Marla Cooper: The Accidental Muse

LUCY BURDETTE: You know by now that I can't resist a debut author. I love hearing the stories about how they began a writing career, and what prompted specific books. Today, please meet our guest Marla Cooper, who will be giving away an advanced copy of her brand new, first ever mystery, TERROR IN TAFFETA. Welcome Marla!

MARLA COOPER: It’s a question writers get asked a lot: "Where do you get your ideas?"

Really, they can come from anywhere—an overheard conversation, a memory from the past, an interesting story in the news. But the idea for my series about a destination wedding planner came to me like a gift from the universe—one that came wrapped in pretty, metallic paper with an expertly tied bow on top.

Several years ago, I got a call from an editor at Chronicle Books who wondered if I'd be interested in ghostwriting a nonfiction book. It seems they'd penned a deal with a destination wedding planner named Alison who was too busy planning fabulous destination weddings to actually write said book.

Of course I said yes, and before long, I was meeting with Alison in her tastefully decorated office so that she could dump the entire contents of her brain into mine. As she told me all about her job, two thoughts occurred to me: 1) Alison might just be the luckiest person I'd ever met, and 2) her job was the perfect setup for a murder mystery.

Here she was, flying off to foreign countries with people she barely knew, and if anything went wrong, everyone looked to her to fix things. Of course, she'd mostly dealt with situations like squabbling bridesmaids or having a string trio show up when they'd hired a quartet, but of course my imagination took it a step further.

I was tempted to ask her what would happen if something really terrible happened. Like, oh, say, everyone hated one of the groomsmen and he ended up being murdered—you know, that kind of thing. But it was our first meeting and I didn't want her to think I was a terrible person.

Besides, I knew what the answer was: She would investigate, of course!

After all, she'd be the one in charge. Besides, wedding planners are typically super resourceful—not to mention really well organized—so if they couldn't get to the bottom of things, who could?

Well, okay, sure, the police. But what if they wrongly suspected one of the wedding party?

Alison and I went on to talk about more mundane matters, like site visits and tent rentals, but when I left, I had a tingly feeling way down deep in my spine. I didn't just have just one book to write. I had a whole series!

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Okay, readers, I was going to ask you where you get your ideas, but I'm in the mood to talk about weddings. Have you ever been to a destination wedding? Or have you ever been to a wedding where things went really wrong? One randomly-chosen commenter will win an Advance Reading Copy of TERROR IN TAFFETA, which comes out March 22 from Minotaur Books.

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MARLA COOPER was astonished when she realized people could actually get paid to write things. So she switched her major from business to advertising—much to the relief of her accounting professor—and began her career as an advertising copywriter. After moving to San Francisco, she became a freelancer so she could take advantage of perks like working in her pajamas, and it was while ghostwriting a book on destination weddings that she found inspiration for her first novel, Terror in Taffeta. Originally hailing from Texas, Marla lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and her polydactyl tuxedo cat. Visit her at www.marla-cooper.com.

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TERROR IN TAFFETA is the first book in a new series by Marla Cooper. It will be available in bookstores on March 22, but you can pre-order it now from Amazon, Barnes &Noble, and other fine retailers.

Here's the scoop:

Kelsey McKenna has planned out every detail of her client's destination wedding in San Miguel de Allende. But what she hadn't planned on was a bridesmaid dropping dead in the middle of the ceremony. When the bride's sister is arrested for murder, the mother of the bride demands that Kelsey fix the matter at once. And even though Kelsey is pretty sure investigating a murder isn't in her contract, crossing the well connected Mrs. Abernathy could be a career-killer. Before she can leave Mexico and get back to planning weddings, Kelsey will have to deal with stubborn detectives, late-night death threats—and guests who didn't even RSVP.