I submitted my 50,001-word novel today.

I started writing on November 1, with a setting and a character.  The setting was Montreal in 1967.  The character was a twenty-two -year-old woman, who becomes a private investigator. I decided two other things about her.  She would be driven by a need for Justice and she would have an overdeveloped sense of smell.

With just this to start with, I dove in and wrote the first chapter.  I decided to write in the third person, but in a few places I would write in the first person.  That was when she was a woman in her sixties, writing in the present time.  I liked her right away.  She had spunk.

I found myself doing research every day.  I needed to check out fashion, music, vehicles, police uniforms, Expo 67, Metro, names, geography, even firearms, and much, much more.  I learned a lot.

My most challenging part was writing the felons.  I had to force myself to make them more violent and unscrupulous than I was comfortable with.

I write books for pre-teens, my Magda of Mayne Island Mystery Series  www.treewithroots.ca/ so this novel, written for adults, was challenging for me.

I’ll let some time pass before I go back and rewrite this book, I think.  Idon’t know if I’ll be interested in writing for the adult market in the future.  I’ll have to wait and see.