Mollie Hunt is an accomplished writer and has been showered with accolades, which include: For Cat’s Paw (third in her mystery series featuring Lynley Cannon) finalist for the 2016 Mystery & Mayhem Book Award; fifth in the series, Cat Café won the World’s Best Cat Litter-Ary Award in 2019. Mollie is a member of the Oregon Writers’ Colony, Sisters in Crime, Willamette Writers, the Cat Writers’ Association, and NIWA. She is a native Oregonian and lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and several cats. Like her Cozy Cat Mystery heroine, Lynley Cannon, she volunteers at a cat shelter.

Part 1: Writing a Mystery

First decide whether or not you are going to write a stand-alone mystery or a series. Questions you need to ask yourself:

• Is this mystery going to be a thriller or a cozy mystery?
• Are you going to offer the solution at the beginning or will the puzzle be revealed over the process of writing?
• Is the hero of the story going to be an amateur sleuth or a law enforcement professional?
• Should you write what you know or should you follow your dream to write the mystery of your mystery-writing fantasy?
• These are the types of questions Mollie believes you need to ask yourself before you launch into writing a mystery.

She advocates for keeping an outline. She starts with an outline, and she takes meticulous notes and has post-it notes, too, to keep her facts straight about her characters (especially her recurring cats and the Crazy Cat Lady herself). She pointed out that if your books have a following — and particularly if you have written mysteries that are part of a series, with the same hero/heroine and perhaps other recurring characters — your readers will be very quick to point out inconsistencies between Book 2 and Book 4 and so forth. So keep notes! And file them in a place that makes sense to you and where you can go back and quickly and easily refer to your outline and your archival historical knowledge of your lead character and your recurring characters, so that mistakes and inconsistencies will not occur in future novels of the series.

Mollie describes her writing process as “Pantser,” which implies that she writes by the “seat of her pants,” as opposed to being a “Plotter” type of mystery writer. This is a quote from her notes entitled, “Unraveling the Mystery of Mystery Writing”:

“Often I begin with a title. My first draft is mostly spontaneous. I make notes as I go along.” Mollie insists that she writes every day; she never has writer’s block and she often works with a cat on her lap. In other words her “Pantser” process really works for her. She surrounds herself with the things she loves (her own cats) and her heroine is modeled after her own life. Mollie writes about what she knows. And she knows about cats and she knows what it’s like to be a 50-to-60 something year-old woman who volunteers her time at a cat shelter. Therefore her cat mystery novels feature Lynley Cannon, a sixty-something cat shelter volunteer who, “finds more trouble than a cat in catnip.”

Mollie keeps track of her characters with an Excel spreadsheet. She transfers information from the story outline and the post-it-notes to the spreadsheet to keep herself honest, and for the purpose of having a reference tool that is handy to use and right at her fingertips. Everything around her may inspire a novel or a title for a novel. As she explains it, “Some little thing I see or hear will strike me, and there’s a book!”

As for the writing process itself, whether it is fiction or non-fiction, Mollie keeps to the code:

• do research, fact check
• develop characters
• observation
• keep character logs and timelines

Where Mollie differs from the “writer’s code or standard process” is:

• the puzzle: The puzzle is the integral part of the mystery; it’s the meat and bones. Mollie will fill in the details of the storyline which surround the puzzle to be solved.

How I do it: “I start with details I want to introduce, then weave the story around the puzzle.” Mollie indicated that she “Follows her mind,” as she is writing. She writes “nano-fast” then she fluffs out the characters. How many McGuffins or Red Herrings does she put in the books? Unknown until she gets into the “deep dive” of the storyline.

The second draft is where the fun begins: Here is where she will color-code her characters that live in the Excel spreadsheet she keeps current. And this is where she will flesh out the details she wants to include in this novel.

Cozy Mysteries (Mollie’s specific mystery genre) are, “gentle mystery stories without foul language, explicit sex or graphic violence. They have a happy ending.” Mollie is often asked how long it takes to write one of her “Crazy Cat Lady Cozy Mysteries.” Generally speaking, it takes Mollie about a year to write each novel. She works through the process in stages: There is a first draft, a second and a third draft; the printed read-through; the beta reader; the edited copy, and up to two proof copies. Plus the launch/promotion, so from beginning to end, this generally takes about a year.

It is interesting to note that Mollie works on more than one storyline or novel at a time. Her biggest challenge is promoting her books and promoting herself. She has found that what works for her, as far as promotion goes, is in-person book signing events. Mollie admits this is her favorite way to self-promote the “Crazy Cat Lady Cozy Mystery Books”

And it certainly is an opportunity for folks to meet the author and get to know her a little bit, experience her personality and get drawn into her cozy cat mystery series and come to feel and understand the mystery solver herself, Lynley Cannon. It is also an opportunity to ask the author questions about the persona of Lynley Cannon, and to ask after all those fun cat facts that Mollie includes in her books. Each chapter begins with a fun fact about cats.

For example, Chapter 13 of Cat’s Eyes (the book Ria is reading at present) begins with this interesting fact about cats:

“Cats have more than 100 vocal sounds, while dogs have only about ten.”

I’ll bet most people haven’t taken that deep of a dive into the life and world of cats (except perhaps other devoted cat owners); thus, not only are you getting a fun mystery to solve with the heroine of the book, but you are also learning some cool things about cats that you might not otherwise have known or learned.

How Mollie Hunt Became a Writer: In 1994 her husband was sent to Japan for work; Mollie stayed in Portland. Mollie loved reading mysteries, but had no idea about agents, publishers or knowledge about the business in general. She wrote a mystery which was 450 pages long. She got a lot of rejection letters, which were useful, because even though they were rejection letters, they often included some good tips about what it takes to write a good mystery; and once written, what it takes for it to be published. One of those tips is that the murder or mayhem needs to take place, “within the first 10 pages of the book.”

Mollie realized she had a lot to learn. She took a master class which was offered by David Gerrold (writer of The Trouble With Tribbles, which became both a script for an episode which aired on the original “Star Trek” series. “The Trouble With Tribbles was one of the most popular episodes aired by CBS — so much so that the story (like the series itself) took on a life of its own and Mr. Gerrold wrote a “Star Trek” novel derived from the “Trouble With Tribbles,” script.

What Mollie learned in this master class was that your “first million words = your practice run.” And you may get several books (after the rewrites) out of that first million words of writing. You may have the conceptual treatise for your mystery series or your TV show scripts.

But after that is where the “real work” begins; that is, fine-tuning this million words into a breathable, believable, readable, living mystery novel series, with recurring characters and a relatable heroine that people will crave and come back to time and time again. Thus, Mollie Hunt found herself a writer with a bona fide, solidified mystery series!

She talked a little bit about the different cat mystery series that are out there, such as “Pop Cats” or “Cosmic Cats.” She believes if you are going to describe your mystery series as a “Cozy Cat Mystery” series, that the cats referred to in your novels should be woven into the story and be an integral part of the storyline. Some books simply have a cat on the cover or mildly reference a cat somewhere within the story or may talk about a cat sitting on someone’s lap or show such a picture in the book or on the book cover. Mollie Hunt insists that you must include the cat in the story for it to truly be a “Cozy Cat Mystery” novel.

Part 2: Publishing Your Work

Self-Publishing; How I do it:

• Amazon, where it all begins
• Smashwords – for eBooks
• Draft2Digital – both published and eBooks
• *IngramSpark (Note: This is a self-publishing platform that sells directly to bookstores. Mollie found this platform “difficult” and does not use it; also she indicates it was expensive to use — she described it as $$$.)

Small publishers/Indie Publishers/Mainstream Publishers

How I do it:

• Professional content and copy editor
• Cover artist
• Self-publish through Amazon: Free
• However, she indicated that University Press is excellent if you are writing about a certain topic. And University Press is outstanding for non-fiction books. They will help you to hone your genre, too.
• Mollie also recommends you have a professional editor read your manuscript. Do not self-edit! Mollie has both an editor with whom she works and a cover artist.

Part 3: Marketing

Book Launch:

• Online, in person, or both?
• Free and pay-for book listing sites
• Reviews/ARC
• Social media
• Friends and family (word of mouth)
• Mollie also mentioned an organization called NIWA, which is the Northwest Independent Writers Association. This organization is dedicated to writers who publish/promote and package their own books; in other words, self-publish/self-promote. You can check out their organization by going to their website: com. Membership is $25 per year and if you join in the middle of the year or what-have-you, your membership fee is pro-rated. Renewals occur in January.

As mentioned earlier, Mollie prefers to do the book launch in person. There are free and pay-to-launch books sites. These sites are useful because hand-in-hand within the site are book reviews of your work, which become another hit point for generating interest and creating sales. She does print up postcards of her book. Nowadays, since she has a robust series in the Cat Lady Cozy Mystery genre, she will print up one postcard that includes all of her books (thus far) in the series. Mollie brought some of these postcards for her display today. Smart, as this advertises both the new book and all the books in the series, which potentially can entice attendees at book fairs or bookstores to purchase more than just the new book.

Mollie will also participate in contests and giveaways. In fact, she donated a book to our own Cedar Mill Library after the meeting, which Jean passed on to our library contact who ensures the donated books get into the for-checkout stream. Thank you, Mollie Hunt!

Mollie finished her presentation by reading from her latest novel which has not yet been released for publication, Cosmic Cat. What a great way to end the presentation, by teasing all of us with her latest book.