So in high stress kind of like past together or fail together setups like this, how do you navigate the balance between like what some romance or like life and death stakes

well i think they go together quite well like if you look at my previous works i definitely use the life and death stakes although you know we've just escaped a danger in order to bring characters together i think there is something about fantasy plots or just you know your general plot structure in general that weaves quite nicely around a romance because you're giving people something to do together and And I'm doing that very deliberately here, in that I'm sticking five people together in this exam group and saying, you cannot escape one another, you are stuck together for the next five days, you have to solve this problem.

Oh, and here's another problem to solve, it's a murder.

So...

the forced proximity aspect of the romances was already built in.

The fun then, and I think you're right, the balancing act was about how do I show as much of the romances as I find satisfying, while also realising that it's not really the thing that's uppermost in these people's minds at the moment.

So I wasn't writing a romance just between two characters who are sharing the sole points of view in the book.

So do you have any advice for writers trying to write within any of those genres without just chasing market trends?