Hazel Edwards asked Hazel Edwards:

After writing children's books, how to do feel about adding a genre and writing adult mysteries?

Hazel Edwards Many writers work in different genres simultaneously. I've always written for young children, adolescents and also adults, but mainly factual. Writing adult mysteries or crime, but with a quirky sleuth like Quinn who is a wedding and funeral celebrant, is a way of moving into different settings and cultures. And a mystery is a way of improving my plotting. I've written kids' mysteries in the past (The Frequent Flyer Twins series) but my adult ones need to be a little more complicated in the plots and motivations. I've enjoyed researching the celebrant industry too. Timely with the same sex marriage law changes but also an opportunity to meet some very personable and skilled people who are celebrants. That's really why I like to write in new genres and new settings, so I keep learning and the writing is fresh. 'Celebrant Sleuth: I Do or Die' took me over a year of 6am-8am daily plotting , with continuing research , followed by about four months of audio recording the novel where I actually read it. The reason was that the diverse gender sleuth needed an Australian voice and was a narrator, rather like a voice over. Audible will release 'Celebrant Sleuth' next month, but the print and ebooks are already popular. There were 13 chapters or episodes in the first book which could adapt well for television, but the sequel 'Wed Then Dead on The Ghan' which is an Agatha Christie themed journey, with a wedding on the real Ghan train was based on research and my family travelling from Adelaide to Darwin on the fabulous outback train which has a special mystique rather like the Orient Express. How lucky are mystery writers that they can call adventurous research, work!

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