Lainey Quilholt Mysteries

Hello to all of you who stop by here (whether you make a comment or not, that's fine, but I love to hear your thoughts).

Today, I thought I would touch on a new project I'm working on. This is one of those things where, as a writer, you're working on aspects of the possibility of a new novel (or story). I've had this in the back of my mind for a while. It's only begun to take shape.

In fact only today I came up with my MC's last name. I'd already settled on Lainey. But the last name had to sort of be unusual. One that could be memorable. I was reading an article--totally unrelated to anything. I saw the name Leona Spray Quilhot. I liked the last name but as I said it I wanted to put that extra 'l' in it. Thus, Quilholt was what I settled on.

I've got the beginning two pages, which will be worked on, of course. But the gentleman who walks into the store had to grab interest.

I've always wanted to write a mystery. I've been working on studying how they are done. Here's a link on 15 tips for writing a murder mystery by Elizabeth Craig. This has been something I've been working on for a while, so the post is a few years old. But the tips are excellent.

And here is the sub-genres of mysteries. (scroll down to "mysteries", this has all sub-genres, if you want to look into any other genre, like horror, sci-fi, etc.) I had no idea there were so many sub-genres of mysteries, but when you read each one it makes sense. Mine, the Lainey Quilholt Mysteries will be teen or YA.

I'll need to keep notes on a number of things--like suspects (you don't want more than 5, because it's too hard for readers to remember them all), and, of course, Red herrings.

The one thing I haven't settled upon is the murder itself, and the motive. I'm leaning toward jealousy, and the murder of either a wife, or the current husband/lover. That sort of thing. Lainey Quilholt lives in a small river town in Iowa. Why Iowa, I don't know, but at the moment, it's what I'm going with. I want to have it in the Mid-west, but not in Illinois. I actually have a small, river town in mind, but need to do more research--and go and see it and get more detail about the layout and such. 

I've put up a facebook page for this series. There, I'll be posting/have posted pages I've been writing, if you want to take a look. I've just posted the first page of the first chapter there. It's really raw, and will probably, as I said, change with rewrites, but it's at least a start.

Have you been thinking of writing something different, or in a different genre than you normally write?