Zero Hour

I've hit a place in the book where I both realize I don't have nearly enough understanding, and don't even know how to research it, and that I really don't care.

I'm just pushing through to the end. Penny has finally made it to Wentworth's ridiculous Zero Station, my one sop to realism that he may have repurposed an existing room  -- "Drainage or something," Penny guesses -- from the earlier station.

I had a nice collection of pictures of tunnel insides from the Northern Line Extension all ready, and I threw them on to my second monitor -- and they don't match. That took a bit of time, mostly staring at them (and watching another video of a TBM in action) before figuring out why they looked different.

While I was looking for explanation I stumbled upon the cutest narrow-gauge they had down there while the TBMs were still working.

So of course I had to put that in the story.

Did I mention how tired I am getting of Penny's vocal and narrative mannerisms? And here I'm facing a third book of them. So far my readership is some 90% older women who know my mom, but they are going out of their way to say how much they like the character so I guess I'm stuck with her for a while longer.

(Something about how she is heroic but realistic. I dunno.)

So I really had no idea how long the Tomb Crawl was going to run. And I wasn't padding it, exactly -- there's a wealth of material I barely touched. But I knew I wanted it to feel sufficiently epic. Well, from the moment she arrives at Kennington Green to the moment she realizes she's trapped in the Zero Station is four thousand words.

The plan is for another crawl, a crazier one through the Bazalgettian warrens currently containing the Effra, and onwards to a slightly-excavated Roman ruin. Haven't even decided what it is. I'd like a military outpost, because Wentworth has been going on and on about 300-type last stands.

***

And Japan is on. I still have qualms about where it sits in the overall character arc. It is in some ways too much, too soon. But I can play off those elements, make that part of the plot that having to suddenly be utterly convincing as the Famous World Adventurer, or falling head over heels in love, is indeed not what it seems and doesn't unfold the way you'd expect.

But, really, any qualms are outweighed by the ....oh.... anyhow, are outweighed by the fact that I could probably sit here and type the bulk of it with scenery descriptions and amusing misunderstandings and language fun without having to reach even as far as my own bookshelf.

And that's something I need right now. Even on this very productive day I've stopped multiple times to look up something, and that's not a good way to write. Worse, the sorts of things I'm looking up become a meal with way too much roughage in in. I need to write leaner -- even if I have no good idea right now what leaner looks like.

That "oh" in the middle of the paragraph above? That was me getting ready to type how I wanted something actually historical -- archaeology would be a bonus -- and then it hit me. As much as I don't want the reader to be facing pages of hard-to-memorize Japanese names, there is a historical but disputed business when Kusanagi was stolen by a rival clan. Or something. I forget the details, but there are reasons I want to use it...