Writerly matters

 A cookie for writers! Patti from Baked Ideas made this amazing edible gingerbread typewriter for benefit of City Harvest, and it is displayed at NYC's Parker Meridien Hotel. From Shelf Awareness this morning.
And did you know that today is St. Lucia's day--the patron saint of writers? Celebrate by writing an extra 500 words, with Saint Lucia guiding your fingers over the keyboard.
I've been pondering series in the mystery genre. I'm reading number twenty-something in a highly successful series, but I find it's not as compelling as the earlier books were. I don't know if that's me or if the heroine had run her course about five books back. I do know of several series that are up in the twenties now. Some that I still follow ardently--Deborah's Crombie's Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James series and Julia Spencer-Fleming's Rev. Claire Ferguson and Russ Van Alstyne series--have ten or less, but there are several others I quit reading. I now have three books written in my Kelly O'Connell mystery series--number two is due out in April and number three in August--and I'm pondering the future. Both my beta reader (I've finally learned to use that term instead of mentor) and publisher both say I'm not through with Kelly and I do have ideas for number four which means I'll have to do number five, because I have that Oriental thing against even numbers.
But I also have a first in another series, and I'd like to see if it would fly. My publisher suggests interspersing the first of the Blue Plate series with the Kelly O'Connell books, and I'm liking that idea. How about you? Do you like to read series? Write them? When is enoiugh enough?
My beta reader sent his notes on the third Kelly mystery today. He pointed out I had a man and a dog both named Gus--I was aware of it but Gus the dog was in previous books, and Gus seemed to fit the new character. But Fred said he had quite a turn when Kelly hugged Gus after a particularly traumatic scene--I meant the dog, of course. So Gus the man is now Otto. I remember once writing three books in a y/a series; in the first two, the young boy's name was Davey; in the third book, for some inexplicable reason, I called him Josh. The editor wrote to ask, "Who's Josh?"