I recently gave you all a little progress update on Detective Mo 3.

If you read it, you may recall that I was concerned it may be a little too heavy for the age-group I have thus far been aiming Detective Mo at (and I’m a strong believer in being consistent with your audience when writing a series of books!). Well, the more I work on it the more I’m starting to think that Detective Mo 3 in its current form is just a bit too complicated and even a little intense to sit comfortably in the Detective Mo series. The bad guy was just a little too sinister; the mystery just a little too serious; the clues just a little too difficult to resolve.

However, I did quite like it so, I here’s what I’ve decided to do:

First, I’ve re-written Detective Mo 3. I’ve written out the whole arch-nemesis idea, and returned to a simple, light-hearted sort of mystery that should be fairly straight-forward for children and shouldn’t give them too many nightmares.

I have, however, kept the original manuscript. I plan to expand it into a mystery novel for slightly older children with a different protagonist. Goodness knows when I’ll have time to do that as I am already up to my armpits in Detective Mo 3 and Project E (title tba) to say nothing of the fact I’m still querying for an agent but… that’s the plan anyway.