Murder amid the chamomile

Ten years ago, Gerry Schmitt of Plymouth was running an ad agency and working around the clock. Today, she's writing "cozies" -- comfortable murder mysteries -- under the name Laura Childs. She has three series going strong -- one set in a South Carolina tea shop, one in a New Orleans scrapbooking shop and one in a small-town Midwestern cafe -- and publishes three books a year. How did this transformation take place? Let's ask her:

Q Why did you start writing books?

A I was in advertising for 30 years, and I got tired of it. So I started writing a thriller in my spare time. It was about geriatric Nazis and stolen WWII treasures. I thought it was fabulous, but I didn't know what to do with it. I called a friend, and he said, "Oh, we need to call my friend Mary." And I said, "Who is this Mary person?" And he said, "Mary Higgins Clark."

Q So you went to New York and met her at a convention?

A Right. She was this marvelous little dynamo in a Chanel suit. I came away with four agents who wanted to represent me. I settled on one and she called me a couple weeks later, and said, "There's an editor at Penguin looking for someone to do something about tea, some kind of a tea mystery." So I went out and bought three cozies, and I hated every one of them. I thought they were too slow, and I didn't think there was enough action, and I thought the characters were one-dimensional.

Q So why did you write one?

A I thought I could do better. I thought I could write something between a cozy and a thriller. Call it a thrillzy. The first one I wrote, "Death by Darjeeling," became the No. 1 bestselling mystery for the independent mystery bookstores. And then the Literary Guild picked it up, and I became the 2001 New Discovery Winner of the Literary Guild Mystery Club. And it just never quit from there on.

A I think it started with Agatha Christie. Kind of a bloodless murder, an amateur sleuth, no gratuitous sex, no crude language, things like that.

Q How did your other series start?

A A lot of my friends were doing scrapbooking, so I did my market research and found out it was something like a $50 million industry, and the No. 1 craft in America, so I wrote a pitch, and they bought it. Those took off like crazy, too. So then, insane woman that I am, I came up one day with this Cackleberry Club series. The world was changing, people were going back to slow cooking and crafting and home-made, and I thought, it may not play real well on the coasts, but in middle America, I might have something here. And they bought that one, too. I'm a very lucky girl.

Q You're a very logical girl.

A Well, it's my business training. And writing is a business. I know every professor is going to say write what you love, but I gotta tell you, a lot of those books get dropped. I write what I think will be appealing, which is what I've always done in advertising. You have to write to an audience.

A Oh, but I do. I love tea shops. Somebody has a pot of jasmine at one table, and they've got Earl Grey at another, and you sit down and they bring you this beautiful three-tiered tray. It's like aromatherapy. You find your breathing has slowed, and it's marvelous.

Q Until someone runs in and says, "There's been a murder!"

A I don't have people murdered in the tea shop. That's the refuge.

Q You publish three books a year. How is this possible?

A I just write fast. I try to write 10 pages a day. The next morning I look at it, and I keep punching it and punching it and punching it and punching it. And then I write 10 more.

A Going back and making it smoother, adding something more colorful, more interesting. Punching up the dialogue.

Q How do you plot your books? Are there things that have to happen, besides a murder?

A You can't spring the killer at the end. You have to kind of sprinkle him in, and you have to sprinkle in other viable suspects, too. I figure, if you can wrap up a murder in seven or eight days, that'll keep your pace moving along fairly briskly. I do a big sheet that says "Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday," and then I put in all the action under each day. I color-code my killer and my suspect and make sure they're in there fairly frequently.

Q Your books devote quite a bit of space to lovely things -- teas and muffins and antiques, with recipes at the end. Why?

A Half of my e-mails are about recipes. They love the recipes.

A My husband came up with it. I said, "Oh, I like that so much" because on the bookshelf in Barnes and Noble, it's going to be near Agatha Christie, and Mary Higgins Clark.