COZY MYSTERY AUTHOR SALLY HANDLEY DRAWS ON HER OWN EXPERIENCES

Sally Handley is the author of the Holly and Ivy cozy mystery series as well as one standalone suspense novel and an ongoing serial. She also blogs at “On Writing, Reading and Retirement.” Learn more about Sally and her books at her website. 

Any Similarity to Real Persons and Places is Purely on Purpose  

Murder Under Tuscan Blooms, the fourth book in my Holly and Ivy Mystery Series, begins with Holly and Nick celebrating their honeymoon at the Manelli family vineyard in Tuscany. It seems to be the perfect spot for a honeymoon until the suspicious death of a long-lost cousin who’s come to stake a claim on the vineyard. Plans for a marriage celebration are thrown into disarray as Holly, Nick and their extended family are drawn into the investigation. 

 

I’m often asked where I get my ideas and whether my characters and stories have any basis in real life experiences. You may or may not know that Holly and Ivy are loosely based on my sister and me, and the character Kate Farmer is based on my dear friend, Nina Augello. Many of the things that happen stem from personal experiences that I use as jumping off points in my books. The idea for Murder Under Tuscan Bloomscame to me after a trip to Tuscany.

 

Two years ago, another dear friend of mine, Janet Adams Strong, called me to say she and her husband Bruce were renting a villa in Tuscany for a month and they wanted to invite me to come visit them. Well, my immediate reaction was, “Wow, I don’t think I can do that.” But after about 10 seconds, that reaction shifted to, “How can I not do that?” And so, I made reservations and spent a glorious week with them in a little village not far from Pisa.

 

Sometime after that trip, I was invited to write a guest blog post on cozy settings. Now the setting for a cozy mystery is usually a small town where all the characters more or less know one another. The first two books in the Holly and Ivy series are set in the fictitious town of Pineland Park, NJ. Book three, Full Bloom, takes place in Kate Farmer’s hometown of Reddington Manor in the Catskills, oddly similar to my friend Nina’s place in Livingston Manor, NY.

 

Now just before I wrote the blog on setting, our local Sisters in Crime Mystery Book Club had just read three mysteries set in foreign countries: on the Cornish Coast of England; Venice, Italy; and Paris, France. So I wrote about how the setting impacted the reader’s experience. That’s when I started thinking there was no reason Holly and Ivy couldn’t take a trip to an exotic locale.

 

Now, if you’ve read Full BLoom, [SPOILER ALERT], you know Holly married Nick Manelli. As I reflected on that, it hit me. Why not have Holly and Nick honeymoon in Tuscany? No setting could be cozier than the villa with the adjoining guest house where I stayed on my visit there.

 

So what else from personal experience shaped this book? One day Janet, Bruce, and I visited a vineyard called Fattoria San Vito where the owner Matteo took us on a tour of the vineyard followed by a wine tasting on the back patio. As book four started to take shape in my mind, I decided to smoosh together the villa where we stayed and the vineyard we visited, and, in true cozy style, I made Nick’s family the owners of the Fattoria Manelli. I even named a character Matteo.

 

And if that isn’t enough, one of the things I pondered was who would be the murder victim and how was I going to write about crime in a foreign country. So again, my friend Nina aka Kate Farmer said that land disputes were a major issue in Italy. Believe it or not, another good friend of mine had just returned from a trip to visit her family in Sicily. On that trip she learned when her brother had visited a few years earlier, he made a claim on some family property there which did not endear him to family members. And so, an American cousin coming back to Italy to stake a claim in the family vineyard became the starting point of Murder Under Tuscan Blooms.

 

So personal experience is a huge factor in the stories I write. If you don’t believe me, just ask my dog Trixie, who is now the star of her own Kindle Vella series, The Adventures of Trixie.

 

Murder Under Tuscan Blooms

A Holly and Ivy Cozy Mystery, Book 4

 

The Manelli family vineyard in Tuscany seems the perfect spot for Holly and Nick’s honeymoon, until the suspicious death of a long-lost cousin who’s come to stake a claim on the vineyard. Plans for a marriage celebration are thrown into disarray as Holly, Nick and their extended family are drawn into the investigation. Was it an accident or was it murder? Will they solve the mystery, or is the honeymoon over?

 

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