Mia P. Manansala Writes "Rom-Coms with Dead Bodies"

Join us in conversation with culinary cozy mystery author Mia P. Manansala as we chat about her Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery series, the shared tropes between romance and cozies, why there’s so much food in this particular mystery genre, and the undue burden put on marginalized authors.
We are your hosts, Emma C. Wells & E.J. Wenstrom. (Find us on all social media—but typo productions especially loves Instagram—follow us @TypoPodcasts. If you insist on Twitter :P we are there also @TypoPodcasts. 

Today’s episode features special guest, mystery author Mia P. Manansala.

Mia’s bio and links (from her website):

Mia P. Manansala (MAH-nahn-sah-lah) (she/her) is a writer and book coach from Chicago who loves books, baking, and bad-ass women. She uses humor (and murder) to explore aspects of the Filipino diaspora, queerness, and her millennial love for pop culture.

She is the winner of the 2018 Hugh Holton Award, the 2018 Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award, the 2017 William F. Deeck - Malice Domestic Grant for Unpublished Writers, and the 2016 Mystery Writers of America/Helen McCloy Scholarship. She's also a 2017 Pitch Wars alum and 2018-2020 mentor.

A lover of all things geeky, Mia spends her days procrastibaking, playing JRPGs and dating sims, reading cozy mysteries, and cuddling her dogs Gumiho, Max Power, and Bayley Banks (bonus points if you get all the references).

Her debut novel, ARSENIC AND ADOBO, came out May 4, 2021, with Berkley/Penguin Random House and is the first in the Tita Rosie's Kitchen Mystery series.

Find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @MPMtheWriter

Mia’s books are available everywhere books are sold, but why not check out our Troped Out Bookshop and order your copies today? 

Show Notes:

  • Emma and EJ welcome Mia to the show, and Mia says she is glad to be a guest. She is excited to talk about leaning into the tropes of her genre—which is cozy mystery.
  • EJ gets right to business and asks Mia what are the tropes of cozies that she used in her writing.
  • Mia explains how the book came to her. Mia and Em were both in Pitch Wars in 2017. (If you are interested in pitch wars information, the link is included in the links section at the bottom of the show notes). 
  • Mia says that her Pitch Wars mentor was author Kellye Garrett, and the two are still friends to this day. Mia and Kellye were talking back in 2017 about how cozies were leaning into rom-com tropes. They were joking and Mia said (quite truthfully) that cozies are just rom-coms with dead bodies. They laughed about it and didn’t think much else of it until one day when Mia was riding the train to work.
  • On this train ride—the first line of her debut, ARSENIC AND ADOBO (available everywhere books are sold—link to our bookshop included in notes) came into her head all at once. Mia pulled out her phone and began taking notes. She said once she began writing notes—the second line popped into her head.
  • Those first two lines that set things into motion???

My name is Lila Macapagal, and my life has become a rom-com cliché. 
Not many romantic comedies feature an Asian-American lead (or dead bodies, but more on that later), but all the hallmarks are there.

  • ARSENIC AND ADOBO follows Lila Macapagal, a Filipino-American woman from a small, Midwestern town outside of Chicago, who has moved into the city. Once Lila finds her fiancé cheating, she returns home to help with her aunt’s restaurant. Of course, she runs into her high school sweetheart—who happens to be a vindictive restaurant critic trying to get her aunt’s restaurant closed. Then…one day he drops dead in the restaurant and Lila becomes the main suspect. She must solve the crime to clear her name.
  • Mia explains that a cozy is essentially a Hallmark story with a body. No sex, graphic violence, or bad language. But plenty of fun with quirky characters, a mystery to solve, and a likable protagonist. 
  • EJ asks what are the key tropes you must hit in order for a cozy mystery to be considered a cozy.
  • Mia says so far, the only deal breaker is no sex on the page and no described graphic violence. She says that another is no bad language—but explains that is subjective.
  • Just like there has to be an HEA or HFN in a romance—these things are necessary for a cozy.
  • She says that typically you will find the main characters in cozies are women, and they often take place in a small town or an insulated community of some sort. 
  • The setting is almost like a character itself.
  • Most cozies have a theme. Mia says that hers are considered culinary cozies—because the stories are often centered around Lila’s aunt’s restaurant. 
  • EJ says that she has noticed that many cozies—from the outside looking in—have an affection for food. That the authors will often share recipes on their pages and in their books. EJ asks, what do you (Mia) think it is about Cozies that makes a communal interest in food so common?
  • Mia says that EJ used the word communal—and that community is a huge part of the Cozy genre. One of the most common ways to get people together is to break bread together. 
  • Mia says that for her personally—food is her favorite thing. (MINE TOO, MIA!) Food plays a significant role in life, including culture. Mia explains that she is Filipino American, and food is one way to stay connected to her culture and to her parent’s home. That food is love.
  • How food is often used to show love and connection. It can be used to show relationships and backstories in books.
  • EJ says that it sounds like the core of cozy mysteries comes down to relationships—which isn’t something she realized before this conversation.
  • EJ asks how the culinary aspect works in the ARSENIC AND ADOBO world.
  • Mia says in her first book, the murder is of the food critic—so the main suspects are all restaurant owners that the critic harmed. The restaurants are all different from greasy spoon diner to sushi restaurant. The protagonist (Lila) interviews each one and in the process, we see how she relates to the town not only as it was when she left years ago—but now that she is back “home.” 
  • Em asks Mia if she has a favorite food that is featured in ARSENIC AND ADOBO.
  • Mia says that she has a lot of favorites. Mia explains how food is such an important part of Filipino culture. She tells the story of how she was on a panel with other Filipino authors who all wrote in different genres and age categories—and the title of the panel was, Kumain ka na ba? Filipino food is love, family, & home. You can view the panel here!
  • Mia says that food is so important to Filipino culture that this is actually the way people greet you—by asking if you’ve eaten. 
  • The character Lila might not seem like she is investigating, but through developing relationships with other characters by sharing a meal with them, she is learning everything she needs to solve the crime. Lila’s strength is really in developing relationships with people.
  • Em asks Mia if the moment she had that lightning bolt of an opening line—fully formed—if she knew that the story would be a cozy mystery.
  • Mia knew it would be a cozy. Mia explains that her Pitch Wars book wasn’t a cozy—it was more of a traditional mystery. There was a little language that would’ve disqualified it as a cozy.
  • When Mia had the idea for this story—she knew it would fit perfectly within the genre’s parameters.
  • Mia explains that when her mom was at the library shelving books, she stumbled across a cozy—The Chocolate Chip Cookie Murders—and it was really cool to find a genre that combined their love of mystery with food. Mia says that while the genre isn’t super diverse, the genre gives her something to talk to her mom about. She literally wrote a book that her mom could read.
  • Em asks Mia about her experience of bringing Filipino and other diversity into the cozy space, which has traditionally been a very cisgendered, very straight, very white space. (Em points out that she hates to use the term traditionally—because nothing should ever be traditionally that exclusionary—though in publishing as well as other spaces—that is often the case.)
  • Mia says there is a lot of weight and pressure that is placed on authors (such as herself) because they have to prove themselves in a way that white, straight authors typically don’t. They can be seen as a publishing risk.
  • Mia says diverse authors are under pressure to prove that they aren’t niche—though her books have a Filipino protagonist and feature Filipino family and traditions—they aren’t written exclusively for Filipino people and that all cozy readers can enjoy them.
  • Mia points out that also, because there is so little representation, that people within the community can tend to judge it even harsher, if the experience reflected in the book doesn’t align with the reader’s own experience. . 
  • Em mentions that one thing everyone can do to support books from underrepresented voices is to talk about them online. Leave reviews. Leave stars. Ask for them at your library.
  • Em reads the blurb for Mia’s sophomore book—HOMICIDE AND HALO HALO, which is about death at a beauty pageant. She asks Mia if she is a former pageant girl.
  • Mia says no, not at all. BUT she asked herself what was one of the things that small town America and the Philippines have in common. Answer? Beauty pageants. Both places have a love of pageants and beauty queens.
  • Em admits that she was in the Mayhaw Festival Pageant as a teen (please don’t take my feminist card!)
  • Mia says no shade to beauty pageants if that is a thing a person wants to do, and Em completely agrees.
  • (For the record—I (Em) only meant that I’m not proud admit I was in a pageant… because…well…Let’s just say Grace isn’t my middle name. Picture a giraffe in heels and that was me in a pageant. Totally not dissing beauty queens, fwiw.)
  • Mia says there is usually a very generous scholarship attached to pageants. Mia researched the issue—why does Filipino culture love pageants? Many of the women competing live in poverty and these pageants and their cash prizes and generous scholarships offer a way out. Once they win and make it—they are able to give back to their community.
  • In the Philippines, you are never *just* a beauty queen. You basically become an activist. You become the face of the place you are from. 
  • And, as Mia points out, college is not cheap.
  • However, pageants also can offer great fodder for plot. 
  • EJ points out that if you are going to tackle the pageant world in fiction, that there are tropes embedded into it. She asks Mia if she had a favorite.
  • Mia talks about how she got to create the prima-donna character. And the making a statement character.
  • Mia says that people often talk about second-book-syndrome. And that—coupled with a pandemic—that HOMICIDE AND HALO HALO was difficult to write. 
  • Em asks Mia if there is a genre that her readers would be surprised to learn that Mia loved to read—one outside of cozies.
  • Mia says that if you looked at her as a cozy author and didn’t know her—you might be surprised to learn she is a huge geek and loves graphic novels and video games. 
  • Mia says that she loves fantasy novels and at one time thought she’d be a fantasy author, but right now she doesn’t have the attention span for a thousand page novel. At the moment she is reading a lot of BIPOC romance because they bring her so much joy.
  • EJ and Em and Mia play Troped Out!
  • First question from EJ: Little old lady sleuth or detective pet? 
  • Mia picks little old lady sleuth! She loves a good pet in a story (including her own novels) but there’s something fun and devious about little old ladies.
  • EJ says that it was such a missed opportunity for Betty White to never play a little old lady crime fighter. 
  • Em says, she thought EJ was going to say villain—and asks if she has seen Lake Placid—because didn’t Betty White feed people to crocodiles?
  • Mia mentions the book, AN ELDERLY LADY IS UP TO NO GOOD. It is a book of short stories and if you go into them not knowing what to expect you will be very surprised.
  • Mia joins Em and EJ as team no-secret-baby in romance—HOWEVER Mia points out that secret baby works well in mystery. THAT is a completely different story when you switch genres.
  • They discuss if it would be better to be changed into a vampire or werewolf and agree that vampire all the way. Em points out that it would take a very particular type of person to want to be a werewolf.
  • Em decides to ask the same question—but switching genres to romance. Werewolf or Vampire?
  • Werewolves give a very alpha vibe. Mia says a werewolf could be more of a fling, while a Vampire could be more of a relationship—you’re literally together forever.
  • Em thinks a dorky werewolf is key.
  • Mia says she does appreciate a good HIMBO (don’t we all??). She says that she is being swayed to team Werewolf.
  • Dumb, sweet, HIMBO werewolf. Yes. And Vampire bestie.

EPISODE LINKS

Connect with Mia
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MPMtheWriter  (that is @MPMtheWriter on twitter)

Mia offers book coaching services. You can find out more about the services she offers here: https://www.miapmanansala.com/book-coaching-services

Catch the panel, "Kumain ka na ba?" Filipino Food is Love, Family, and Home, on youtube right here: https://t.co/kLXa7NLIaU

Mia’s and the rest of our guests books are available in the Troped Out Book Shop, online at: https://bookshop.org/shop/TropedOut


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