8 months since I started The Enceladus Calyx. The first blog post that indicates I had a working premise was Nov 6, 2018, although there are posts going back before my trip to Athens that contain germs of the idea.
The outline was completed Jan 1; only two months. Felt longer. It took until April to tweak the draft until I was writing the current "semi-clean" draft.
And although I was feeling it was much longer ago; the Bronze Age novel that sent me to Greece to research got its start in September of 2017. Which means I took a break fifteen months later to do the "quickie" novel I'm currently on.
This has not been a fun week but I still ended up with a stronger plot. I have multiple and conflicting emotional through-lines but I have a sort of scheme now that organizes them a little better. It is creating more tough things to do, though. I've got a character coming back that I didn't intend to see again, and a whole scene that is sort of a harsh mentoring in social engineering. And then there's a chase after a pickpocket in Venice.
At least in Munich, physical stunting doesn't attract the wrong attention. Ten thousand people in a tent full of testosterone and beer and there isn't any stupid thing they haven't tried. Stunting around on the vaporetti is going to get you put off the water bus, at least. If not get you in bad with the Carabinieri.
The new scheme does leave me uncomfortably having to talk about neo-nazis while in Germany. There's got to be a sort of Godwin's Law for Adventure Archaeologist stories. I've actually got her at one point blaming the hat.
And I'm really not sure what all is going to happen back in Athens. So I have a lot more spots in the future where I will have to slow down and do some research and planning. I don't think it is likely I'll have Draft In a Year. Sigh.
Oh, and research. I looked up airfare and hotels and even with doing tricks like flying into Frankfurt or Verona and taking a train either Munich or Venice is a wee bit more than I want to spend at the moment. The castle in the sky plan of copying my character's itinerary from Frankfurt am Main all the way down to Venice with a stop-over in Munich...yeah, that's close to two thousand bucks. I thought the point of this story was to write about what I already knew?
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