The Bookshop Mysteries Origin Story
The origin story of The Bookshop Mysteries is an interesting one. I (Steve) was writing a middle-grade science fiction series called Diary of a Martian, about a family living on a Martian colony. It was a first-contact story full of adventure. The series was very popular and loved by readers. Diary of a Martian wasn’t an S.A. Reeves novel series, but written under my name, Stephen B. Haunts.
As a reader, though, as well as loving science fiction and fantasy, I have always enjoyed reading and watching murder mysteries. As I was writing the third book in the Diary of a Martian series, called Earthbound, I had an idea for a murder—as you do, nothing unhinged about that. I thought there was the kernel of an interesting novel in that murder idea, so I made some extensive notes and even did a little research into the murder weapon. I had no intention of writing a murder mystery at the time because I was in the writing world of Mars and aliens; something I still love, but I figured that as I get older, I might write a murder mystery later in life.
Fast forward about eighteen months, and I was relaxing one evening on the sofa with my wife, Amanda, and we were working our way through a digital box set of one of our favourite TV shows, Death in Paradise. It was while watching that show that Amanda paused the TV and said to me,
“You should try writing a murder mystery. It could be fun.”
My response was, “Well, actually, I do have an idea for a murder.” At that point, I got my laptop out and loaded up the document with the murder plan in, and showed it to Amanda. At that time, I didn’t have any characters or setting, just the murder itself, but them something wonderful happened. Within a few hours—we forgot we were watching Death in Paradise—we had the full concept for the Bookshop Mysteries in place. We set the first novel in the town we lived in, Belper in Derbyshire, and we had the idea for the Bookworm bookshop, and the owner, Gemma, and her assistant, Mavis. These ideas seemed to flow, which is when you know you might be onto something when the first burst of inspiration felt effortless.
At the end of that evening, we had a well-formed idea for the entire novel, and Amanda suggested I write it. I am a full-time writer, so that was possible, but I had another idea: why don’t we work on it together? After a quick discussion, we came up with a way of working: we plan the story together; I write the first draft, and Amanda edits the chapters as we go. As a full-time writer, I could spend the time on writing the draft, and Amanda could edit chapters as we went along, as she had a full-time job during the day. It might just work!
For book 1, A Bitter Pill, we kept the scope of the story limited, which is why book 1 is the shortest book in the series, but that was a conscious decision while we got used to working together. In the worst-case scenario, we didn’t enjoy the process, but we still had a completed novel, or it would develop into something bigger, and considering at the time of writing this post we are drafting book 7, the process went well. I’ll go into more detail on our writing process in a different post, but it’s safe to say we rather enjoyed working together. We began writing A Bitter Pill in September 2024, and we had a complete draft around May 2025; so we took it slow for book 1.
The book was ready to be released at the beginning of July 2025, but I didn’t fancy releasing the book over the summer holidays. Instead, I set up a pre-order showing the book’s cover and the book description. I then set up some Facebook Ads in the UK, US, Canada, and Australia—just £5 a day in each country—to gauge interest over the summer break with a view of launching the book in September 2025.
To our amazement, the pre-orders flowed, proving that there was a market for the type of book we were writing, which gave us the confidence to release the book, and the rest, as they say, was history and S.A Reeves was born.
S.A. Reeves - Steve and Amanda