Did I mention this is really the worst possible series for me? I thought this was a series where I could cheat -- combine my own travel experiences with my knowledge of various stupid pseudo-archaeological ideas and wrap it up in a little goofy adventure.
Instead it is a thoughtful inquiry into our interaction with history, set in carefully researched and very real locations, firmly grounded in fact...with a little goofy adventure.
Anyhow. I'm doing it in Scapple, mostly because Scapple is a cheap option and I already know how to use it. It is Mind Mapping software; a grandiose term for connecting boxes with lines.
The main reason I went to it for this one...turned out to be unnecessary. One of my first questions was whether I have enough material and if I can make balanced parts out of it or if too much is happening in the wrong part of the book. So I wanted software I could make different size boxes in.
Well, turns out making a column of tentative scene names padded out the vertical dimension sufficiently. And gave me something to count and calculate. And that answered the first question; I need everything I've put in, even the stuff I tagged with red or orange, because the word count is already at 2,000 words a scene.
(The diagram above is not really an outline; it is about blocking in the basic chapter structure. The true interconnections, and the interweaving of plots and themes, would be a heck of a lot more tiny dotted lines.)
***
And that includes the Imperial War Museum. And I have no idea what I'm actually going to do there. I just created the box, and it filled a space that needed filling.
And it is making me think more and more of making that trip myself. I can just barely afford it right now. I'm also still waiting for new medications and new exercise regime to properly kick in and stabilize. The plan -- such that it is -- is a mere week in London, with a day trip to Canterbury and Kent (I won't be going by horse). And another day trip a little bit oop North, because there's a perfect location for a scene.
And the British Museum of course. And pay even more money (tickets are selling out fast) for one of the Underground's tours of closed subway stations. And there's a few other underground attractions. Kent is the most ambitious, as that's a sort of volunteer field school. So I'd be paying a hundred pounds or more for the privilege of kneeling in the dirt all afternoon digging a small hole with a smaller trowel.
But this flies even more in the face of wanting to write quick and dirty. The sad reality is that this thing is going to be enough of a pain to plan and execute that quick and dirty isn't happening whether I chose to spend a vacation doing research.
And, yeah, I already have growing sketches for four more books. Just added some new notes for two of them; the American Southwest, with Heritage issues and CRM and NAGPRA as the B plot to a story about Archeo-gaming, the No Man's Sky archaeological survey and the Great Atari Burial, retro-computing, Gamer gate, Tomb Raider -- with cultural appropriation tying the two plot threads together. And some nukes, because you gotta have nukes.
The other; Notre Dame and restoration and preservation, crossed up with an Umberto Eco plot of a group of maniacs who think they are on the trail of Templar secrets (they aren't), and as a B or C plot, warbirds. I may not be able to get her up on the wing of a plane, but it is about time to get in one.
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