nasty spitballs.
James says: The world of the Perfect Coven began as a fun idea for a cute series of stories. And that part remains. But it’s not just the one series in that one place with that one group of characters anymore. Now we have histories, biographies, folklore, all the things that make a world vibrant and alive. The cozy mystery series we’re doing are expanding the world even more and giving our readers (and us!) a look at life in PCEarth outside the campus of our chosen college for the original stories. This world has become so much wider than we ever expected. I still have writing projects that are not at all related to Perfect Coven but I keep coming to the stories I/we am/are crafting in this world of ours.
Perfect Coven 