A. L. Jensen Cozy Mysteries is a biweekly feature of Women Writing, offering insights into this beloved genre and my journey from writing historical fiction to cozy mysteries with a Nordic twist.
Happy Saturday! In today’s newsletter:
📚 Progress is … progress
📝 My “Ask Me Anything” with Jennie Nash
👉Write on 2026 with Book Coaches Canada
Life has a way of tipping the balance when you least expect it. Whenever lots of good things happen, I always expect other life events to remind me not to get too comfortable. It’s easy to get excited about the good stuff, and harder to accept the not-so-good stuff. With that in mind, I’m in the season of acceptance.
Maybe this volatile spring is a reminder, too. In Sudbury, we had “Snowmageddon” in March, followed by flooding in April, and now a water advisory. While cleaning up the massive mess in our yard, I observed the plants peeking out from the garden, the grass slowly greening, the small buds on the trees. I also escaped Sudbury to visit my daughter in Ottawa where the grass is already green, the trees are mostly green, and the tulips are blooming. We spent time birding at Mer Bleue and visited Robert Plante Greenhouses in Navan. Mother Nature will do what she does, and we just need flow with it.
Same goes with book three of the Hygge House Cozy Mystery series. On the one hand, I’m having trouble getting pages done with so many distractions and obligations. And when I have an incredibly productive session, I am buoyed up again. Without a doubt, when I’m done the first draft, I won’t remember which days went well and which ones didn’t. I’ll just be in the next stage of the writing process. And that’s, well, progress.
Spring is coming to the north and book three will be ready on time.
Of that, I can be sure.
“Ask Me Anything” Live with Jennie Nash
I had the privilege of taking party in Jennie Nash ’s “Ask Me Anything” Live recently, and am sharing it here in case you missed it. We chatted about writing, discussed memoir and mindset, and shared information about Book Coaches Canada’s upcoming Write On 2026 event (see below for more about how you can join us). Jennie is incredibly supportive of her Author Accelerator book coaches and our Book Coaches Canada community. Thanks, Jennie!
Join us!
Join Book Coaches Canada, a group of Canadian Author Accelerator certified fiction, memoir, and non-fiction book coaches, for a weekend of webinars on writing, publishing, mindset, and strategies. Sign up for as many (or all the sessions) and check out the freebies and special offers. Write On 2026 takes place on May 30-31, 2026.
Register for free at write-on-2026.heysummit.com. And don’t forget to join “Prompt or Perish: Book Coaches Debate AI and the Future of Writing” and my session “The Sisu Method: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Writers.”
And did I mention? It’s free!
That’s a good insight—not to be derailed by the ups and downs.
Sometimes I don’t remember in what draft the names changed and I lost characters completely! The “ghost versions” of the book, and the despair and hope with which I wrote it, have somehow been baked into a whole. True for this one I’m working on as well as the published one.