When Pigs Fly

I'm still plotting on the London book. I hope this isn't going to be how the series goes. I'm telling myself the problem is in trying to use the real world and be somewhat realistic about it, but it could be I'm just pants at plotting.

Well, I guess the holes are getting smaller. Each time I circle around, I find a remaining gap, but the rest of the structure is firmer and firmer; more interesting, more connected, more grounded. So there's that.

And I'm changing history. Partly because it would be too much work to find a real thing that works, but more because if I shift things just a little I can use real things that are real interesting. And, yeah, I'm changing names anyhow. I didn't mind making fun of Golden Dawn in the last book, or naming major museums -- it did bother me a little naming smaller but equally real commercial establishments -- but with the politics of this one the various and sundry organizations for the Field School, the Northern Line Extension, the Zero Station, and many and sundry clubs involved in urban exploration and metal detecting and so on are all going to be fictional.

Back somewhere in my notes is that this is a series where the unlikely happens. Where the idea of the Adventure Archaeologist who speaks seven languages, can translate Sumerian Cuneiform like reading a shopping list, who has traveled the world taking risks, exploring, climbing, fighting, etc., etc., meets the real world. And sometimes works.

So I'm not going to send her to Paris and have her clinging to the side of a random office building. No, she's going to climb the Eiffel Tower, dammit! I might not have a robbery at the Louvre but it would at least be at Musee d'Orsay.

So this is what I nailed down today:

There's a real opportunity here for her to learn Urban Exploration and practical climbing skills, but I'm not going to really go into it. The theme of this one is Underground. It is almost Campbellian, in fact. So she may hear of Parkor, but she's more likely to meet Trainspotters (of the London Underground variety).

(Yeah, that's MIT. And dammit; the old name for the Steam Tunnel explorers of M.I.T. was "Vadders," and you know where it comes from? Colossal Caves! Which opens up retro-computing, James Dallas Eggbert, the Dungeons & Dragons hysteria, M.I.T. "hacking," the Great Atari Burial...)

But that's the next book. Or somewhere later. In fact, this one I'm backing off again from any real talk about Lara Croft or Uncharted or any of that.

I also might not have much time for Panto, the Old Globe, etc. I'll see...when I finally get to outlining the damned thing!