Mystic Crystal Revelation

My "tek" is finally coming along, to the point where I could play a little Maqsum rhythm along with a YouTube lesson. But that's not important.

I sat down at the writing desk* and actually managed to hammer out a revised 800-word prologue chapter. Complete with some physical stunts, some archaeological puzzle-solving by Our Hero, and the requisite glowing crystal Atlantean dingus.

*It's the same desk I'm currently eating dinner at, and if I had moved a little quicker this evening be soldering LEDs at. But the idea is there.

This might have been the most fun research I'll have the whole novel. I found a "paper" (actually, slides from a presentation) at Academia.edu claiming something novel about Minoan burial customs and I can totally use that. I don't need to see if this has any academic standing or if I'm understanding it right, because in the prologue scene everything is supposed to be styrofoam and matt paintings. So is a particular god Hurrian or Hatti, did they have bronze axes or only copper...who cares! I only need to make it look cool.

(The one difficulty in the scene is descriptions. I can't say "horns of consecration" because that makes an assumption that the viewer of the video knows Minoan iconography. I have to say "curving stone horns.")

I figured out my thematic problem. I think. I spent a morning at a cafe and wrote a thousand words of notes basically about her hair. It makes sense in context. The big thing I came to is that "becoming the mask" -- no, even putting on the mask -- isn't even an option until half way through the story. So in that first critical scene at the gallery reception she's not hiding behind her created character, because she has never immersed herself in that character in a real-world situation.

And the other thing is that the fact that Athena Fox is fictional is a totally open secret. In the reception scene, the challenge is to do a good acting job; nobody there thinks the character is real. But this is true later in the book(s) as well. The conceit I'm going with here is something many actors, and most stage magicians, have faced; the "Yes, but" response. As much as the magicians protest, or even demonstrate, that their act is nothing but trickery, the best they will get from one small segment of their audience is, "That may be, but even if you aren't aware of it yourself you do have Real Powers."

(The most piquant actor equivalent is the action star who despite protests get smacked on the nose by a fan who is totally sure they really can block a punch as well as their character can.)