You know you've asked an academic to take a look at a piece of your fiction when their first comment is: 'I think you need to flesh out in more detail the main character's ontological crisis in finding a dead body.' So that's what I've been doing this morning. Examining the ontological crisis of waking up next to a dead body. The questioning of one's self, one's mortality, and one's relationship to the world. At least, that's what I'm assuming he meant. So, here's a scenario for you: You wake to find the dead body of someone you've never met before in the bed next to you. How do you react?
My posts this week
Book sources
Review of Sweet Money by Ernesto Mallo
Crime fiction, but not as we know it
Review of The Whispers of Nemesis by Anne Zouroudi
Infinity and beyond
6 comments:
Hard-boiled: you grab the whisky bottle while you plan how to dismember and hide the body.
Police procedural: you take a whisky while planning how to hide the fact that you went to bed with an informer/ suspect/ witness or whatever for your boss.
Spoof: you have had so much whisky already you don´t get the person is dead. You get so offended when he won´t drink with you that (you think) you kill him with the whisky bottle. And NOW you have to hide the body of someone who just died of a heart attack.
Cosy mystery: the dead body is probably a mouse or a bug. You put your garden gloves on and bury it among the tea roses.
And me, the vicar´s wife: I would be very surprised indeed.
At my age it would be even more of a surprise than for Dorte, and probably fatal.
That's one of the things that happens to Paul Jacobsen in Mike Befeler's LIVING WITH YOUR KIDS IS MURDER except he wakes up in a plane
Well, Dorte, it seems I have a hardboiled on my hands. Great job on coming up with subgenre egs.
Hardboiled - why am I not surprised ;)
But if it´s a Colm McEvoy story, I am sure I´ll enjoy it no matter what you call it.
This one is a standalone set in the US. A screwball noir. Out with beta-readers at the minute.
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