Determining genre: mystery

57. Easter Monday 6 April 2026

I haven’t had the last five days off from editing but my progress has been minimal so I thought I’d save the update for today. I took Thursday off and enjoyed lounging by the burner, reading, eating lunch in the sun and I spent ages tidying and cleaning the interior of my car, which was surprisingly satisfying. On Good Friday, I merely wrote a few notes. Saturday, Sunday and today, I went through more highlighted sections, taking it easy. All in all, I probably did a full day’s worth of work over three days, which I’m fine with.

                However, I have also just sent this version to Chris and Sarah B, who have both offered to read it, gulp. As I’ve nearly finished going through the highlights, it seems a good time to get more feedback.

                Sarah B and I had a long Zoom chat yesterday. We talked a bit about my writing. I told her how much I was struggling to align it with one genre in order to sell it to agents. Previous manuscripts of mine have crossed genres, which I don’t think is desirable for debut writers. I had thought this novel would come under crime. But when I think of crime, I think of police crime and more hardcore crime (Ian Rankin, Lee Child, Val McDermid). I had thought of cosy crime, but I’ve been reading a lot of cosy crime and I don’t like it. Too much of it seems far too cutesy and, to my mind, ridiculous. I have a bit of an issue with the neatness and body count of some cosy crime – no one ever seems to mourn or consider the fact that someone has been murdered.

                Anyway, Sarah looked on Libby and I Googled and we decided it falls into “mystery”. The general consensus seems to be that mystery usually follows a crime (eg for my purposes, murder) and they are often “whodunnits” because the reader can guess along with the characters/sleuths who is the perpetrator (I share all the information/evidence the characters have). However, “mystery” does seem to not be a key genre. When it comes to submitting to agents, I will probably have to submit to agents who accept crime fiction if mystery isn’t listed.

In other news, I slept in my cabin last night. This morning, I opened the cabin door at half-six and was greeted by frost and a slash of bright orange sky, along with the sound of crows and a woodpecker.

In the afternoon, Chris and I stood at the bottom of the drive for a while, chatting to six motorcyclists who were waiting for a recovery vehicle (four hours later …). We gave them tea, coffee and shortbread. I could see them from my desk and it rated highly on the valley-goings-on scale!