A terrible feeling of wheat

Did I mention I hate the predictive speech-to-text on the current iOS?

The crazy gallery reception chapter is almost finished. Just have the bit where a Greek Margaret Dumont presses a protective amulet on her, and a short conversation with the gallery owner just before Penny, done with the marathon bit of improv she just pulled off, has a bit of the shakes and what will only be her first ouzo of the evening.

I'm already at 4K. Does mean I still fall short overall, though. And, yes, I could easily expand any of the existing conversations. I could have painted a more detailed picture of the Minoans, for instance. But this would only, to borrow a phrase, fatten the book, not expand it. What I really need is either more plot...or a "B" plot.

As it is I feel there's a little much already. Especially since a lot of the history and myth being talked about isn't important to the central conflicts. Both chapters 1 and 2 are largely about people showing off their knowledge; chapter 1 is Penny on the Acropolis demonstrating how she's able to have a successful history show on YouTube, and Chapter 2 is a fluid, multi-side conflict masked as polite conversation:

“Alea iacta est,” Howard raised his glass to us. “The die is cast.”

“Said?” Vash prompted.

“Wasn’t that Caesar?” Safe bet; Howard had all the signs of a military history buff, and that “est” made it Latin. “When he, what was it, crossed the Hellespont?”

Vash shook his head. “The Rubicon. Caesar crossed the Rubicon.”

“Alexander crossed the Hellespont,” Howard amplified.

“So did Xerxes,” I said.

“Alexander threw a spear into the soil,” Howard volleyed back.

“Xerxes had the river whipped,” I replied.

And never mind that the Xerxes story only appears in Herodotus and Caesar had spoken in Greek (if he said it at all). That's history for you. You can always drill deeper. Always.

Yes, there are plot-important things hidden in all of these, but for the most part they are subtle. Still, one can't just have a man jump out with a gun. Because that's not plot, either. Plot is, well, plot. Not description or dialog or action, by themselves, but what those things advance.

Speaking of which. Somewhere down the road I need to do a complete dialog pass. This is mostly to get the different speakers sounding more distinct. I also want to listen to a bunch of native speakers (I'm pretty sure I can just search "interview Greek musician" and find something) to get some of those subtleties of word order et al that come when someone isn't speaking their first language.

But also I want to make some distinctions between Penny's voice and the voice she puts on when in the character of Athena Fox. Dialog is one of the places I can underline the access she has to confidence and a projection of competence when she is in character.

(And apropos of nothing, my file names for the current "books" of the narrative are "Agora-Phobia," "Black Forest Hams," and "Owed on a Grecian Urn." If I somehow manage to add to the plot, it might give me a fourth; "What Does the Fox Say.")