The Lure of the Extraneous

I am playing ideas for my next Mallorcan mystery story, and considering the various colorful threads of Carthaginian archaeology (connected with the myth of Dido and Aeneas), pranic or reiki healing, the Mallorcan “cloth of tongues,” school bullying, a letter carrier, family names and the Inquisition, a sunken freighter, amateur astronomy, the wife of a Senegalese drummer.  It would be so much easier if I could think in simple plots instead of intriguing objects and intellectual pursuits—things like “x loves y but so does z, so x throws z into an old stone well and then tries to cover her tracks.”  Not that the two are incompatible, but I suspect I’d get a lot more written if I’d just come at things from the other side, instead of getting fascinated by the details of the extraneous matter—especially when I know nothing about any of that, and need to research endlessly.  I should just set a story in an office cubicle in northern California at the end of January, and have done with it!  (Ah, but where would the mystery be in that?)

image: tela de lenguas, Paul Coleshill