Over my lifetime as a reader I have devoured many genres from literary fiction to historical novels, sci-fi and speculative fiction, young ault and the classics to name a few.

Ever since I began my role in elected leadership of my religious community seven plus years ago, I have found myself drawn to the cozy mystery.

Light, simple and enjoyable, the well written cozy is also clever and gives you a sense of immersion into a particular community. Open the pages and you step into your sleuth’s world and follow her as she peels back the layers of disruption and deception that are threatening the coziness of her beloved community.

They also have a beginning and an end. And by the end, the problems are solved. Truth be told that is probably the main appeal for me at this time in my life, when the problems I attend to in my own ministry tend to be more of the lingering and unsolvable kind. Not to mention the problems in our wider community.

All this to say I have had a cozy mystery living inside my head for the past year. My sleuth? Sister Izzie, a youngish nun living on the Jersey Shore.

This week I was blessed with a week away for a writing retreat. The biggest unsolved mystery– would the characters living in my head translate to the written word–has been solved. They now exist in my cozy mystery in progress. And what fun the whole process of writing a cozy mystery turns out to be!

I am only beginning this writing adventure, but so far it has been very enjoyable and a little surprising, in a very good way. These past few years I have discovered great joy in writing, but fiction writing is new to me.

I can’t wait to see how the story turns out. I have an idea of course, but have learned this week that the characters sometimes have ideas of their own when my fingers hit the keyboard.