I grew up in the woods and now live in a different part of the forest. But I found my neighborhood in 2019.

Writing, as they say, is a lonely pursuit. Unless, of course, you find your neighborhood. For me, that was discovered at Crime Wave six years ago. I’d dabbled with writing ever since graduating from college in 1989. Self-published a book. Shopped a few others around.

I thought my shtick was historical fiction and attended some conferences, but I did not relate to most of the attendees. It seemed that they were largely romance authors who write about love in the past. Perfectly fine, but it was not my shtick.

Luckily, I was not yet relegated to a desk in the woods. I was busy raising kids, coaching sports, running businesses, and teaching school.

In 2019, I attended Crime Wave in Portland, Maine, and that all changed. Writing became my neighborhood. It took me a very short time to realize that people who write about murder, mayhem, and mystery are my community. My neighborhood. My people.

Crime conferences are a great time for bonding, of course, and I attend as many as finances and time allow, which is not nearly enough. But the connections happen everywhere, every day. My publisher, Encircle Publications, who luckily published mysteries as well as historical fiction, began a weekly happy hour on Zoom where their writers met to chat about books and things. Just hang out. My circle widened.

From those connections made at conferences and happy hour, I began doing joint author events. These began with a few close friends at Encircle, BJ Magnani, S. Lee Manning, and Kevin St. Jarre at the start, but has slowly rippled wider and wider to include so many more author friends than I can even count.

In the past year, I have been involved in countless events with other writers. I have interviewed authors about their books and launches. I’ve been in conversation at events with other writers about our writing. I’ve been on panels, at roundtables, teaching workshops, attending Noir at the Bar events, done COST TALKS to audiences, signed at bookstores, been featured at book clubs, and become fully enmeshed in my crime writing neighborhood.

Of course, I spend many an hour at my desk with my headphones on staring at this laptop screen as words emerge in front of me creating new friends and neighborhoods. But it is nice to get out and embrace my living neighborhood as well.

Murder, mayhem, and mystery might not be Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, but it is My Neighborhood, and I relish in it and the people around me every day of my life.

About the Author

Matt Cost was a history major at Trinity College. He owned a mystery bookstore, a video store, and a gym, before serving a ten-year sentence as a junior high school teacher. In 2014 he was released and began writing. And that’s what he does. He writes histories and mysteries.

Cost has published six books in the Mainely Mystery series, starting with Mainely Power. He has also published six books in the Clay Wolfe Trap series, starting with Wolfe Trap. There are two books in the Brooklyn 8 Ballo series, starting with Velma Gone Awry. For historical novels, Cost has published At Every Hazard and its sequel, Love in a Time of Hate, as well as I am Cuba. The Not So Merry Adventures of Max Creed began a new series this past April. Glow Trap is his eighteenth published book.

Cost now lives in Brunswick, Maine, with his wife, Harper. There are four grown children: Brittany, Pearson, Miranda, and Ryan. They have been replaced in the home with four dogs. Cost now spends his days at the computer, writing.