Into the dark

 My annual complaint at the Equinox - Mabon, if you are in touch with your Pagan roots - which took place on Monday. Now it will just keep getting darker until the winter solstice, the shortest day, on 21 December. 

I know that I write the darker side of romance, and I have a professed ambition to one day write a gothic novel,  but I really don't like the dark, short days - and the cold too. I know that celebrating Autumn, or Fall, is a bit of a thing at the moment - harvest festivals, making preserves from excess fruit and vegetables, foraging, drinking pumpkin spice latte, curling up on sofas with cushions and throws and fluffy blankets, watching re-runs of The Gilmore Girls (yes, that is apparently a thing) but it is not me. I'm all for the sunshine and the daylight. If there is such a thing as re-incarnation then coming back as something that hibernates sounds attractive. A bear maybe. Eat as much as you can, then sleep for five months or so. I just looked that up and apparently snails can hibernate for up to three years. Not in my garden they don't - the pesky things are always on the prowl. But who would want to be a snail anyway? 

Putting the garden to bed, painting the outdoor furniture, hunting out the fleece bags to wrap my baby olive and bay trees, before it gets really cold are my autumn rituals, and I wouldn't really call them a celebration. One thing I do like is planting bulbs. I'm waiting for the box I have ordered to arrive - I already have some posh new pots to put them in - but that too is looking forward to warmer sunnier days of spring! 

I'm just not built for this time of year. 

You can't stop at one ...

 corpses, that is. 

I was pondering this when reading an American romantic suspense/thriller and considering our obsession - as readers - with serial killers. IRL serial killers are quite rare - but you wouldn't know it from the number of novels there are that feature one. It is a sad fact that victims of violence in the real world are very likely to know the person responsible - a family member, friend, co-worker ... But, of course, that's not dramatic. And it's not just thrillers that have a superfluity of bodies - even a cosy crime is obliged to have more than one, traditionally the second being the person who was shaping up to be the chief suspect. And we've spoken before about the victim who lets it be known that they have some sort of information/clue and is, of course, killed before they can reveal it.  And don't let's get started on Shakespeare, or Jacobean drama in general. Of course, they knew what they were doing. Events and situations that would be horrific IRL are simply thrilling on the stage, or between the covers. 

More than one corpse is understandable on one level - it ramps up the tension, but the other thing I was thinking, when reading that thriller, was that it allows the plot to develop as a puzzle. It doesn't matter if it is a cosy or a thriller a major part of the enjoyment is watching the sleuth unravel what is going on. OK, that can be done with one murder, but a series of deaths allows the mystery to develop as the investigator learns more and more about their adversary.  

Apart from the thoughts brought out by my reading matter, the topic has been on my mind lately as I'm currently still toying with the idea of having a dabble in cosy crime, as several fellow romance authors have done lately. I have characters nudging me, and what might be a love triangle floating around.  I'd never do that in a romantic suspense because I'm firmly of the belief that there has to be a couple that you can root for all through the book. The growth of the romance is an essential ingredient, so I wouldn't mess with it by introducing doubt, but in a book that would be slewed towards crime, not romance ... Well, maybe. There would still have to be some romance - that's a given in my writing - but the chance to walk on the wilder side? Again maybe. It's all maybe at the moment - but when something settles, I promise you'll be the first to know.    

A Writer's Tropes?

 Tropes are a thing at the moment - grumpy/sunshine, only one bed, fake fiance - you know the list. Writers do their best to fulfil readers' expectations in respect of these themes - but it occurred to me the other day that there are a few things that you might call writer's tropes - ideas that form a backbone or scaffolding for creating a story. I've started a list;

Who's the Daddy? 

Paternity issues often loom large - the mystery of an absent unknown father; children who are not the actual offspring of the person they though they were, opening all sorts of cans of worms, and catnip for an author; late discovery of paternal responsibility - I rather like that one, when the hapless unwitting dad find himself suddenly in charge of a child if something has happened to the mother.  

Return to Sender

Letters. We've spoken about these before. One of the big backbones. Everyone knows my dislike of the letter that is read but it's contents not disclosed to the reader - that one gets the book aimed straight at the wall. I'm uneasy too of the letter that is put away that would have ended the book right there if it had been opened. There had better  be a good reason for that, but I am OK if there is a good reason. And, as we know, a letter is often the only way the past can 'talk'  to the present. And that bundle of old love notes, tied with ribbon and scented with lavender ...

Fish out of water

This one sometimes features as a reader trope too. moving a character out of their comfort zone - from city to small town. to a new country, from rags to riches, or the other way around - a good start point for a novel working with the character to cope with a whole new world - and one that the reader might well identify with.

Violence  

The shock factor. A requirement for most crime and thriller stories, presented in different ways of course, but also an element of other kinds of story - a romance can begin with a violent act or event that has tragic consequences that kick start the story. Not just the body in the Library, although that is more or less a given for cosy crime. A fatal plane, car or train crash, a suicide, an unexpected death, even if a natural one, all with life changing implications for other people surrounding the person who dies.

There are probably many more, and I'll add them if I think of them. The big thing is that they are a pivot  - an agent for change - a place where a story starts or moves to a new track.

 And that's where it gets interesting ... 

The fashion in titles

 My post a couple of weeks ago on The Daughter of Time got me thinking about how much book titles have changed. At the era the book was written - during, and pre and post WWII - popular and genre fiction had much more 'flowery' titles. Quotations from literature - plays and poems. I'm thinking of the much loved Mary Stewart who often used Shakespeare or poetry - but also Jane Aiken Hodge, Agatha Christie, Evelyn Waugh, Earnest Hemingway ... to name a few. Now publisher seem to expect titles that are much more 'What it says on the tin.' 

In the age of social and multi media, shorter attention spans and a plethora of book titles on offer I can understand the appeal of letting the reader know what to expect. And maybe we are not so well read in the classics these days, making those quotation titles less easy to relate to the content of the book? It does make me a little sad though when I see yet another 'signpost' title that could be applied to any number of genre offerings. Am I an old romantic? Yes, I think so. After a rummage on the Internet I found that poetry and the Bible are particular old time favourites and there are some more recent examples - P D James and Ruth Rendell used literary quotes as have Val McDermid, Tracey Chevalier and Sally Rooney. I have a particular weakness for Jacobean drama, but it is not to everyone's taste and maybe you do need to know where Cover Her Face (P D James) or Nine Coaches Waiting (Mary Stewart) actually come from and the sinister gothic horrors that lie behind them to fully understand. I suspect that in 2025 both authors would have been asked to chose something more prosaic - or have it chosen for them. Like covers, authors often don't have a lot of agency in these things. Unless you are self published of course. Then you can chose what you like -  but I'm guessing that the choice would be more likely to be modelled on the top ten best sellers than what was appearing on stage in 1613.