IWSG: (Re)Working It

This first Wednesday of the month is The Insecure Writer's Support Group day, the day when writer's post about their insecurities--we all have them--and offer support, advice and share experiences of this writing life we have taken on.

Thank you to Alex Cavanaugh and his co-hosts this month,  Tamara Narayan, Patsy Collins, M.J. Fifield, and Nicohle Christopherson, for all their hard work in bringing this endeavor together.

This month's question is: Have you ever pulled out a really old story and reworked it? Did it work out?

The short answer is: No.

What I am in the process of doing, however, is taking a Young Adult series that never made it for various reasons, mostly inexperience, to Adult. So in a way, it's a bit of reworking in the sense that it's the same characters, different stories.

I've branched out and tried my hand at writing different things over the last couple of years. I was going to write more grown up stuff, and not be so "vanilla", if that's the right term. But either I'm not ready or it's just not me. I enjoy writing cozy mysteries and I don't want bad things to happen to my characters and I want there to always be a happy ending. It's quite the quandary, and quite the balance, to introduce conflict and maintain tension.

But--I enjoyed writing my YA series and now I'm enjoying writing these characters as Adults. I hope I've grown enough as a writer to pull it off. In any case, I'm working it--to the extent that I've had a new header made based on the series.

So...check out my new blog header! It's based on the world I created. My series takes place in Sabrina Shores, England, a modern day medieval village that's incredibly haunted. The ghostly residents seem to want to stay, so of course it creates lots of havoc for Indigo Eady (pictured in the forefront), ghost whisperer, and my main character.

Here's a shout out to Corona Zschusschen, my illustrator, on creating it for me! It's such a visual motivator, bringing to life the village and characters that I pour my heart into through my writing.

What about you?

Have you ever taken your characters from one age group to another? Did it work out?

Do you use visual motivators?