Members

Stone Lyon Society

The doors are open. The lamps are lit. It's time to write your mystery novel.

Cozy and traditional mystery, taught by working authors.

Claim your keyPeek through the window

Online · Self-paced · Live monthly sessions

  • 12 months — one finished manuscript
  • Taught by working mystery and crime authors
  • Optional 1:1s and manuscript editing

Enrollment is open for fall.

Fall enrollment is open. Reserve free, pay $995 in October — or $895 in full today.

Twenty founding seats at $895.

See seats

What we believe.

We're a school for the people who carry a half-finished mystery in their head. Who read Penny and Osman and Horowitz and want to write what they love. Who pick up Christie or Sayers, or French or Atkinson, and feel the form still has more to give.

We teach cozy mystery, traditional whodunit, and literary crime. The sub-genres have different rules. The craft is the same.

Eight rooms. Eighty leads. One finished manuscript.

The curriculum is a house. Eight rooms, each teaching one part of the craft. The Library for the genre, the Map Room for the puzzle, the Study where you write the book. Inside them, eighty leads: a short lesson, a passage from a working mystery, one exercise, one tool at the door. You leave every room with work you can hold, one step closer to the Gates, and to your finished manuscript.

Working authors. Reading your pages. By hand.

Every page you submit is read by a working mystery author, publishing right now in the genre you want to write. By hand. In their own voice. The strange turn of phrase. The way your sleuth thinks in fragments when she's nervous. The edge that makes a manuscript yours. AI doesn't read your work here. Voice is the work.

Cozy and traditional mystery, taught like the craft it is.

We're here to put more good books on bookstore shelves. To connect writers who love this genre with the working authors who came before them. To honor the puzzle, the village, and the reveal as the craft they are. The readers waiting for these books, and they are waiting, deserve writers who know what they're doing. We're trying to be useful in that work.

Curriculum.

Eight rooms. Eighty leads. One finished manuscript.

The house is built for two kinds of writers. Dive in full time and the fast track runs about thirty weeks, front door to Gates. Moonlighting around a day job? Your key is good for a full year, and the rooms don't mind waiting.

Stone Lyon Society
Members Only
Ground & First Floor

Tap a room to step inside

▼ front door ▼
Ground Floor
First Floor

Peek through the window

A look inside the House.

Curious about what lurks behind the large oak door? Swipe through to see what's on the other side. We think it's a mystery worth solving.

01

The Foyer

Where every visit begins — with a nudge back to where you left off.

01 / 08

Seen enough?

Fall enrollment is open. Claim your key and step inside.

Claim your key →Or get the letter ↓

The Residency

A year inside a house built for one book.

Online · Self-paced · Live monthly sessions on Zoom

You carry a mystery around in your head. Maybe it's half-drafted, maybe it's just the itch that won't quit. What's missing isn't talent — it's a path from the blank page to a finished book, taught by people who actually write the genre you love.

MEMBER SEAT · STONE LYON SOCIETY

The Residency: Member Seat

A year inside the House. Every room, every live masterclass, the Parlour. Yours at your own pace.

Fully online · Self-paced Rooms · Live Zoom sessions

$1,095$995Early-bird · save $100

Reserve your seat now. Nothing due today — your $995 tuition is charged when classes open in October. We'll remind you first.

Classes open in October. Early-bird pricing ends when the doors open.

  • One finished manuscript. The whole House is built around a single outcome — the book, done. Ready to pitch and publish.
  • A path, room by room. Eight rooms take you from the first body to the final reveal. You always know your next move.
  • Taught by working mystery authors. People publishing cozy and traditional mystery right now — not generic gurus.
  • The Opening Moves. Our scene method — get writing fast and rescue a scene that's dying on the table. Yours to start today.
  • Your pace, your way. Self-paced for a full year. Sprint it full-time or moonlight around a day job.
  • Live masterclasses, monthly. Working authors, live and themed to the rooms — recorded if you can't make it.
  • Feedback only when you want it. Add a mentor read, a line edit, or query help à la carte. Never a package you won't use.
  • A Parlour of your own. A private members' community built like a club — channels for each room, wires between writers, and a feedback thread that reaches the founder directly.
  • Human, never AI. Humans teach here, and humans read your pages. Your work stays yours.
Early-bird rate locked inFirst accessThe Parlour

The early-bird discount is here. Then it's gone.

$995 for the full year, locked before classes start this fall. Members who claim a key before the doors open keep the early-bird price and a few quiet perks reserved for the people who showed up first.

Claim your key

Founding members enter first.

The Opening Moves

A working tool · Yours now

Where the writing actually happens.

Plot, structure, character. There's brilliant work out there on the high-level questions. What's harder to find is help with what happens at the level of the scene. The paragraph. The sentence. The work of opening a blank document and getting the first words onto it. We've all been there.

We start at the smallest unit. The scene. The paragraph. The sentence. Four days, one scene built from scratch, alongside the school's founder.

Once you can write a scene that lives, you can write anything.

Four days. One useful tool. Plus our Sunday Letter after. No spam, no nonsense. Just craft.

Taught by the working authors of the genre.

A small bench of mystery authors who publish right now in the genre you want to write in. Traditionally published, indie published, hybrid. We don't gatekeep on imprint. We hire for craft, teaching disposition, and time on the page.

Tap the card to read her bio →

A working cozy author
A traditional whodunit voice
A literary crime writer
Claim your key to learn from published authors →

The founder

A note from Patrick.

I love to read.

And that's where it all starts, isn't it?

I wasn't always a voracious reader, though. In fact, I loathed reading for the better part of my childhood. I spent most of my time in front of a television watching shows and movies I was far too young to watch. It wasn't until that beautiful coalescence of the right book at the right moment with the right teacher that it all turned around for me. That was in high school, and I never looked back. I even majored in English Literature for my undergraduate degree.

I still wasn't a great reader at that time, though. How was I supposed to move beyond simply comprehending the words? To find theme and meaning? To dig my hands into the soil of the text and sift, search, and feel out the sublayer until I could extract the subtextual that, maybe, even the author wasn't aware of?

Fortunately, my professors didn't sniff me out. Well, most of them didn't. I think one suspected. I'm looking at you, Professor Frank.

The stacks of books from multiple classes, ranging from the classics to modern prize winners, were overwhelming. But they broadened my range. Gave me a deeper appreciation for the art form. I even wrote three full novels while I was an undergrad. That's right, I got the bug. I spent nights and weekends and free periods scribbling in a notepad or glued to a monitor to produce three horrendous, wandering, mixed-genre novels that should never see the light of day. And I love them whole-heartedly.

I carried on to an MFA in Writing for Film and Television, where I wrote screenplays, directed film sets, and collaborated with people much cooler than I could dream of being. A few of those scripts have placed in competitions, most recently in 2026.

Somewhere along the lines, though, life took me in a new direction. I built a career in higher education administration, teaching writing on the side. Eventually, I parlayed that into a career in business. Business! How the heck did I let that happen? But turns out I had a knack for it. Maybe that observation and critical thinking I'd developed while analyzing stacks of books was paying off.

I never lost the itch, though. I kept writing. Bit of this and that. Scripts. Poetry. Song lyrics. Prose. You name it.

I never stopped reading, either. I love literary fiction, especially from British and European authors. But still, nothing seeps into my bones and sweeps me away the way a good mystery does.

I read every night before bed. A book typically sagging from my hands and down to my belly as my head lulls in my rocking chair, in the corner of my primary bedroom. I always have a mystery in hand or on deck. I force myself to alternate in literary fiction or other genres so I can better appreciate returning to my comfort zone.

Maybe it hit me in that rocking chair. Maybe earlier, somewhere I've forgotten. I want to see more mystery books on the bookshelves. I want more options, not just the few series I've personally fallen in love with. (Richard Osman has taken part of my year, every year, recently.) What if I built a place where aspiring mystery writers could learn from the working authors who came before them? More good books on bookstore shelves. More writers writing the genre I love.

That's what Stone Lyon Society is meant to do.

I'm here to keep my own writing alive and well, alongside yours.

Oh, and the name.

Stone Lyon Society is named for two families who settled in northern New Hampshire and reportedly didn't get along. The Stones and the Lyons, somewhere in the mountains around Lancaster, not far from the Canadian border. New England's modest answer to the Hatfields and McCoys, by all accounts. Probably with fewer firearms. Probably more politely worded grudges.

I'm descended from both. I didn't learn that until my fortieth year, after I'd moved back to the region where the families originally settled, and I started pulling at the thread. The investigation is ongoing. Quebec is involved. Europe before that. There's more to find.

Which, if you think about it, makes a writing school for mystery a fitting place to spend the rest of my working life.

I hope it brings you the same joy it does me.

Now, let's go write our way into a corner and see if we can't get out of it.

— Patrick

S·L

Questions from the doorway

A few things people ask before they knock.

  • What is Stone Lyon Society?

    A writing school for cozy and traditional mystery. Eight rooms, eighty leads, one finished manuscript. You learn the craft from authors publishing in the genre right now, at your own pace, and you leave with a book you can pitch.

  • What's the Opening Moves?

    Our scene method, and it's yours free right now. Six things every good scene does — somewhere, somehow, not always in order. Once you can name them, you can find them, and when a scene's dying on the table you can trace it back to the one that didn't land. Works for mystery. Works for whatever you're writing. It's one tool, not the whole school — but it's a good place to start.

  • When do classes start?

    This fall. The Foyer, the community, and the Opening Moves are open now — start there. The rooms open for the fall term, and your year begins the day the doors do.

  • What does the experience feel like?

    Self-paced, room by room. Each room guides you through one part of the craft — the Library for the form, the Map Room for the plot and clues, the Study where you write — and you leave every one with something you can hold. An outline. A character bible. A passage. Drafted pages. Sprint it full-time in about thirty weeks, or moonlight around a day job across the year. The rooms don't mind waiting.

  • How do the live sessions work?

    Twice a month, a working author teaches live — a masterclass themed to one of the rooms. Come with questions. Can't make it? We record every one, so you never lose a session to a scheduling conflict.

  • Who teaches?

    Working mystery authors, publishing right now in the genre you want to write. Traditionally published, indie, hybrid — we hire for craft and the ability to teach it, not for the imprint. Korina Moss, an Agatha Award winner, is first at the High Table. More names as the doors open.

  • Does AI read my work?

    No. Humans teach here, and humans read your pages, by hand, in their own voice. Your voice is the work. A machine can't see it.

  • What are the add-ons, and why do they cost more?

    You pay for the craft, and nothing else. The whole House — every room, the live sessions, the community — is everything you need to get the book done. One price. Some writers will want more, though: closer guidance, a way to move faster. We offer that. We just didn't fold it into the price and make everyone pay for what only some will use. So the extras wait behind a secret passage — a mentor read, a line edit, query help — and you open them when you need them, and only then. Starting at $100, scaling with the work. We don't make you buy what you won't use.

  • What does it cost?

    $1,095 for a full year in the House — every room, every live session, the community, all of it, at your own pace. We intentionally keep tuition low, a fraction of the cost of other online writing schools or MFA programs. We bring in discounts whenever we can, too, so keep that magnifying glass in hand.

  • What if I already have my own way of writing?

    Good. We're built for it. Brandon Sanderson splits writers into planners and discovery writers — I'm borrowing his framing because it's the most honest one I've found. He writes fantasy, not mystery. But there's sharp mystery work buried in those books, and we'll take the lesson wherever it lives. The House has a staircase for each. Not sure which is yours? We help you find that out early, so you never climb into a room that fights the way you work. There's no single way to solve a mystery. We're just on your side for the investigation.

  • What am I charged today?

    Nothing, if you enroll for fall — your card holds your place, and we take the balance when classes start, with a note first. Or pay in full now at the founding rate and you're set for the year, nothing due at launch. Either way, cancel any time before classes start.

  • Why enroll now instead of waiting?

    Early-bird pricing ends when the doors open this fall. Come in now and you lock the rate, you're first through the doors, and you can step into the Foyer today. Pay in full for extra benefits.

  • Can I change my mind?

    Yes. Any time before classes start, for any reason, in full. And the first seven days after, once you're inside.

Not ready to enroll?

Letters from the Drawing Room.

Leave your first name and email. We'll send a free 4-day mini course on scene craft — and a letter every Sunday after. We'll open the door when we open the door.

Or, if you're ready — claim your key and register for fall →