ON THE SCENE - Tracy Donley

Cozy mystery author builds her catalog

Story and photos by Dalondo Moultrie

For as long as she can remember, words have been Tracy Donley’s thing. It feels like writing is something she has done in some form since her earliest days of even knowing how to string words together to form sentences.

“I think I wrote my first booklength manuscript around age 13,” Donley said. “I’ve always written. I think I was about 5 years old when I asked for a typewriter for my birthday.”

Back in those early years, she knew her goal in life was to become an author, which she told people as a child. It took some years and lots of hustle, but Donley achieved her goal.

The Seguin High School and Texas Lutheran University graduate is a published author several times over under an assumed name, Thea Cambert. And now, her publisher has agreed to release the next cozy mystery series penned by Donley under her real name. “As Thea, I’ve written about 21 books,” she said. “As Tracy, I’m starting the fourth in a series.”

“Murder in the Meadow” released earlier this year is the first of a four-book Rosemary Gray cozy mysteries series. Two others of the series are written and ready for release and she’s currently sculpting the fourth of the books.

Her publisher came up with the nom de plume Thea Cambert when Donley penned her first cozy novel last year. Even though she knew writing was her thing, she didn’t start publishing her work until around the time of last year’s lockdowns related to COVID-19, Donley said.

“It’s because of the pandemic this all came about,” she said. “My job before that was as a children’s minister at St. Andrews Episcopal Church. We couldn’t meet in person because of the pandemic. I couldn’t do the stuff with the kids. I was still trying to do something for them but most of what was taking up my time I could no longer do.”

She just had more free time in which to practice her passion professionally. Donley also had an inside track since she had previously done freelance work editing books. That work allowed her a glimpse inside the publishing world and access to a publisher.

She reached out to one and let the company know she was interested in penning a novel. Things worked out from there, Donley said.

“They had me come up with an idea for a series of four books and asked me to go ahead and write the first one,” she said. “If they liked it, they would have me write another three. By the time I finished the fourth, they asked me to write four more and then they asked me to write four more.”

As the offers kept coming, she kept churning out novels. The turnaround times for the novels is brief so authoring more and more books keeps her busy, Donley said.

She started out completing a new book about every other week. That scheduled has relaxed a bit as more work is piled on her plate, she said.

“I’m writing three books right now,” Donley said. “One as Thea, one as Tracy and a third book I’m actually co-authoring with my son Nate.”

Cozy mysteries are lighthearted tales that often begin with a character discovering a murder and then being swept up in getting to the bottom of the criminal act, Donley said.

There’s no extraordinary violence, no blood and nothing too graphic

It is somewhat of a formulaic genre, which helps feed new material to readers insatiable appetite for more content, she said.

... I’ve gotten some fan letters during the pandemic that people have said, ‘Your books have helped me escape for a little while and made me feel better.

Books she’s authored run somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000 words. The novels may not be ground shaking, classical literary works but she writes them for readers who get out of them just what they need, Donley said.

“It’s not that I’m trying to write ‘important’ literature with these books, but I’ve gotten some fan letters during the pandemic that people have said, ‘Your books have helped me escape for a little while and made me feel better,’” she said. “To me, that’s what I’m doing, that’s what it’s about. These books are not going to win Pulitzer Prizes. They may not change the world but they could change someone’s day. They could affect someone. That’s the bigger meaning of my work.”

Donley’s father and grandmother were born in Seguin, as was she. She raised two children, 26-year-old Nate and her daughter, Emily, who is 22.

While homeschooling her children, she had less and less time to continue cultivating her love for writing.

After the kids finished high school, she was able to get back into it because she had more time and then the opportunity to be published came along later, Donley said.

Her family members share her love of words. Nate is a librarian and Emily is studying the same profession.

Her husband John is a middle school science teacher but also loves books. Her husband and children are extremely proud of her work as is her extended family, Donley said.

“My family’s been so supportive and so proud,” she said. “My brother has read every book I’ve ever written. … It’s a great feeling.”

The pay isn’t too bad, either. Not to be mistaken, writing the cozy mysteries doesn’t bring her a ton of money from each book but she’s increasing her volume of published works, which should increase the overall payout, Donley said.

Currently, she’s in the process of building up her catalog and with every subsequent novel, the money gets a little better, she said.

Right now, Donley said she is paying her dues.

“It gets better every month and I expect when I have a catalog of, say, 50 books, it’ll be even better,” she said. “I get royalties from the publisher, so the more books I write, the more lucrative it will be.”

Still, she won’t sacrifice quality just to push out more books. She owes it to the fans who enjoy what she produces to continue putting out high-quality content, Donley said. That way, she can achieve all of her goals while still doing what she loves, which is to continue as a weaver of tales to entertain the public.

“I feel very honored to be one of the people who’s a story teller; that’s just what I do,” Donley said. “I guess at first I felt like ‘I’m just writing these cozy mysteries. It’s not going to win any awards.’ But it’s important. It takes the reader to a different place and I’m very proud of that.”