The Case of the Repeating Symbols: Fireworks from the Otherworld

--By Kirsten Weiss, cozy mystery author

Photo by Arthur Chauvineau on Unsplash

I’m knee-deep in editing Death in Red, White and Rooibos, playing with motifs like some half-mad painter who can’t leave well enough alone.

And I catch myself thinking: Why the hell am I doing this?

Yes, fireworks make excellent motifs. They’re disruptive, chaotic—a call to adventure.

They also represent transformation from something small, dark, and contained to something loud and bright.

But I write cozy mysteries, for God’s sake.

Warm mugs and murder.

Most readers want the puzzle, the cat, and the cinnamon roll that’s the clue to the killer (recipe in the back of the book).

They don’t care about motifs.

But the old masters did.

They wove symbols and repeating images like golden threads so their stories would hum long after the last page.

They did it for depth. Resonance. Meaning.

For cohesion that makes the tale feel alive.

But what if the motif was something… more?

What if it pointed at something higher? Something just beyond the veil of the page?

Robert Moss writes about the symbols that stalk our ordinary days—if only we’d train our eyes to see.

Maybe it’s because I’m not only a mystery writer but also a cozy mystery reader, I love looking for clues.

Solving a literary murder, after all, is just another kind of divination—a way of reading the hidden patterns in human behavior.

Whether these symbols are whispers from the otherworld or smoke signals from our own unconscious, they hit like lightning and crack us open.

Because symbols are the native tongue of the unconscious.

It’s why the Tarot works—every card is a little altar of images.

It’s why the witch reaches for a crow’s feather to cast her spell and to focus her intent.

Symbols slip past the gatekeeper of the rational mind and speak straight to the soul.

And when we pause over a motif in a book and ask, What are you trying to tell me?—we’re practicing.

We’re building the same muscle we’ll need when the dream arrives at 3 AM offering a red necklace and release.

Or when a blue knight keeps showing up on road signs and big rigs like a spammer offering to update your auto warranty.

And if a motif is truly alive, it isn’t just story decoration.

It’s the drumbeat in the heroine’s chest.

It’s the call.

The repeating messenger.

The thing that circles back again and again until the heroine finally turns, listens, and changes.

Because that’s what good story arcs do.

And maybe—just maybe—that’s what good lives do, too.

They explode, again and again, until we see the light.