Zwei Fuchse

 Rewrites done, two days of running it all through ProWritingAid again to check for any newly created grammatical errors, and uploaded.

Just before I pressed the "publish" button I heard from a beta reader who is almost finished and will have notes for me. Sigh.

Well, I still have to finish the revisions on the cover. But then it will be published and I'll finally be able to move on.

***

The stack of books for Japan has been growing. I've been reading Underground, which is a series of interviews by Haruki Murakami (yeah, that Haruki Murakami) of survivors of the Aum Shinrikyo attacks.

Found Contemporary Japan and a Lonely Planet guide to Tokyo at one of the book hutches I pass on my walks around the neighborhood. A History of Modern Japan (I heard an interview with the author via the BBC) and Gender Gymnastics have both arrived. Plus I intend to dip into Inside the Robot Kingdom, Behind the Mask, Japanese Mythology, and other books I have already on my shelves.

Plus I bought Come and Sleep (on the folklore of the kitsune) and have been reading Heaven's Gate on Kindle.

There's a growing list of topics which would be interesting to explore, but I still don't have a plot.

And another thing. A problem I've always had is that I like to create boxes. That is, a set of definitions or formats that will then be applied to a set of related creative works. There are things I would like to have in each Athena Fox story -- but I am working hard to let go of the idea that I must include them in each story.

So I'm trying to make it less a checklist and more a Chinese menu:

An archaeological concern. That is, some aspect of the intersections between science, preservation, and the rest of the world. In the last book, it was Development and the role of CRM. I'm not sure what this is in the Japan book.

A question about the character. The series is always dancing on the conflict between Penny and the role she plays, and the inherent contradictions in that role. This one I've got covered.

A historical question, particularly, one that has some controversy attached. The last book sort of missed that one; it was all about the London Blitz, but there wasn't much in the way of false history and there were certainly no UFOs. For Japan, I want to do the UFOs, but I don't know how to connect that back to actual (and interesting) history.

A place, particularly one I've been. There's always going to be a bit of travel exotica here, and it includes experiences -- urban exploration or Viking crafts or whatever.

And a couple things that seem to be showing up consistently:

Cosplay, or rather, a chance to dress up in period clothing. This one is not going to be period so much as kimono...very possibly an entire geisha do-up, as offered to tourists in Kyoto.

Social consciousness. I didn't really intend it, but Penny seems to have a habit of noticing urban poor and systemic racism and falling in with people who are on the fringe of their societies.

The deep dive. I didn't want to do this for the Japan book. I wanted to keep it out with tourist locations and hanging with the well-to-do, because hanging out with students or doing budget travel in Tokyo or worse yet getting out into the countryside is more work. Well...I'll see.

***

I'm set on the UFO cult as being central to this story, as well as the (overly) suave government man she romances and the takaresienne who delivers a much-needed sanity-check. I've even totally lost the notes on a real cult who collected (probably trafficked) antiquities and had a famous-architect museum that reads like a James Bond villain lair. But that doesn't matter because as much as I'm willing to name-check real organizations whatever is at the center of this plot is going to be entirely fictional.

I know it can let me talk about society and issues in contemporary Japan, and about the intersections of pop culture and conspiracy theories and mainstream science. But it doesn't seem really archaeological. Or historical. That might end up being the actual theme of the book; that the history is all Disney-fied and re-purposed, the castles poured concrete and the temples torn down every ten years, and all Penny gets to do is wear the hat and act like Indiana Jones without a legitimate excavation in sight.

But I'd really love to reverse that in the third half of the book (sorry, Bob and Ray) and have some actual archaeology going down. And that's what's giving me trouble,