AGING CHARACTERS by Lois Winston
When I was first asked to write a crafting cozy mystery series, I decided my amateur sleuth would be in her early forties and have two teenage sons. Having older children would give her more sleuthing flexibility. She wouldn’t have to rely on childcare when she set out investigating a crime, and she could rely on her kids to pull a casserole out of the fridge and pop it in the oven when she was running late. What I didn’t think about until the series sold was that those teenagers would go off to college sooner rather than later if I allowed the books to progress in real time. I not only wanted to keep the kids around for as long as possible, but I also wanted to keep them in their teens. Anyone who has ever raised teenage boys will realize the character and plot potential that can be mined from the average teenage boy. However, in my series, Alex and Nick are dealing with more than run-of-mill teenage angst, rebellion, and hormones. The series opens with their father having just ...