Welcome to the Creative Pen podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur,

bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing, publishing options and marketing ideas for your book.

You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint and lots more information at

TheCreativepen.com. And that's Pen with a double N. And here's the show.

Hello, creatives. I'm Joanna Penn, and this is episode number 540 of the podcast, and it is Saturday,

the 20th of March, 2021, as I record this.

In today's show, I'm talking to Debbie Young about writing cozy mystery, an extremely popular

genre right now at a time when people want feel-good escapist fiction with nothing really bad

happening and no pandemic. It's always interesting to hear

from authors writing in different genres. This is not a genre I read or write. And Hawkesbury-Upton,

where Debbie lives, is exactly what you would imagine of the quintessential English village.

And Debbie runs a village festival. And this village

and the festival was the basis of one of her series of books. And in fact, I drive past the

turnoff on the way to my dad, through the Cotswolds when I can, when I'm allowed to visit my dad

out of pandemic times. And I love that Debbie's books fit so well with her life

living in the village. And she talks a bit about how she has to obviously not write

exact characters from the village, but how so many of them do you just resonate with that life.

So I know you're going to enjoy that. And it's funny because we were talking about writing about the place where you live. And I really struggled to

feel at home here in Bath. Like when we first moved here from London in 2015, I was like,

what is this place? This is all Jane Austen and bonnets and Georgian architecture. And yes,

it's beautiful, but I could never live here.

It's just not gritty enough.

...