I edited for about 90 minutes yesterday. The work involved incorporating all my younger son had written and improving a couple of scenes I’d been thinking about. I still need to read through the whole thing one more time, fixing little things and looking for major problems. Then, it will be ready to move to the next stage.

This story my family and I have written is a children’s mystery that takes place at the American Suzuki Institute, focusing on four 12 to 13 year olds (2 boys, 2 girls) and a stolen violin. The violin is a mythical “Goldin” violin–very expensive, with almost magical qualities to it.

Both of my kids are Suzuki violinists and have been attending this “summer violin camp” for many years. They are the experts for anything having to do with music. We want to run the manuscript by the director of the Institute to make sure all the details regarding the running of the Institute are accurate. One of the main characters is an actual Suzuki teacher. We need to get permission from him to use him as a character, and see if he wants to fix any of the “witty banter” associated with his lessons.

So, the next stage will be to show the manuscript to the director and the teacher and see what they have to say.

The beauty of this book is that it has a ready market of readers: attendees of the American Suzuki Institute. Hopefully the story will be good enough that word can spread out of that demographic to the general kid-reading public.

My husband has helped with ideas for the story and, as our resident computer expert, will be in charge of turning the manuscript into an actual book. We plan to self-publish this spring and have the book ready for the summer institute.

Check back here to get updates on The Stolen Goldin Violin.