King of Cozy Mysteries

YOU could call Steve Higgs the King of Cozy Mysteries and he is a genuine phenomenon in the brutal world of publishing having produced some 80 books since turning full time author in 2017.

Speaking to Euro Weekly News he explained “I wasn’t very interested in much at school except for writing and was delighted to win an award when I was 10.

“To some extent my future was pre planned as I come from a military family and it was always expected that I would join the army which I duly did, being commissioned and spent my time on the mechanical side.

“Happily, I was offered the chance to leave, with a reasonable pay off, in my early 40s and I took advantage of the offer.”

After leaving the army he took jobs in the corporate world, got married and is now the proud father of a boy (Hunter) and girl (Hermione) but writing started to call.

He wrote his first book whilst still working and decided that this had to be the future but realised that trying to get an agent and then a publishing deal could be a long and torturous process, so he decided to learn about selfpublishing.

The process of writing comes easy to him and he tends to write a new book every two weeks or so which explains how he has published so many is such a relatively short period of time.

“Although I work quite long hours when I am writing, a lot of my time is involved in promotion and marketing, as well a weekly newsletter to everyone who signs up via my website”

Several authors bemoan the effect that Amazon has had on booksellers but Steve, recognised from the beginning that as a self­publisher and with Amazon hogging about 80 per cent of the world market, not only did he want to work with them but is quite happy for his books to be made available on Kindle Unlimited where for a small monthly fee customers can download a select number of books at no additional cost.

The income per download may be small but when you have 80 books and growing the actual amount is better than might be expected and half of his annual income comes from Kindle

Unlimited.

A definition of cozy mystery is a gentle and often humorous subset of the broad genre of crime writing which is a comfort read.

With characters such as retired policeman Albert Smith and his Alsatian Rex Harrison (who was thrown out of police school for being too clever), Housewife come detective Patricia Fisher, Wedding Planner, Felicity Phillips and The Paranormal Blue Moon Detective Agency, the novels are both gently amusing and genuinely mysteries and always include a dog, a cat or both.

“I am in discussion with a production company about the possibility of three of my creations becoming TV or even Film franchises and I like to network with other authors and recently spent a few days in Mallorca at a special event for self­publishers.”

With an eye to the future, Steve is working with a select number of other writers who will be co­authors of books based on his concepts. He will take on the risk of publishing the books which will be produced to an agreed ‘script’ and will then share any profits on a 50/50 basis.