V.M. Burns

It’s been said that the act of writing, at its most fundamental level, is a form of wish fulfillment.

- John B. Valeri

This is a truth that V.M. Burns infuses into the pages of her popular Mystery Bookshop Mysteries featuring amateur sleuth/aspiring writer Samantha Washington.

“Samantha dreams of owning her own mystery bookshop and of writing British historical cozy mysteries. These are also my dreams,” the author said. “So, with this series, I’m able to live vicariously through her.”

Burns—an operations manager at a call center by day—is quite formidable in her own right; she holds a bachelor of arts degree in political science and urban studies, a master of science in administration, and an MFA in writing popular fiction. In addition to penning the aforementioned five-book saga, which launched with the Agatha Award-nominated The Plot Is Murder (2017) and continues with November’s Bookmarked for Murder, she also writes the R.J. Franklin and Dog Club Mysteries for adults as well as the forthcoming Fairy Tale Cozies for children.

And while she has yet to open up that bookshop, Burns has realized her dream of writing British historical cozies through the series’ novel-within-a-novel construct that chronicles Samantha Washington’s adventures as both a reluctant investigator and an as-yet-unpublished writer of—you guessed it—British historical cozy mysteries.

“When I first got the idea for this series, my intent was the entire murder would only take place in the book Samantha was writing. However, I wasn’t sure cozy mystery readers would be happy merely reading about the murder my protagonist was writing,” Burns said. “That’s when I got the idea of including both a contemporary murder and a British historical cozy.”

Despite the similarities between the author and her character (which include owning two chocolate toy poodles), Burns’s protagonist possesses a distinct origin story.