I know it seems beside the point to be talking about fiction in the face of the appalling pandemic. But Covid is having its deadly impact on every aspect of our present day life, no matter how we earn (or don’t earn) our living.

As I have begun writing a new novel, a problem has become apparent. The fiction I write is usually set in the present and the plots are wound around contemporary dilemmas and characters. How can I, and writers like me who like to create a credible reality, treat the pandemic? Do we take it into account? Or do we pretend it doesn’t exist in our “real” world?

This is not a dilemma for writers of genre novels set in the past or future – fantasy, sci-fi, historical or crime novels. Nor is it a difficulty if you want to write a story with Covid as the driving force. There will be lots of stories that deal with the pandemic. My puzzle is akin to those situations which prompt the expression “the elephant in the room,” that is, any subject too big to mention.

Should my fictitious characters, living in the present, be affected by the pandemic? Or should I let them live happily without a mention of it?