When I was first invited to be on this list, I think it was because it was assumed I was writing cozies. Every time I read the definition of a cozy, I don’t think my books quite fit that category.

In my Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery series, of course Tempe is a resident deputy sheriff. Most deputies don’t solve murders, but she lives in a small town in the mountains–the Southern Sierra in California to be specific. She covers a much larger area than the town, including the local Indian reservation. Often times, just the fact that she is Native American is the reason she is involved in murder investigations.

The Rocky Bluff P.D. series, set in a small beach community, revolves around the lives and families of the members of the police department and how the job affects the families and what’s going on in the family affects the job. Of course, there is always a murder.

In neither is the sleuth a non-professional with a hobby or job that is what seems to constitute a cozy.

What might qualify my books as cozies is the fact that I don’t use any bad language and I shut the bedroom door.

In any case, I’ve been with the Stiletto Gang since the beginning, and I love hanging out with all these bright young women.

My latest Tempe Crabtree mystery is Invisible Path. Tempe is taken away from planning her family’s Christmas celebration by the murder on the reservation of a popular young Indian man which somehow seems connected to a para-military group with a compound hidden high in the mountains. Mundania http://www.mundania.com is the publisher.

Marilyn