Welcome to our mini-series on A Warm Mug of Cozy Anthology, which celebrates the writers whose stories are featured in Volume 2 of our yearly anthology.
Today, Sam is sharing what inspired his story “A Terrible Murder.”
The main inspiration for “A Terrible Murder,” was to tell the story from the murderer’s perspective. Like everything, it’s been done before, but I hoped it would be a novel and interesting approach for me at least. After all, surely one reason we all love crime fiction is the fascination of what goes on in the killer’s head. Why do they murder people and how can they justify it? The immediate problem with this approach was, if this was to be a cosy crime tale, the murderer couldn’t be a nasty or vindictive person, because that wouldn’t be fun or cosy at all. The murderer had to be mostly likeable, have a good reason for their actions and be able to provoke at least some sympathy from the reader.
The solution was to make them a thoroughly incompetent murderer and for everything to go very wrong for them right from the beginning, despite their best efforts. The story proved fun to write. I hope you enjoy reading it too!
Sam Morris is a UK-based writer who also happens to have a day job and a family. His work was recently shortlisted in the English Heritage Ghost Story competition, and highly commended in the Essex Book festival’s Crime Short Story Competition.
Thank you for sending us your story, Sam! We know people will love reading it as much as we have!
Today’s post completes our series for this year. See you in 2025 for the third volume of our Anthology! In the meantime, don’t forget to order your copy of Volume 2.
Cendrine & David