Never a Shortage of Ideas....

I have ANOTHER idea for a novel. I never seem to run short on ideas.

So now while Kate is turning into a smart and overconfident 16-year-old, Maggie is stewing over how someone could electronically hijack her top-secret cell phone/CIA toolkit and how to get to the seventh floor unseen, Sophronia is lying about her age so she can ride with Annie Oakley, and Melora is trying to find a contest a teen could win against an adult that would have high stakes, I am pondering this:

Wouldn't it be fun to write a murder mystery where one of the fairytale wicked witches has been murdered, and all the princesses are the suspects. Naturally, it would take the stories of the princesses and, instead of asking "how would a good person grow from these experiences", the question would be "how would this life history ruin a person?" So, for example, Sleeping Beauty is a pothead (or junkie or something). Snow White? Obsessive-compulsive. You get the idea. Each of the princesses really does have a legit motive for wanting a witch dead, you know....

Unfortunately, I haven't gotten very far on the plot. I just have a little dialog jotted down--the princesses are sitting around talking when a flying elephant zooms by and someone shoots it. They think whoever created those creatures out to be shot, too, and have his heart and brain buried under a mountain. "Have you noticed they always seem to fly overhead right after you wash your coach?!" Imagine the mess that would make. They all live in the same ostentatious neighborhood, of course, and everyone's always remodeling their castles to be better than everyone else in a serious case of Keeping Up with the Charmings.

The thing that's holding me back is the sleuth. Who would the sleuth be? The Fairy Godmother? Another fairy? One of the Handsome Princes wouldn't work because I don't think I could write a convincing male sleuth. Maybe one of the ugly stepsisters or a stepmother of someone. That would work--a wicked stepmother, who is actually a really nice, down-to-earth person who has been vilified by the "rich" set. She's not actually wicked--it's just that the princess was a real jerk who was always in trouble (stealing and stuff), and stepmommy got the blame. Hmmmm.....

I'll have to let the idea ferment some. It might conflict with my idea of taking Kate to a convention of holiday-related characters. Maybe not. The mystery can be different, although I kill a witch in one and the easter bunnies (stupid pests--always running around, multiplying like crazy, and they have no sense of propriety. Not to mention they chew the furniture and tend to run off in the middle of a conversation) in the other.

Writing is so fun.