Well that was a surprisingly quick decision to make. I've decided to scrap my third novel, Long Shadows, and move onto the idea I had for number four.

The idea came to me yesterday and just made sense, but with hindsight, I think the decision has been brewing for a while.

My next book will be a humorous crime story that I hope will become a series of novels. Having contacted agents recently with Nothing Ventured, I was amazed at how many particularly wanted to receive crime novels. It was difficult to find any that actually stated they took on humorous novelists. When humour was mentioned on their websites it was usually for either children's books or for non-fiction.

One agent that got back to me said that I had a great beginning and a lively narrative voice but that humour was difficult to sell as it's subjective. Personally I think that could be applied to all novels. Just because someone likes one particular book in a genre it doesn't mean they'll like the next book by the same author or another writer in the same genre. Surely, if an agent thinks a submission is good, he/she should at least request to see the whole book. There's a story behind the humour after all.

But anyway, that is what I was up against with Agents. Perhaps my crime novel, although still humorous, will have more of a chance.

So it was probably while I was contacting agents that I first considered writing the crime novel next but it was only yesterday I realised that perhaps I didn't need to write Long Shadows at all. It's a follow on from Driven to Distraction and, to be honest, I haven't sold that many copies of the first novel for it to warrant a sequel.

That's not to say writing a first draft of number 3 was a waste. I can still use some of the ideas/settings in my crime series; especially if I set those in my fictional county of Tenhamshire. I might as well use it now that I've created it; like Thomas Hardy's Wessex or Caroline Graham's Midsomer.

As soon as I'd taken the decision to scrap Long Shadows I began getting more ideas for, what I'm calling, my Maggie Reynolds Series. In Driven to Distraction, the coach party was meant to be staying in a spa town called Cunden Lingus. I was using this in book 3 as a work place for the character of Angela. I'm probably going to use this now as my setting for the crime series. The town (a cross between Bath and Salisbury) has recently been given city status and the mayor is pleased with the amount of investment in her new city and looks forward to an increase in tourism. What she doesn't need is a local serial killer spoiling that. The police put out a public appeal for information. Maggie Reynolds has some for them but she's reluctant to get involved due to the source of that information...and that's all I'm sharing so far.

Suffice it to say, I think my holiday from writing is over.