#TRAVEL TO COBBLE COVE WITH GUEST AUTHOR DEBBIE DE LOUISE

Debbie De Louise is a librarian and the author of the Cobble Cove Mysteries, short stories of various genres, a standalone mystery, and a paranormal romance. She lives on Long Island with her husband, daughter, and three cats. Learn more about Debbie and her books at her website. 

Cobble Cove: A Small Town You’ll Love to Visit but Might Not Want to Live in

Cobble Cove is a fictional, upstate New York town that is the setting for my Cobble Cove cozy mystery series, which currently includes four books. What readers may already know, or those seeing the book titles might guess, stones and rocks are big geographical features of the town. In fact, when Alicia visits there to find some answers about her husband’s strange death because he lived there as a child, she enjoys the quaint street names and the stone architecture of the buildings and houses. The Cobble Cove Library, where she ends up taking a job, is located on Bookshelf Lane. The man she meets and later develops a romantic relationship with but who she fears might’ve played a role in her husband’s death, lives on Stone’s Throw Road.

There’s a small group of shops known as Cobble Cove Square that house the newspaper office of the Cobble Cove Courier, the post office, bank, beauty parlor, gift shop, and other establishments. In the second book of the series, this area plays an important role in crimes that are committed near the holidays.

The only place to stay in Cobble Cove and where Alicia initially checks in, is the Cobble Inn. Alicia eats dinner at the Cobble Diner after arriving in town and learns some interesting information from the proprietor.

Cobble Cove is a small town with a lake running through it. After Alicia meets John, the newspaper publisher, he takes her on a picnic on Cove Mountain where they can view the lake and village from a special vantage point.

I live on Long Island where Alicia originally comes from. I based Cobble Cove on some of the upstate towns I’ve visited. In the books, I refer to the neighboring town of New Paltz, a real place that happens to also have stone houses and buildings.

Besides its charming setting, Cobble Cove is home to many quirky residents. There’s Dora the innkeeper; Casey who manages the diner; Postmaster Ed; Sheila and Mac who work at the library; Wilma, the hairdresser; and Irene, the gift shop owner. There’s also Sneaky, a library cat, and John’s golden retriever Fido, both of whom help solve mysteries in the books.

Despite the cozy image of Cobble Cove, danger lurks within. Several murders and other crimes take place in the town over the course of the series, and more are scheduled in the future. Come visit if you dare.

Join Sneaky for a Facebook Valentine’s Day Paw-ty celebrating Love on the Rocks on Friday, February 8 from noon to 9 pm EST. There will be cozy mystery authors, contests, prizes, and giveaways. Click here to RSVP and learn more about  the event. 

Love on the Rocks

A Cobble Cove Mystery, Book 4

It’s February in the small town of Cobble Cove. Love is in the air . . . but so is murder!

When Alicia helps plan a Valentine’s Day Party at the Cobble Cove library that also includes a surprise for her newlywed friend, Gilly, things go wrong when a mysterious box of chocolates addressed to the director turns out laced with poison.

Clues Lead to A Dead Suspect.

Although Alicia promised John that she’ll no longer meddle in crime investigations, she and Gilly set out to find the person threatening Sheila who murdered the courier of the deadly candy. The three people they suspect include the professor from California who’s been romancing Sheila while she assists him with research for his book; the obnoxious patron Rhonda Kleisman who threw coffee at the director after refusing to pay for a damaged book; and a visiting widow staying at Gilly’s inn who’s unnaturally curious about Sheila and earns the nickname of Madame Defarge for her interest in knitting.

New Cat in Town

While Alicia and Gilly are trying to solve this new Cobble Cove mystery, Sneaky is introduced to Gilly’s new kitten, Kittykai, a calico she brought home from her honeymoon in Hawaii. It’s not like at first sight, but the two cats eventually become friends. They also both play a part in foiling the killer’s murder attempts, but will Alicia and Sheila survive unscathed?

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MYSTERY AUTHOR MARY ELLEN HUGHES TALKS ABOUT CREATING A FICTITIOUS TOWN ON MARYLAND'S EASTERN SHORE

Mary Ellen Hughes is the bestselling author of the Pickled and Preserved Mysteries, the Craft Corner Mysteries, the Maggie Olenski Mysteries, and the Keepsake Cove Mysteries. Learn more about her and her books at her website. 

The Significance of Setting

How important is setting in a book? A lot. If your protagonist is number one, to my mind setting is a close number two, especially in a cozy mystery, the kind I write.

 Cozy mysteries are usually set in a small town, or at least in a city neighborhood where everyone knows each other.  I’ve chosen to create fictional towns for my mysteries, and I do it carefully, knowing that what I create will affect my entire story.

In my latest series, the Keepsake Cove Mysteries, I put my town on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, an area that developed differently than the rest of the state because of its location. For many years, it was reachable mostly by boat by anyone on the western side of the bay. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge eventually changed that, but the culture that developed over three centuries remained to a large degree.

I built my fictional Keepsake Cove within easy reach of the bay bridge and not far from the historic town of Cambridge, in an area that Harriet Tubman’s underground railroad wound through in the nineteenth century, a fact that I worked into A Vintage Death.

The development of Ocean City on the coast brought droves of vacationers across the Eastern Shore to its beaches. When they’re not swimming or sunning, tourists love to shop, so small businesses, of course, sprang up. Though no town exactly like Keepsake Cove existed, it seemed quite possible that it could. So I created it and filled my town with shops that specialized in one or another kind of collectible, making it a popular stop for vacationers as well as collectors.

That setting was important to my protagonist, Callie Reed, whose life was changed (in A Fatal Collection) by the sudden death of her aunt, who owned a collectible music box shop in Keepsake Cove. When Callie inherited the shop along with her aunt’s little cottage, it gave her the push to break off a stale relationship and start a new life, as well as investigate the true cause of her aunt’s death.

In A Vintage Death, Callie was pulled into circumstances surrounding the death of a local B&B owner. This brought in more history of the Eastern Shore, which, I felt, added to the murder investigation.

Would my story have been different set anywhere else? Absolutely. Just as one character is affected by another, where they are impacts their decisions and what they are able to do. It can also add interest and color.

A side advantage is that the author—in this case, me—has a good excuse for fun excursions we refer to as ‘research.’ Spending a pleasant day learning about a lesser-known part of your state, camera in hand and meeting new people can be a wonderful break from sitting at your computer, and it only takes a day when your story’s location is nearby.

On the other hand, setting a book a bit farther away, like, say, Hawaii, might be a great idea, too. For the mystery possibilities, of course, not (cough, cough) necessarily for the ‘research.’

I think, though, with a little effort, I could deal with that side, too. We authors can rough it a little, when we have to.

A Vintage Death

A Keepsake Cove Mystery, Book 2

As the new owner of a music box store in Keepsake Cove, a quaint town full of collectible shops on Maryland's Eastern Shore, Callie Reed is eager to get more involved in her community. So she volunteers to plan the fall street decorations and welcome a visiting author who's come for a special book signing. But the celebratory mood is cut short when the local B&B owner is found dead, killed with a pair of vintage scissors.

Suspicion is cast on the victim's estranged wife, Dorothy, who owns Keepsake Cove's vintage sewing shop. Callie is sure Dorothy is innocent, and the visiting author agrees. Together, they begin their own investigation, only to discover that many people in Keepsake Cove have secrets. Secrets that are worth killing to keep.

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