| by
Hannah Reed
I
knew from the very beginning that I wanted to work for Berkley
Prime Crime. The New York publisher excels at publishing theme-based
mystery series with wonderful covers, and I wanted to be part
of their family. Luckily, I had an agent at the time. We brainstormed.
“A wine series?”
I suggested, mainly because I absolutely love wine, and the
research would be such fun.
“Berkley
already did one,” she told me. “How about a fairy
godmother protagonist?”
“Uh…sorry,
but I don’t know a thing about fairy godmothers. What
else do you have?”
She
was one smart agent. “What do you like?” she asked.
“You know, what are your passions?”
I
thought about that then answered, “Animals, flowers,
anything having to do with being outdoors, cooking.”
I paused. So did she. We both knew that the bookshelves were
brimming with cats and dogs and culinary series, and there
probably wasn’t any room for more.
“Birding?” I suggested.
“Already done.”
Well, where the heck was I going
to fit in?
“How about a craft? Do
you do an unusual craft?” she asked. “All the
most popular ones are already contracted, so it would have
to be really original.”
I shook my head, feeling pretty
defeated.
But my agent wasn’t a quitter.
“I’ve always thought,” she said, infusing
the sentence with magic, “that a beekeeping series could
work.”
That was it! I’d been reading
about the plight of the honeybee. I could show the cozy reading
world that there was a vast difference between a sweet little
honeybee and a nasty old yellow jacket. Plus, the concept
had all the ingredients that I love - animals, flowers, honey
(as in cooking), and I could write in lots of nature. It was
so me!
Excited,
I wrote up three chapters and an outline. Story Fischer and
her hometown of Moraine, Wisconsin came to life. Along with
a grocery store she owns and an interfering mother, a snoopy
woman living next door, a hot cop who rides a Harley, and
a K-9 police dog (see, I managed to get that dog in there,
too).
Berkley
came back with a contract offer to write three books in the
Queen Bee series. I had been accepted into the family.
Beewitched
is book five in the series. If you haven’t been introduced
to beekeeper Story Fischer yet, you can start wherever you
like, because each can stand alone. Welcome to my dream come
true.
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