Introduction

There’s no doubt that Janel Gradowski loves to cook. Her blog is filled with recipes and cookbook reviews. So it’s no surprise that her cozy mystery series is based around culinary mysteries.

Today I talk to Janel about the inspiration for her books, her interest in flash fiction, and the intrigue and politics involved in the fictional culinary competitions that are catalysts for the murders in her mysteries. The first book in the series is Pies and Peril.

You can find Janel at JanelGradowski.com. As well as on Twitter and Facebook.

Press play (above) to listen to the show, or read the transcript below. Remember you can also subscribe to the show on iTunes. And listen on Stitcher.

You can also click here to watch the episode on YouTube.

Transcript of interview with Janel Gradowski

Alexandra: Hi, everyone. This is Alexandra Amor with It’s a Mystery Podcast and I’m here today with Janel Gradowski. Hi, Janel.

Janel: Hello.

Alexandra: Nice to see you. Thanks for being here.

Janel: Thank you for having me.

Alexandra: You’re welcome. So just for anyone that doesn’t know, I am going to give our listeners a bit of an introduction. Janel Gradowski is the author of the bestselling Culinary Competition Mysteries series. She also writes several short fiction series. Her work has appeared in many magazines, anthologies and online journals. She is a wife and mother who lives in the mitten-shaped state of Michigan. I’ve never heard Michigan described that way before and I love it.

Janel: Yes. We always have our map with us when we point to where we live, so it’s great.

Alexandra: It must be easy to teach kids in school then.

Janel: Yes, and actually the Upper Peninsula, you go sideways, so that’s a great way to do both sides of the state.

Alexandra: Yeah. Oh, fantastic. My parents live in Southern Ontario.

Janel: Not far away.

Alexandra: Not far away. Exactly. So the thing that intrigued me about your books is that you call them Culinary Competition Mysteries, which I thought was really interesting. So they’re not just culinary mysteries; there’s competitions involved.

Tell us a little bit about the books, their background and about Amy Ridley, your heroine.

Janel: Amy loves to compete in culinary competitions, any kind of contest from recipe contests to live cooking shows. It happened in a few of them. So that’s where it came from that I loved watching those kinds of shows on TV, and it goes into my series.

Alexandra: Well done. Okay. And so you obviously like to cook too.

I had a look at your blog and you do recipe book reviews occasionally.

Janel: Yes, I do. I have a huge collection of cookbooks and thank goodness for e-books or they’d be overflowing in my house.

Alexandra: Right. And so tell us about Amy. She’s married. Is she married right at the beginning of the series?

Janel: She is married and I’ve gotten quite a few readers who were surprised by that. It’s not really common it seems in cozy mysteries but, yeah, she is married. Her best friend gets married part-way through the series, and now has had a baby in the latest books, so she is dealing with that.

Alexandra: Yes, yeah.