Starting a New Series by Marilyn Levinson

Recently, I started writing the first book in a new cozy series. However, there was much I had to work out before I could write the first word of the first chapter. For one thing, my new series takes place on an island that you will never find on any map. Dickens Island is my creation. It's situated smack in the middle of the Long Island Sound and belongs to New York. Creating an island requires all sorts of planning—its size; its shape; how many people live on the island year round; how many come during the summer months; what ferries link the island to the mainland; what the school system is like; its local government; its history.

I researched the islands off Long Island to learn how they deal with many of these issues, and came up with many methods of my own. Setting, as any cozy author will tell you, is a very important element. It is the world where our characters live, work, interrelate, and commit murders. 

My main characters came to me early on. I knew I wanted my sleuth to be a savvy woman around forty—divorced for many years and the mother of a fifteen-year-old son. And so Delia, short for Cordelia, was born. Twelve years earlier, she divorced her abusive husband and left three-year-old Connor on Dickens Island to be raised by her parents, while she lived and worked in Manhattan. When she moves back to Dickens Island to resume her maternal duties, is it any wonder that Connor resents her? That he's distant and difficult, and bound to get into more-than-typical teenage trouble?

Graham Dickens, Delia's father, is the patriarch of the family, and feels it's his responsibility to keep the island running smoothly. Not that he holds any position in the island's government. Those positions are held by his brother, Brad, the president of the town council, and Reenie, Brad's wife, who is the island's manager. Unfortunately, Brad and Reenie are fiercely at odds over most issues. Their open discord has begun to affect their marriage and to divide the island into two hostile camps. 

 What fun it is to create new characters that will live on in future books. Helena, Delia's grandmother, has left Delia a large Victorian house when she died the previous year. When Delia discovers her grandmother's hidden room filled with sailors' logs and journals, Helena appears in ghostly form. She fills Delia in on events that occurred many years ago that shed light on the  recent homicide.

 A shaggy dog starts to follow Connor about, often spending the night at the house with Delia and her son. Delia has no success in finding his owner. She's surprised when she sees the spitting image of the dog in an early photo with her grandmother.

 And so I've begun writing the first book in my new series. I've had to stop a few times to understand my characters' relationship with one another. I'm glad I did because that enriched the texture of the story. Now all I have to do it write about the murder, why it came about, and how it gets resolved. And a few other things, of course. That should keep me busy for the next several months.