Crazy Cozy Spoof Pitch

Blogfest Crazy Cozy contest to celebrate Alyse’s launch

My friend and fellow author Hart Johnson (Tami Hart) is celebrating today because she has been officially launched~ as new “name” Alyse Carlson in the wide world of readers of cozy mysteries. Her Azalea Assault is published today by Berkley Press. Yet, true to form, she isn’t crowing from the rooftops about her newfound fame, but is sharing the honor with her friend and (longer-term) professional author Elizabeth Spann Craig, who also launches today, though not for the first time: her new ‘Quilt or Innocence‘ is released today by Signet.

So it is not surprising that some of us were asked to make the occasion a little more crazy (than it already was, and it is jolly: see other participating pretenders) by sharing in a Crazy Cozy Spoof Pitch: setting out the bones of a Cozy Mystery and letting the authors choose the zaniest.

So here’s mine—all apologies for uproarious laughter or convulsions subsequently induced—accepted.

CRAZY COZY SPOOF PITCH:
Protagonist: My detective is an amateur crop circle photographer, Colin, camping overnight with his girlfriend and accidental witnesses to what they believe is the manifestation of a light orb in the making of a crop circle.

Sidekick: his girlfriend, the lovely Linda; who has ideas of her own about who is making the patterns in the cornfields.

Manton Drove crop circle June 2nd, 2012, first CC in barley: “all the Cees”

Theme: you guessed it—the crop circle season has begun! endless imaginary designs conjured up to keep the croppies hoppy! er, happy.

Victim #1 and Victim #2: found together next morning in the middle of a newly-formed crop pattern: #1 is local rope-&-plank circlemaker Dave, known to brag about his alien connections; #2 is the lifeless corpse of a small, gray large-lidded alien. Their bodies are aligned to face an ancient burial cairn and passage grave on the distant horizon.

Killer: Locals suspect Dave’s partner Doug had been jealous of his partner’s ability to make board-and-stomp patterns in the wheat better than him; but when more “alien” circles start to arrive and they know they didn’t make them, they decide to split up and see what’s going on.

Aliens making crop circles? who would’ve thunk it?

But our trusty sleuth and the dedicated Linda have other ideas, when they camp out the following night and witness another ball of light descend and pick up the gray body, deliberately left to see if they could film any developments…

aha: the culprit… or do their eyes deceive them…?

Oh, yes: The real killer is the driver of the second “light orb” ship, who thought by sacrificing his colleague and the earthling, they would learn more about Earth jealousies. After all, they have full capability aboard to resuscitate his co-pilot and resume their mission…
©2012 Marian Youngblood

…and a postscriptum for the serious matter of the day:
If, by now, you haven’t figured out what a Cozy Mystery is—think Daphne duMaurier, Agatha Christie, rather than Blade Runner, Alien Resurrection—if you see what I mean…

And it may interest you, bloghop reader, to know that even Alyse’s publisher, Berkley, knows that she’s loopy; because this is their cover blurb for her:

“Alyse Carlson is the pen name for Hart Johnson who writes books from her bathtub. By day she is an academic researcher at a large midwestern university. She lives with her husband, two teenage children and two fur balls. The dust bunnies don’t count. This will be her first published book.”

Don’t you just love it? How can she fail? Go, Hart: woot woot.
Lots of love.

Azalea Assault is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other good book stores, June 5th.