Mystery and Romance or, in the UK, Crime and Romance – two genres which, on the surface, seem to operate in different dimensions and act on different parts of the psyche. In one, the bodice is ripped by the fumbling hands of a brooding, handsome gentleman whose hunger and love are matched by that of its wearer; in the other, the hands don’t fumble because they’re deliberate as the serial killer, intent on adding another mammary gland to the collection in his Sheraton mahogany display cabinet, wields his razor.

But both are subject to often strict conventions. For the most part, Romance calls for happy endings, but then so does Crime – well, endings anyway. The mystery must be solved, the culprit apprehended or punished in some other way. There are, of course, examples which subvert the rules, but we only recognise them because the rules are there. The point is that, in both genres, resolution is reached and fans are happy that their desires have been sated yet again.

In the end, though, the rules are only sacrosanct because the characters accept them as such. Romantic heroes and heroines believe in the possibility of happiness. Not only that, it’s a happiness which, according to the rules, will be eternal – happy ever after – a condition which, for (I’m guessing) the vast majority of real people, is unattainable. OK, so obstacles have appeared, but they’ve been overcome. Does that mean there won’t be any more? Probably not, so how can things be ‘happy ever after’. Does requited love really change the way the world works?

It’s hard to imagine a detective, faced with corpse after corpse, excess after excess in the books in which s/he features, having the same belief in the perfectibility of the species and a rosy outcome. And yet s/he works at solving the problems, bringing light where there was darkness. So the apparent bleakness suggested by all these misdeeds can be overcome. In a way, it’s illusory.

The more you look at it, the less cut and dried it seems to be. And I found this out for myself when I was writing The Figurehead. It was going to be a crime novel, because that’s what I write (apparently). Well, it is a crime novel but it also became a Romance, mainly because, without any planning or direction on my part, two of the characters started being attracted to one another. At the end of the book, I wrote this:

Quickly, she raised her hands to his face and pulled him down towards her. As he leaned forward, he saw her lips part and then, suddenly, felt them warm and soft against his own. It was a lover’s kiss.

But that was all. Their social stations were different and no decisions had been made about their future conduct. The woman had the impulse to kiss the man and that was that. It’s a problem I’ll have to resolve in the sequel but I’m congenitally NOT a writer of Romance, so I’ll be interested to see where they go next.

My point is that, as has been said many times by many people, it’s the characters who drive the plot. Let’s try it. I’ll pluck a name out of the air – Marie-Rose Tremaine. There. I won’t describe her because you, the reader, prefer to shape her to your fancy. The name is slightly exotic, certainly, but it could equally be that of a simple Cornish girl. Remember Tess Durbeyfield, a.k.a. Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and look what became of Norma Jeane Mortenson.

Now let’s put her in a setting and see how she decides what the book will be. She’s standing by a gate at the edge of a field at sunset. In the corner of the field is a crumbling old barn. But the view is beautiful, it brings out all her yearnings for the love and affection she never got from her father, a retired Field Marshal. She sighs at the beauty of it all but her musing is interrupted by footsteps. She turns and sees a tall, handsome man walking towards her down the lane, a shotgun cradled over his arm.

Over to you. Is it a Romance, a Crime? What happens next?.

I’m still swithering between three projects: the next Carston novel and sequels to The Figurehead and The Sparrow Conundrum. I’ve started two of them but none has yet drawn me into it sufficiently for me to want to spend all my time on it. But this week, on a whim, I posted a tweet asking whether anyone had any ‘spare characters’. OK, only one person answered it but I realised that it was a possible way of jump starting my writing of Sparrow 2.

Those of you who visited my blogsite in its previous incarnation (livingwritingandotherstuff, which is still there and, surprisingly, still getting hits) may remember I asked visitors to suggest random elements – a word, name, theme, setting or whatever – which I’d combine to make a blog. It was a challenge and it was very enjoyable for me to write – so much so that the eventual blog had to be split into two.

I find that sort of challenge very stimulating and the world of the Sparrow is so extreme and so weird that I think having to incorporate random characters, ideas and the rest into it might produce some interesting plot points and developments.

At least four of the characters from the original will reappear. There’ll also be a vampire thread which has nothing to do with vampires, and a recent set of FaceBook exchanges suggested there’d be a place in it for a kilted male model with the obligatory abdominal structures whose ambition is to be the hero in a Highland Romance. The latter is an example of how random events or thoughts can contribute enormously to a concept in the early design stages.

So… here’s the point. I’m inviting, once again, suggestions for threads, themes, plot points, a character with some specific foibles, genres to parody – anything in fact that would fit into a black, absurd, satirical farce. All those which I use, however much I distort them in the telling, will earn their source nothing but an acknowledgement.

Thus, once again, I look forward to a host of stimulating suggestions or the familiar sagebrush silence..

This one’s about money because money’s in the news. Some people ‘on welfare’ (I use the generic term in order not to be misunderstood) are having their benefits cut, thus saving the government a few pounds a week in these straitened times. There are many who welcome this, emphasising that people who don’t work shouldn’t get ‘paid’. They conveniently ignore the fact that there are no jobs and/or that some of these individuals actually can’t work, because of parenting commitments, disabilities or some other factors. I know there are those who are just lazy and happy to sponge off the state, but I’m not sure that I follow the argument that a blanket reduction of benefits is a fair way to deal with them.

I could bluff my way through some politics but economics, which was always a closed book, is even less penetrable than an obscure Serbo-Croatian dialect. Nonetheless, there’s one aspect of the money thing that I really need explained to me. And it relates to the present banking crisis. It seems that Mr Bob Diamond, the CEO of Barclays, has ‘earned’ just short of £100,000,000 over the 6 years he’s been in charge. Now that he’s leaving, having allegedly presided over a period in which corruption was rife and profits were valued more than customers, he’s likely to get a bonus of another £22,000,000. Just pause to absorb that a moment – one hundred and twenty-two million pounds in six years.

OK, the l’Oréal adverts tell us ‘it’s because you’re worth it’ and Mr Diamond may well have such a grasp of finance, people, the world – even where the Higgs Boson hangs out – that he IS worth that much money. But even if he is, why the hell does he need so much? What’s he saving for? He must have had a bob or two before he took the job. He must already have at least one house, a car, maybe a boat, even a couple of racehorses, so why does he need £22,000,000 on top of the £100,000,000, and why did he need £100,000,000 in the first place? I leave conclusions about his probity to others – what concerns me is that he represents the sickness of the system by which we’re all forced to live. While people with nothing are having the few pounds they need for food, clothes and shelter refused them, why do those at the other end of the scale, who already have more than they can spend, just keep on accumulating the stuff (and even resent having to give some of it back in taxes – taxes which, by the way, aren’t gifts to the government but the money needed to maintain the social infrastructure essential to keeping a nation civilised)?

Money is no longer a means, a convenient way of bartering, it’s become an end in itself.  There’s maybe something I don’t understand. Perhaps if I suddenly acquired many millions, I’d feel the need to multiply them further, but why? Is it to wave wads of notes in front of others to show how powerful I am? If any of you can explain to me why people need more money than they can possibly spend, I’ll be very grateful..