In addition to traditional gothic horror and Victorian ghost fiction, detective fiction rounds up my literary Holy Trinity. I bought a used copy of Agatha Christie's complete Poirot short stories (a hefty volume, that), and I'm now getting ready to buy the complete Inspector Morse book series once my refund for my returned order goes through (long and stupid story, that). As much as I would rather borrow the books from the library, only a couple of these Morse books are available -- in audiobook format, at that.
Anyway, I've been trawling the 'net for stuff on classic detective fiction that isn't Agatha Christie, and I stumbled across a Youtube channel that recommends obscure classic detective novels. I'm now spoiled for choice and am dying of bliss. One of the recommended writers, of course, is Dorothy Sayers, whose books I haven't tried yet, and as luck would have it, my public library has her novels, and none of them are currently checked out. SCORE.
There's also Ann Cleeves, whose books are more recent, but I've always loved British mysteries and detective fiction. Again, I've never tried her stuff before, and I'm looking forward to seeing where her books take me since I also find inspiration from other writers' works (as all of you should know by now).
I've been painfully aware of my heavy use of the internet during the weekend (primarily for my subscriptions to different Youtube accounts specializing in video essays on books, economics, art, and paranormal stuff) and would like to eat away at that with books beyond just my usual go-to genres in e-book format. Doom scrolling is not my thing (not anymore), and sometimes even those video essays just don't rouse my interest enough to click (I really miss the pre-internet days).
I guess I'm feeling the need to hit pause on my preferred e-book genres to clear my head as well as my preferred brain-clearing methods in streaming format. Sticking to nothing but the same stuff for months and months, I think, is partly to blame for my sluggishness in writing or breaking out of my usual approach to writing. Managing to complete Achille and Florian was a boost. Changing Valérian from a straightforward third person narrative to epistolary fiction has helped propel it forward. But I think my brain needs more. Much more.
So maybe setting all of my recently purchased MM books aside in favor of non-queer content in the genres I've always loved will feed the fire some more. Valérian IS partly inspired by Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca, after all. While it's not detective fiction, my WiP heavily leans on mystery and creeping horror and atmosphere, and shifting my full attention from purely MM stuff to everything else outside my usual reads will also work its magic on the book.
I can't remember exactly when, but there was a time a while ago (I'm talking over ten years ago) when I didn't touch a single MM romance for two straight years or something like that and just explored a bunch of different books like Angela Carter's anthology of reworked fairy tales and Robert Coover's Briar Rose. And I think some of the books I wrote during that break were some of my best or favorites because I felt more experimental than usual and just went for it. I think Arabesque and Rose and Spindle were a couple of those, but I can't remember the others.
But yeah. This time around it's classic detective fiction, and we'll see how this "sabbatical" from my go-to genre will help the muse.
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