The Cozy 52: Q&A with Ellen Byron / Maria DiRico

Ellen Byron, who also writes under the pen name Maria DiRico, joins us for this week’s The Cozy 52 interview. I’m so excited to have Ellen visit book frolic! As a cookbook collector (my collection is 200+ cookbooks!) her Vintage Cookbook series is right up my alley. Read on to find out more about how she got started writing culinary cozies, the TV shows she’s worked on, and what she has coming up next!

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 Ellen Byron / Maria DiRico

NAME: Ellen Byron / Maria DiRico

LIST ALL YOUR COZY MYSTERY SERIES:

• The Vintage Cookbook Mysteries
• The Catering Hall Mysteries (as Maria DiRico)
• The Cajun Country Mysteries
• And in August 2024, the Golden Motel Mysteries!

HOW ARE YOUR COZY MYSTERIES PUBLISHED? Traditionally

The Q&A

TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOURSELF

I’m a native New Yorker who moved to Los Angeles to write for television. I’m proud to say I achieved that goal, writing for shows like WINGS, JUST SHOOT ME, and FAIRLY ODD PARENTS in a twenty-five-year roller-coaster of a career. I now write mysteries fulltime and couldn’t be happier. I share a mid-century ranch house on the Valley side of the Hollywood Hills with my husband, our brand-new rescue pooch, and our twenty-three-year-old daughter, who boomeranged back home after college while she embarks on a career in the business world. My favorite hobbies are needlepoint and coming up with fun swag I can gift to my readers. I love to dance – despite what you’ll read below – and basically have the musical taste of a tween because pop music is my jam, past or present

LIST THREE FUN FACTS ABOUT YOURSELF THAT WE WOULDN’T READ IN YOUR ‘OFFICIAL’ BIO.

1. My big regret is that I never went en pointe when I studied ballet.
2. When I was fourteen, I auditioned for Paul Newman for a role in a movie he was directing. I told him this, and he told me not to give up hope because his wife went en pointe at thirty-five – his wife being fellow film star Joanne Woodward.
3. I obviously lacked the dedication of Ms. Woodward because despite Paul’s encouragement, I never did go en pointe.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO START WRITING? WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO WRITE COZY MYSTERIES?

My dad was an advertising Mad Man – he literally worked at ad agencies on Madison Avenue – and both my brothers became writers, so it may be in our genes! I have to write. Have to. I literally can’t not write. I can’t articulate why – it’s like a primal need for me. As to why I write cozies, I don’t like reading violence and I was trained as a playwright that you only use profanity when you can’t think of a better way to say something – and 99.9% of the time I find that you can. Plus, I can’t write sex scenes to save my life. I full-on suck at it. So cozies, which eschew graphic sex, violence, and profanity, are a natural fit for me. Plus, all my series have a humorous bend, which skews more towards the cozy genre.

WHAT SUBGENRE(S) OR THEMES OF COZY MYSTERIES DO YOU WRITE?

I somehow wound up writing culinary cozies, which is a headscratcher because I’m not much of a cook. When I was writing Plantation Shudders, my first Cajun Country Mystery, I found I was making myself hungry and I figured if that was happening to me, it might happen to my readers. So I added some recipes to the book and an accidental culinary cozy author was born! I’m not kidding when I say that creating the recipes is sometimes harder than writing the actual books. My upcoming series, the Golden Motel Mysteries, is not a culinary cozy, which oddly enough feels weird now.

TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOUR COZY MYSTERY SERIES. WHAT INSPIRES YOUR SERIES?

An aspect of my life has inspired each of my series. My first, the Cajun Country Mysteries, was inspired by the passion for New Orleans I developed as a student at Tulane University, coupled with an overnight stay my husband I once experienced at Madewood Plantation on Bayou LaFourche. I’m half Italian and the Catering Hall Mysteries draws from growing up attending event after event at the catering halls that cousins ran in Astoria, Queens. (My pen name “Maria DiRico” was my late nonna’s maiden name.) With the Vintage Cookbook Mysteries, I combined my passion for vintage cookbooks with my love of New Orleans’ Garden District. And the inspiration for my new series, the Golden Motel Mysteries, which will launch in August of 2024, dates back to my first trip to California in 1975, when my great-aunt took me to Columbia State Park, which is an actual Gold Rush village dating back to the early 1850s. I never forgot that fascinating visit. But the series has a connection even more personal. My protagonist is a burned-out sitcom writer. Hmmm, I wonder who could inspired that, wink wink?

ONE OF YOUR SERIES, THE VINTAGE COOKBOOK MYSTERIES, IS ALL ABOUT A VINTAGE COOKBOOK FAN. HOW BIG IS YOUR OWN COOKBOOK COLLECTION AND WHICH ONE IS YOUR OLDEST (OR MOST VALUED)?

I now have over a hundred books. I think fellow collectors will relate to my inability to stop snatching up great finds despite the fact I have zero room for another book in our house. My favorite cookbook isn’t the oldest in my collection but it’s my most valued: The Photoplay 1928 Cook Book [sic] of the Stars. I adore this book because it ties into my fascination with silent movies. 1928 was the transitional year from silents to talkies in film, and the cookbook includes recipes from both classic film stars and silent stars whose names and careers have been lost in the mists of time.

ASIDE FROM BEING AN AUTHOR, ARE YOU INVOLVED IN THE COZY COMMUNITY IN ANY OTHER WAY?

I am so involved! I’m on the national board of Mystery Writers of America, I lead workshops for MWA and Sisters in Crime chapters all over the country, and I’ve volunteered for many other activities. I just completed a stint on the committee that planned the California Crime Writers Conference. And I’m launching an inaugural event at this year’s Bouchercon: Cozies and Cocktails. It will be like Noir at the Bar but for cozies.

WHO ARE SOME OF YOUR FAVOURITE WRITERS?

Dame Agatha, of course! And since I love historical mysteries, Jacqueline Winspear and her Maisie Dobbs series is a favorite. (Honestly, I’d be hard-pressed to think of a historical mystery author I don’t love.) I’m blessed with a huge number of talented friends – too many to single anyone out. I love reading all their books, from suspense to Cozy. I’ll also read anything Hallie Ephron writes and I haven’t missed a single Inspector Gamache mystery.

IF YOU WERE MAROONED ON A DESERTED ISLAND, WHAT 3 BOOKS WOULD YOU WANT WITH YOU?

A compilation of all the Miss Marple mysteries, Wuthering Heights… and a blank journal!

DO YOU HAVE ANY PROJECTS COMING UP THAT YOU’D LIKE TO SHARE WITH US?

I’m super excited about my new series. Here’s the logline: Dee Stern, a burned-out TV writer whose career is on the downswing, impulsively quits her job on the Kidz Channel sitcom “DUH!” and buys a rustic motel in a small California Gold Rush town at the foot of a national park. Dee soon finds herself totally out of her element as both a motelier and an amateur sleuth when a dead body pops up straddling her property and the national park’s.

The Quickie 5

• FAVOURITE FOOD: don’t make me choose! Or think about it. I’ve gained 25 pounds in the last couple of years – and that’s on top of the twenty I already had to lose!
• BEVERAGE OF CHOICE: Tea, either jasmine green or Early Grey, hot or cold.
• MOST PRIZED POSSESSION: the single photo we have from 1929 showing my father in a “perambulator,” my grandmother, my great-grandmother, and my grandfather, who was a low-level Jewish mobster who disappeared in 1933.
• FAVOURITE SEASON? I don’t care what native Californians say, we don’t have them here! But growing up in New York, I’d say fall when the leaves were glorious, and early spring when the leaves are newly green, and the weather makes the heady transition out of winter to soft spring air.
• FAVOURITE VACATION SPOT? New Orleans, chere! But also, Cambria, CA.

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To keep up to date with Ellen Bryon/Maria DiRico online, you can connect with her HERE.