Kent Holloway kicks off a new year of The Cozy 52! I’m so excited to have Kent here – he is one busy guy and between his job as a forensic death investigator, writing new books, AND launching a publishing company, his 2023 is going to be packed! Read on to find out more about Kent and his books!
Note: I know I’m a couple of weeks behind on The Cozy 52 (my year got off to a pretty rocky start) so I’ll be squeezing in a couple of interviews between now and the end of January so that there are still four this month and then we’ll go back to the regularly scheduled one interview a week format!
Who or What is The Cozy 52? Each week I will be sharing an interview with someone involved with Cozy Mysteries – an author, blogger, Facebook Group host, podcaster, cover designer – so that we can showcase this amazing community! I hope you’ll discover some new authors, plus learn more about what goes on behind the scenes with the people who write, publish and promote cozy mysteries!
Introducing J. Kent Holloway
NAME: Ken Holloway
LIST ALL YOUR COZY MYSTERY SERIES:
- The Grim Days Mystery series (right now, only two books are published out of three that are planned: Death Warmed Over and Dead in the Water. The series is about a series of strange deaths in a small beach town—deaths in which the Grim Reaper didn’t sanction. So the Grim Reaper himself takes human form, calling himself Silas Mot, and comes to town to figure out how these people are dying (and solve a few mysteries along the way).
- I’m currently writing two first books of two new series as well: The Vampire’s Valet Mysteries, in which R.M. Renfield acts as an amateur sleuth in Victorian London while taking care of the needs of Count Dracula
- The Ice Pick and Melvin Mysteries, in which a career criminal gives up his life of crime to open up an ice cream truck in another small beach town, but ends up finding murdered people on his route and must solve them to clear his name.
HOW ARE YOUR COZY MYSTERIES PUBLISHED?
I’ve been self-published pretty much since the beginning of my career (2009) and love every minute of it. I’m now a co-owner of a new mystery publishing company, and once we get started officially, I plan to publish my books through the new company, Charade Media, as well.
The Q&A
TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOURSELF
I live in the nation’s oldest city, St. Augustine, Florida, which was a dream of mine since I vacationed here every year of my life as a kid. I’m a forensic death investigator for a medical examiner’s office by trade, and have been working in this field since 1995. I’ve seen a lot of things in this job…a lot of dark things…which is why I gravitate toward lighthearted mysteries as opposed to the more gritty stuff. I read (and write) to escape my day to day life. I don’t want to read about the realism of my job on my free time.
I started out as a paranormal thriller author, but my mentor Warren Murphy (who co-created one of my favorite fictional heroes, Remo Williams of the Destroyer book series) one day asked why I didn’t utilize my knowledge of forensics and write mysteries. I told him exactly what I said in the above paragraph…that I read and write to escape. But he challenged me and I wanted to impress him. So I wrote my first work of crime fiction, Clean Exit, about a criminal cleaner for the mob. It was so much fun that I kept delving into the genre and eventually found my passion for whodunnits.
As I’ve already mentioned, my high school best friend and I are about to open up (mid-January 2023) a brand new publishing company called Charade Media. We’ll be featuring fun, lighthearted whodunnits, cozies, traditional mysteries, and such.
It’ll actually be my second publishing company. My first was called Seven Realms Publishing and it was hugely successful. It featured seven different genres from thrillers to mysteries to horror and sci-fi. I was fortunate enough to publish some bigger name authors during that time including NY Times bestselling authors Jeremy Robinson and David Golemon, as well as the first mystery novel written by Hy Conrad, one of the head writers of TV’s Monk and a consultant on White Collar. Kensington went on to republish Hy’s first mystery and now there’s three in the series about an exotic tour group that travels the world and the tour guide ends up solving mysteries. It was originally entitled Rally ‘Round the Corpse, but the first book’s new title is Toured to Death (An Amy’s Travel Mystery), if you want to check it out. I’m proud that I was able to convince Hy to write it as he was a bit hesitant to do so at first.
LIST THREE FUN FACTS ABOUT YOURSELF THAT WE WOULDN’T READ IN YOUR ‘OFFICIAL’ BIO.
- Hmmm. Let’s see. I have a deep love and appreciation for Russia (despite what’s going on Ukraine right now). Its history and language and people. I first fell in love with Russia in high school when my 10th grade history teacher spent an entire semester teaching us about its history. My senior year, I took Russian as an elective. Back in 2005, I spent a few weeks in St. Petersburg teaching kids how to play baseball. It was a dream come true!
- The second thing would be that I’m not a conventional lover of music. Most of the time, when people ask me “What’s your favorite kind of music?”, I don’t really have answer for them. Not really a fan of any. But then, that’s no entirely true. I love Celtic music. I especially love Big Band music of the early 20th century. And I love Calypso music, which inspired my mystery, Killypso Island, the first mystery in my Captain Joe series (it’s clean and lighthearted, but its subject matter makes it not exactly a cozy, which is why I didn’t mention it earlier.)
- Third thing is that I’m an ordained Baptist minister (that’s not the fact though). The fact the few people know is that Marvel’s Thor comic books helped me understand the Bible when I was a kid. True story. The use of King James English in the Thor comics helped me to understand all those thee’s and thou’s and led to a deeper understanding and appreciation for the Bible.
WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO START WRITING? WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO WRITE COZY MYSTERIES?
The first part of the question is simple. I’ve been telling stories my whole life. My parents, in fact, didn’t quite know what to do with me and my immense imagination. It was in the way I played pretend. It was in the adventures my childhood friends and I had on a daily basis. My entire life as a kid was one big story. If reality was too mundane to my liking, I’d spice it up in my own imagination and suddenly, I was an adventurer hiking through a jungle looking for a lost city.
In fact, I usually avoid the term ‘author’ or ‘writer’ when describing myself. My preferred descriptive is ‘storyteller’ because I don’t really care which medium I use. I just have to tell good stories.
The second part of the question has been answered in previous questions, but basically, I’m attracted to cozies (whodunnits in general really) because I prefer the lighthearted, playfulness of cozies with their zany characters and quaint settings. I love the puzzles too, and trying to solve the mystery before the reveal. Cozies don’t take themselves too seriously, unlike most procedurals or the more gritty crime fiction.
WHAT SUBGENRE(S) OR THEMES OF COZY MYSTERIES DO YOU WRITE?
Now this is a loaded question for me. Part of my answer might get you some ‘hate mail’. I’m not sure. But I’ll answer as best I can.
First and foremost, my brand motto is ‘Where Death and Folklore Collide’. Basically, many of my books (mystery or otherwise) feature folklore very heavily. Add to that my fascination with folklore regarding death (hence my Grim Days Mystery series featuring the Grim Reaper) and my career in death investigations and you’ll understand where I’m going with that. Many of books not only deal with folklore, but they also feature various Afro-Caribbean religions such as voodoo, Santeria, and Palo Mayombe (just to name a few). The reason for this is that a forensic death investigator, I’ve made these and similar religions a speciality because most law enforcement isn’t equipped to handle such things on death scenes. It’s not that these religions are the cause of these deaths. It’s more about the fact that these poor people who are grieving over a loved one have legitimate religious beliefs and often are treated poorly because law enforcement gets freaked out by religious artifacts, etc at a scene. In my job, I try to bridge the gap between cops and families to help the grieving process better.
Finally, and this is where the hate mail might come in: a few years ago it occurred to me that cozies are heavy on cupcakes and knitting and all sorts of fluffy things. That’s not a bad thing at all. But it kind of eliminates a huge potential market of people who might not be into those things. Where are the cozies involving race cars? Where are the cozies involving baseball players or hiking or mountain climbing? I concocted a new subgenre that someone (a female, by the way) suggested should be named brozy mystery…implying that these were cozies with more male-oriented backdrops. It wasn’t designed to exlude females or anything. Just to attract readers who aren’t into baking recipes and the like. Brozies (it’s the name itself that seems to get more people riled up and I can understand why. Everyone has a different view of what a ‘bro’ is) have kind of taken on a life of its own and there are dozens of authors currently working on this subgenre as I write this. At the moment, I only have one book I’ve written that I think would classify as a brozy and that’s my aforementioned Killypso Island, which is set in the 1950s during the Cold War on a tropical island, and the sleuth is an ex-pilot from World War II who is currently a smuggler who gets tangled up in a murder, a voodoo cult, and a handful of KGB agents hunting for a spy.
TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOUR COZY MYSTERY SERIES. WHAT INSPIRES YOUR SERIES?
The Grim Days Mystery series had several inspirations. First, it was based off my fascination with folklore surrounding death. I wanted a world where Death (the Grim Reaper) encounters other beings associated with death (known as Psychopomps). Santa Muerta (the Latin American saint/goddess/spirit of death) is Silas Mot’s ex-wife. He’s hounded by other Psychopomps such as voodoo’s Ghede clan and Anubis as he investigates these murders. In many ways, there’s a little bit of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods going on with the series. The TV show Castle was also somewhat an inspiration for the series. Silas Mot (the Grim Reaper) is modeled a great deal on Nathan Fillion in that show and has many of the childlike, nerdy characteristics. After I wrote and published the first book, a few reviewers commented that it was similar to the TV show Lucifer, although I’d never seen it. I’ve since watched the show and agree with the assessment that there are striking similarities.
The book I’m currently working on, I Scream for Murder (Book 1 of the Ice Pick and Melvin Mysteries) had a simpler inspiration. Ice Cream trucks have always creeped me out. As a forensic death investigator, whenever I see an ice cream truck, I can’t help but wonder what nefarious creep is lurking behind the wheel of the ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ spewing truck. One day recently, I saw one of these trucks and had a thought. What if the owner of the truck was a career criminal really trying to turn his life around? What if he kept finding dead bodies and the police kept suspecting him of these crimes because of his past? So my sleuth Ice Pick was born from that. Like I said, I’m still writing this one, so it won’t be available for a while yet.
WHY DO YOU THINK PEOPLE LOVE TO READ COZY MYSTERIES?
I think the answer to this is in the name. Cozy. The thing I love about them is simple: despite the subject matter (typically murder, but can be any crime), I know when I read it, I’m typically going to read it tongue in cheek with a smile on my face. As I read these books I get this overwhelming sense of comfort. I’m typically not going to read anything super heavy or controversial. What I’m going to get are a few laughs, a fun story, and if I’m lucky, a nice little brain teaser to stretch my mental muscles.
ASIDE FROM BEING AN AUTHOR, ARE YOU INVOLVED IN THE COZY COMMUNITY IN ANY OTHER WAY?
I’m excited to say that I’ll be speaking at this year’s SleuthFest in Florida this year. Not sure yet whether I’ll be running a workshop (most likely on forensics for fiction) or on a panel. They’re still working on the particulars at the moment.
I run several groups on Facebook including Clean Crime Mystery Writers Association, where we try to encourage people in their pursuit of clean crime fiction. I also run Brozy Mysteries R Us, which is designed to mobilize and eventually define what brozies are and how they can reach untapped markets in the mystery sphere.
As for cover designs, I do most of my own covers (except for the ones I can’t…I know my limitations. Lol). I used to have a book cover design business, but I was better at designing thriller covers than mysteries or others.
WHO ARE SOME OF YOUR FAVOURITE WRITERS?
My answer here might surprise you. Favorite authors of all times are JRR Tolkien and Tim Powers (especially for his amazing pirate book On Stranger Tides). Jim Butcher and Neil Gaiman are two other favorites. And I’m close friends with Jeremy Robinson, but I was a fan long before becoming friends with him.
On the mystery front, I’m a big fan of a couple of indie authors, Ryan Rivers (who’s written a few in his Bucket List series which is kind of like Psych as a cozy), John Gaspard’s Eli Marks Mysteries, Colin Conway’s Cozy Up series, and anything by Jeffrey Cohen (EJ Copperman).
I’ve recently discovered Tom Mead’s Death and the Conjurer (a debut closed door mystery) that was absolutely amazing. I’ll be paying close attention to Mead and his future books.
IF YOU WERE MAROONED ON A DESERTED ISLAND, WHAT 3 BOOKS WOULD YOU WANT WITH YOU?
Tim Powers’ On Stranger Tides, any translation of Beowulf (but preferably the one Tolkien did), and Preston & Child’s Cabinet of Curiosities.
DO YOU HAVE ANY PROJECTS COMING UP THAT YOU’D LIKE TO SHARE WITH US?
I’ve already mentioned I Scream for Murder, but I’m currently working on another I’m excited about as well.
One is called The Vampire’s Valet (Book 1 of The Count’s Familiar Mystery series) in which R.M. Renfield’s cellmate in the asylum is murdered by a stake to the heart. Renfield soon learns that other innocent victim’s in Victorian London have been staked as well, so he escapes the asylum to figure out what’s going on (he thinks vampire hunters are looking for his master). In this version, Renfield was formally an inspector with Scotland Yard before going crazy and as he begins to investigate, his old skills begin to return, mixed with his new powers given to him by Dracula (he can turn into a swarm of flies for instance!). Lighthearted and fun, it’s a classic traditional mystery that leans more toward cozy than it might sound.
The Quickie 5
- FAVOURITE FOOD: Cheeseburger
- BEVERAGE OF CHOICE: Sweet tea (I’m from the south!)
- MOST PRIZED POSSESSION: A Japanese sword my grandfather won in a craps game during World War II while in Japan.
- SUMMER OR WINTER? Winter, but I live in Florida so Florida winters are amazing.
- FAVOURITE VACATION SPOT? The Appalachian foothills of Kentucky, where I was born and grew up.
To keep up to date with Kent Holloway online, you can connect with him on:
WEBSITE | CHARADE BOOKS | FACEBOOK | AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE
