Mystery writer Ellie Alexander is partnering with Travel Ashland to bring fans of “cozy mysteries” to the city for tours, talks and other events with more than a dozen other authors.
Courtesy Ellie Alexander
The author of the Bakeshop Mystery Series used the city of Ashland for her inspiration, with many real shops and restaurants in the city appearing in the novels, which now number more than 20.
And for the third year in a row, Ellie Alexander is partnering with Travel Ashland to bring fans of “cozy mysteries” to the city for the Ashland Mystery Festival, with tours, talks and other events with more than a dozen other authors.
Alexander joins us to tell us more about the genre, her own Ashland-based cozy mystery novels and the festival that runs through Oct. 19.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Ellie Alexander has written more than 20 installments in her Bakeshop Mystery Series. She uses the city of Ashland for her inspiration, with many real shops and restaurants appearing in the novels. For the third year in a row, she is partnering with Travel Ashland to bring fans of so-called “cozy mysteries” to the city for tours, talks, and author events. The festival starts tomorrow, and Ellie Alexander joins us now. It’s great to have you on the show.
Ellie Alexander: Thank you so much for having me.
Miller: Can you tell us about the main character in your Bakeshop series, the pastry chef and mystery solver Juliet Montague Capshaw?
Alexander: So in this particular genre, we kind of camp it up with the cozy, because these style of mysteries are not about gratuitous violence. It’s more about an amateur sleuth who solves the crime. And in my case, Juliet Montague Capshaw is a lover of all things Shakespeare and an artisan pastry chef, and she’s come home to Ashland to heal her broken heart and run her family bake shop Torte. And then while she’s baking up delicious pastries, she stumbles across bodies.
Miller: Did you come to mystery writing as a mystery reader?
Alexander: Absolutely. I wrote my first mystery when I was in second grade, I still have a copy of it. But I have this very eclectic reading background, cause my dad was an English professor and he taught Shakespeare, so he had me reading all of the classics and quoting sonnets and soliloquies at a young age, which at the time I didn’t appreciate. But my mom was a prolific mystery reader and introduced me to Agatha Christie, of course, and Sherlock and all the greats at a young age as well.
Miller: How much do you remember about that first mystery you wrote when you were second grade?
Alexander: I still have a copy of it today, and my penmanship was so much better. My kindergarten teacher came to my first book signing, and she was like, “Your storytelling is fabulous, but we gotta work on this penmanship.”
But it was really a cozy. It was about two young girls who are on a bike ride and their bikes break down at this haunted mansion in Portland. They go inside and cobwebs are sweeping across their face, and there are creaking doors, and they have to spend the night in the spooky basement. But then the next morning they find bicycle repair kits and ride off happily ever after, which is pretty much what my books are today, really.
Miller: You’ve used this word a couple of times and have and have sort of defined it, and I’m sure many of our listeners are used to it, but for those who aren’t, how do you define a cozy mystery or “a cozy”?
Alexander: I think of these as modern day fairy tales in some ways, in that the focus is on the puzzle. It is cerebral in that if I have done my job well as a writer, all of the clues and red herrings are embedded. The reader knows as much as the sleuth knows, and they should be able to put the pieces together by the end of the book. But the focus is on community. I think we’re all experiencing a time in the world where we don’t see justice happening very often, which is why I think they have this fairy tale aspect. You know something is going to happen at the beginning of the book. There’s going to be something horrific, a body’s going to be found. But by the end, all is right with the world again and everyone has come together, and you have that sense of justice.
Miller: So just to be clear, there are still murders, but you don’t dwell on the violence or the gore, and justice is a big part of it, that the world is made right in the end.
Alexander: Exactly, yeah. I think of these as like the antithesis of CSI. So it’s not about the crime scene. You don’t have people that are sweeping the scene and doing digital forensics, but you have maybe a knitter or a baker or a dog walker or a librarian. It’s all about the setting and kind of creating this warm vibe, and really escapism for the readers as well.
Miller: Is it ever hard to create that light tone – the coziness that’s required – when there is a murder at the center of it, and there’s never anything actually cozy about homicide?
Alexander: It’s so true. I think Agatha Christie is sort of the great Dame who gets credited for that if you think about those quintessential English village cozies. And there is that juxtaposition all the time that you have to deal with. Yes, there’s been a murder, and now what are the ramifications and what’s the emotional impact that ripples out within the community? So there is always that balance of lightness and darkness.
Miller: Is a part of you always thinking about how to kill characters off in interesting new ways?
Alexander: Absolutely, 100% yes. As well as I also feel like I’m basically a detective by this point in my career, so my husband will stop me if we’re somewhere and I see police activity, like, “Should I go offer my services?” “No.”
Miller: He reminds you that you are not in fact a detective?
Alexander: Correct.
Miller: Your books include these titles from this series alone: “A Smoking Bun,” “Killing Me Souffle,” “Laying Down the Latte” and “Muffin but the Truth.” Do you have a favorite bakery related pun from this series?
Alexander: I have so many favorite puns. And I think the reason that puns work is because they inform the reader, you know if you’re picking up a book called “The Smoking Bun,” that you’re not getting ready to read “War and Peace.”
Miller: Right, or “Silence of the Lambs.”
Alexander: Exactly. One of my favorites recently is “Killing Me Souffle.” A reader suggested that title, but then I can’t not hear the song in my head.
Miller: What makes Ashland a fun place to set a mystery?
Alexander: Ashland just has such an eclectic artisan community already with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Oregon Cabaret. I think people who are drawn to that are natural readers as well. And then it’s so stunning for the fall. You’re kind of nestled in the Siskiyou Mountains down here. Lithia Park is the crown jewel, and it is showing off for the weekend as readers are starting to arrive today. And it’s so walkable. There really, truly is a sense of community spirit, and it’s been a community endeavor to launch this festival.
Miller: What was the idea behind it, three years ago, the initial idea?
Alexander: It really began because I’ve been writing this series since 2014, and over the years I get so many messages from readers saying, “Hey, I’m gonna go visit Ashland for the first time, and I know that you’ve used real places as the inspiration for these stories. Can you give me some ideas of where I should go?” And I just happened to casually mention that to Travel Ashland, and they were like, “Hey, we could run with us.” And this was coming out of COVID, where things had really slowed down. Obviously, the theater and travel in general took a hit. It was originally going to be just a festival centered around the Bake Shop Mystery series. And I said, “Wouldn’t it be more fun if I invited author friends from all over the country and the world to come join us too?” And it just sort of took on a life of its own.
Miller: How is this festival different from other mystery conventions? Some of them can be huge. 1,700 people have been known to go to one of the famous ones. How is this different?
Alexander: This is really about experiencing Ashland and putting readers into the pages of a cozy mystery so that when readers show up, they are the detectives, the sleuth for the weekend. So I have attended over the years many of the big conferences, which are fantastic, but those tend to usually take place in one hotel room where you’re flying in and all the events are in giant hotel conference rooms, so you’re not really experiencing wherever you’re traveling to. This is truly immersive. Readers go all throughout the plaza, into shops and restaurants. It’s interactive, there are mystery dinners out at restaurants and OSF is hosting teas, that sort of thing.
Miller: Has the festival grown in the last three years?
Alexander: It has absolutely grown. This year we have readers coming from 92 cities throughout the U.S. as well as the U.K. and Canada. And I really think that the antidote to the disconnection we feel in the world right now is this idea of coming together and sharing space over something that people really love and feeling like you’re getting to be part of something and make those bookish connections. It’s been so fun to hear from readers who came to the first event and then made friends and have continued that relationship, and now we’re coming together for the third time.
Miller: One of your most recent books that came out just a couple months ago involves a murder at a book fair. Is that the kind of thing that mystery fans secretly fantasize about?
Alexander: I mean you have to, right? Yeah, I think so. And that’s the piece that we have with the festival weekend. One of the first things that readers will do when they get here is they will have to look at a crime scene and see what clues they can deduce and then go out throughout all of Ashland and piece together the mystery by the end of the weekend.
Miller: Am I right that this festival for you is basically a labor of love?
Alexander: It’s absolutely a labor of love. It’s all volunteer hours. The same is true for the authors. We have authors coming from Canada and the U.K. as well, and so it’s been definitely a community affair to build it out.
Miller: Why do you keep doing it?
Alexander: I know that stories help remind me that we belong together, and I love being able to not only extend the fictional worlds that I’ve created but hopefully let that ripple out into readers’ experiences so that when they leave, they’re connected to a whole new world of stories as well.
Miller: When you read a mystery, how good are you at this point of figuring out whodunit before the author tells you?
Alexander: It’s sort of a cautionary tale. I teach new writers, mystery writing specifically, and it is hard now with having written so many that you sort of know how the genre and the formula, so to speak, works. So I’m pretty good.
Miller: Oh, interesting. But when you say that, it’s almost like you know how the magic works, and so they’re a little bit less entertaining because you’re pretty good at figuring it out.
Alexander: That’s right, exactly. You lose a little bit of that “a-ha” moment because I’m looking at the structure of how an author has done the novel. That doesn’t take away, of course, the charm of somebody’s individual writing style and the setting, but yeah, I tend to read other genres, especially when I’m writing a lot myself.
Miller: Ellie Alexander, it was a pleasure talking with you. Thanks very much.
Alexander: Thanks so much for having me.
Miller: Ellie Alexander is a mystery author. She’s the author of, among other series, the Bake Shop series which is set in Ashland. She is also the creator of the Ashland Mystery Festival which starts in Ashland tomorrow.
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