Call a Rabbit a Usagi

 Science Fiction writer James Blish once wrote crossly about the habit some writers had of showing an animal that looked like a rabbit, acted like a rabbit, in all important respects was a rabbit -- and calling it a "smeerp."

I can't think off-hand of a culture other than Japan that gets so much of this. Seems everyone that writes about it has to make sure you use ocha instead of tea, hashi for chopsticks...all the way out to using the Japanese spelling and pronunciation of English loan-words.

And, sure, I get it. The delights of language. More, it is easy to see why "katana" and "kimono" because whereas the literal meaning of the latter is "clothes" and the former is just a kind of sword it is worth making note of the distinctive kind of clothing and sword.

And for someone like me, well, it is fun that ocha is actually o-cha, that is, "Honorable tea" (honorifics are hard to translate directly into English) and the latter is derived from "bridge."

I guess I'm reacting to the way it just seems to be done so much that it has become cliche. Since I'm writing books full of cliche anyhow, I would like to skip some of them when I can!

***

The other problem is a problem for me and a worse problem for the reader. This is more fish-out-of-water stuff, but more specifically, the early chapters are all about Penny showing that she can confidently navigate a place where she doesn't know any of the language.

The kinds of situations I've set up, it seems too awkward to leave out all the actual speech, as in, "They spoke Japanese to me. I thought I caught the word for 'run', so I ran." The scenes scan better if I put the actual thing being said.

So first problem is that my Japanese is rusty, and was never that good to begin with. And to make the problem vastly worse, there is a huge gulf between technically correct -- whether phrasebook Japanese or Google Translate Japanese -- and correct idiomatic usage. A difference which would be instantly obvious to any reader who knows even as little as I know about Japanese.

(I'm reminded for some reason of a cute gag in Urusei Yatsura where foreign reporters are commenting on a race. The French one is yelling things like "Ou est le pencil! C'est sur la table!")

And of course in the end I muck up my perfectly good idiomatic phrases because I need them to be just at the edge of understandable; that certain words and forms are re-appearing. 

Well, there's always editing. I can always cut more of the Japanese out when I'm in revisions.

***

I got the opening to work and then I stopped for two or three days to work out Part I in more detail. Yeah, I'm stuck with it now. Each Athena Fox story starts with a prologue (in italics) which is Penny's show as broadcast. Then five parts, each with an amusing name of some sort, with part IV starting at the final pinch point of the third act in a three-act structure. I've sort of given up on amusing names for this one and the part names are word/concepts; Ryokan, Ganbatte, Kitsune, Makoto. (Or they might end up as Sumimasen, Yatta, Magatama, Honne. Nothing is drawn in ink, not yet.)

Part I is basically being a tourist in (mostly) the traditional parts of Kyoto, plus ninja. I looked at a bunch of stuff for Toei Eigamura. It took typing not just the Japanese name but the kanji into YouTube to pull up some videos from inside the activities. So the stuff there just got bigger and bigger and now I've got a long chapter where she not only looks at the Edo Village standing set of Toei Studio, but dresses up as a "Young Man"** from their costume options and is interacted with by the cast of the chambara exhibition, but also visits the "Ninja Maze" with a hall of mirrors like something out of a Bruce Lee movie (no, some Western tourists made that comment on their video). The only thing this bit lacks is "real" fake ninjas.

Instead the first ninja attack of the novel takes place at Kamogawa...err, bridge over the Kamo river in the East of Kyoto, not far from her ryokan, where a music major at Kyogei (err...Kyoto University) is sort-of busking on shakuhachi. In fact she's playing "Round Midnight." This is the weirdness research will lead you to. I had a question about busking in Kyoto and that led me to a blog where a first experience of shakuhachi was described as being similar to the thrill of hearing Coltrane, and I figured of course you could play that Dexter Gordon standard. Flipped on to YouTube and found someone doing just that and it sounded even cooler than I'd imagined. 

Ooh. And I just realized there's a pun lurking in all this. The people who famously wandered around playing shakuhachi are of course Zen monks. Well, Gordon didn't write that song. Of course not. Monk did. (Brother Thelonious, that is. And it's a pretty good beer, too.)

To finish off my research of the last few days, I already knew there was a crazy mall under Kyoto Station. They have some appropriate clothing shops and a health and beauty supply called Hikari and there was going to be a scene already -- originally at the massive Takashiyama depato...department store...getting clothes and makeup -- and the name is also perfect for her room at the ryokan (it looks nice in kanji) and it means "light," not "bright" but the connection is there if I want to use that, too. 

And it is plot-advancing. They have Genki stuff there, too; the healing bracelets and special creams made by one of the tendrils of Healthy Spirit. And yes I caught a "how to pack for Kyoto" on YouTube that at one moment was talking about recommended make-up supplies you could get locally and without the slightest break was going on about pain-reducing magnet stick-ons.

And of course there's ninja. Which means Penny needs a clever way to not get stabbed, again. Although there are at least two very good and reputable places to buy decent swords in Kyoto, and cheaper stuff is even easier to find, the maps of the Kyoto Porta don't show an appropriate shop there. There are, however, a pair of shops that are rather intriguing; one sells chopsticks. The other sells fans. Hrm. This requires more thought.

(The trouble with writing action scenes with Penny is that she's not supposed to be trained. Even Athena Fox isn't supposed to be a fighter. She's supposed to be able to talk her way out of trouble. The sword fight in the last book had some really big hand waves to make it possible to happen at all. Having her fight off ninja is even more problematic...in so many ways. Even if they are really poor ninja.)

** So there's a ridiculous bit to unpack here. I got lucky and the official site of the Toei Eigamura park has a list and pictures of all the costumes available to rent for an hour and stroll around the village set in. They are, naturally, gender-segregated. Guys have the choice of basically samurai or cops; shinsengumi, ronin, etc. Girls have the popular choices of geisha/maiko (make-up and wig available for an extra charge) and married or unmarried woman, all in typical kimono et al. Except. Down at the end is a woman with pink cherry-blossom pattern hakama and she has the two swords of a samurai stuck in her sash. She is identified in English as "Young Person" and that's not...wrong...but the Japanese word is also on the picture and that word is Wakashu.

Wakashu were boys. Boys of the samurai class who often dressed as women and who formed, err, friendships with older samurai. (And were also apparently much lusted after by women as well). Some academic papers describe this as 'The Third Gender of Edo."

So one wonders how much of this is understood, tacitly or not, among the people who rent the costumes, and how much it is made clear to people who aren't aware of that cultural tidbit. It looks like it is aimed at just being a way for the female tourist (Japanese or not) to get to wear a costume with swords included, and the chambara I watched (sorry, sorry, sword fight) the hero character was played by and was obviously meant to be seen as a female samurai.

But there is some really interesting gender role stuff going on here and for a novel that's going to include a dip into the famously cross-dressing Takarasuka Revue, quite the thing.

This is why we research.

They Call Alabama the Crimson Tide

 I've been thinking too much about writing. That's made it hard to actually write.

I've been answering questions on Quora. I've been reviewing books through Pubby. And I've drafted the first 3,000 words or so on A Fox's Wedding. At least twice.

Started using Scrivener's Snapshot function, too. Very nice. It is basically a Wayback Machine for your novel. Except it works on a document basis, so you can look at or revert one scene or chapter without touching the rest.

With each book in this series, I revisit what I'm trying to do with the character, and with the series itself. So there's been a lot of that. I'm also re-thinking a lot of what I have been doing and what I think I know about story-telling. Opening chapters are hard, anyhow, in that you are trying to set the style and mood and set up the conflicts and introduce the major players all at once.

And, basically, every choice you make in the opening chapters has repercussions that spread through the rest of the manuscript. I don't mind revising a bit to put the ducks properly in the row. But when you are still figuring out where the ducks are heading...

So one win for the light outlining mode. I completely stumbled on a great name for the Enka singer turned charismatic cult leader at the center of the novel. It is a name that gives him so much character it is making me rethink the rest of the people around him. One of those characters might get cut entirely. Well, maybe I can use him in another book.

And a quite different win for my insistence on going where the research leads. When I flew to Kyoto we landed at Osaka. Well, that airport is now called "Itami" and it only does domestic flights. The new Kansai International is the place; built in the middle of Osaka Bay. And I'm watching video right now of when Typhoon Jebi came through (about a month ago in story time). It threw a tanker against the skybridge, damaging it badly.

I could have hand-waved this and just flown into Osaka, or not even mentioned it. But showing the damage from Typhoon Jebi gives me a useful beat to the end-of-the-world message the cult is moving into (now officially called Healthy Spirit -- yes, in English, but also nicknamed the Genki. I wanted to call it Expanding Man but that didn't scan right in Japanese or in English.)

Got my sinuses tickled and it would tickle the rest of me if they didn't get around to clearing me to return to work until at least Tuesday. Even if it is unpaid vacation. My boss is in the same tried-to-get-tested-at-the-height-of-thanksgiving boat so there's not going to be a stink about that. I'm pretty determined Monday is a goner in any case.

Oh, and I got another hundred-dollar violin, swapped the chin-cello strings to that and now I have a silent violin to practice on again. And I can feel the improvements happening already. Still no silent bowing, but the vibrato is improving and the intonation is improving a lot.

Reading Rambo

 The biggest advantage to traditional publishing is you get someone else to do all of this. Meaning editing, cover design, advertising...and chasing reviews.

I've been working the Pubby carousel. As a side effect, I've been reading a lot of fiction. I always have trouble focusing on the research I'm supposed to be reading. I have samples of several books here on the shinshukyo -- that is, the New Religions of Japan, plus a few on UFO religions and a few cults that went famously bad (like Heaven's Gate). And a couple books on ninja, and papers on the Imperial Regalia and on magatama in general...

At least I picked my first Japan location. Found a nice ryokan in the Gion district of Kyoto, that even hosts a Maiko performance on weekends.

***

So the reviews have been helpful. One reviewer wasn't fond of the "six sticks of pocky" voice that Penny had during much of Hounds. I'm with him there; part of my goal in Wedding is for her to be forced to play a more reflective, assured person...and for some of that to rub off.

Reviewing has also been interesting. I've left long and detailed reviews, not just on the books I contracted via Pubby, but on several other books in my digital library. I read widely anyhow but what I've been reading via Pubby is a bit different.

Once again I am thinking there are two nations here. That is, down here at the "not as good as Sir Pterry or a popular as JKR." Which, actually, aren't bad exemplars. Wait, can you say "bad exemplar?" Isn't that like "slightly magnanimous?"

Anyhow! For the purpose of this mini-essay I'm going to call it right brain v. left brain. Not just the writers, but the ecology of the writer and the readership. The right-brainers are all about the emotional gratification. I see them working and learning on Quora, at Fanfic dot net, in the self-published glut at Amazon. Cliched situations and characters, well-worn furniture of your basic space opera or fantasy setting.

And they get strong support from their readership. And I'm not saying any of this is bad. Look, if four hundred years of itinerate poets could be telling and re-telling the same bronze age siege and make a living doing so... And there are "good" authors (I mean those get both mainstream success and are lauded for their craft), like Brian Sanderson, who came up this way.

Then there's this group that I suspect usually turned to mysteries in the past. Thoughtful, even cynical. Educated. Interested in the craft. In a word...older. The main complaint is that they have been thinking too hard and too long and it is hard to cut through to that living heart of story.

There's both types at Pubby but you can guess which I ended up selecting to read and review. And why these weren't fast skims that could be finished in a couple hours and left with a, "Loved it all, Kaylah and Wolf are meant for each other, loved the pink dragons...!"

Again I'm not being negative. That's dancing about architecture there. This is complaining that your haiku doesn't fit iambic pentameter. These are different art forms for different audiences.

***

So my goal...the second of my goals...among my many goals...is to avoid as much as possible the temptation of giving the Japanese names of everything. To take even further what I did in the Germany part of Knows and have Penny generally not knowing. And there's some deeper themes going on with her being in Old Kyoto but still encountering mostly rebuilds and recreations and revisioned history, plastic cast veggies at Toei's Edo-Machi and concrete castle in Osaka. And then being yanked away to go clubbing in Tokyo when not working out around glass and stainless steel.

But the discomfort, both fish-out-of-water but especially spy-undercover, hits hard in the first couple of scenes and one of the big reasons to give her a room at the ryokan is so she can stumble around in the pink toilet slippers getting soap in the tub and otherwise getting it completely wrong.

So I'm trying to keep the history at a low ebb, resist the temptation of using Japanese equivalents for everything and keep that to the words that are interesting or plot-significant -- but at the same time give in to a bit of Japan's Greatest Hits as far as maiko and kabuki and castles and onsen and...

Slowly my memories of Japan are returning. Not just the time I spent there, but all I absorbed through a lot of reading, a lot of watching daytime dramas and other Japanese movies and television, and a lot of studying the language (not that I got very far.) But there's a lot I want back before I feel comfortable depicting the places and culture.

Definitely, the Paris book would have been faster to write. (And there's a running gag in the Paris book. The underlying plot is what looks like clues to a Templar treasure, except Penny is quite sure all the Templar conspiracy theories are total shit. So there are many conversations of, "Then in 1250 Jacques de Molay secretly visited..." "I don't care." "...leaving the secret Templar sigil in the artwork of the famous..." "Not. Listening.")

Just found a new research trick, essential in this time of lockdowns and business failures. Using the Wayback Machine to roll back the website of a museum or hotel to pre-COVID days. 

Down to the pub

The review that Pubby claims was left for one of my books has yet to post at Amazon. The review I left, for a book I selected to review on Pubby four days later, already posted.

Well, since I have the credits, I requested another review. And also took on another myself. A cool little turn-of-the-century steampunk novel that grabbed me with the first page. Hey, since I was thinking of reading it already...

I have feelers out but at the moment I still have a kiss-of-death rating on Hounds. A single star that is going to ensure nobody else will read it, ever. Until I can get something in there to make it look better.

At least I've started blocking out scenes for Wedding. I always have trouble getting into these. When I'm not writing in Penny's voice she seems so distant and alien. I think once I start putting down scenes it is going to go quickly, though. More quickly than the last, I hope.

Meanwhile I'm reading. And reviewing.

And binge-watching Bones. Which is a bit of a master class in how to set up a situation and handle exposition. Just overall very nice work. Very smart, very efficient. The stories are dense without feeling rushed. They feel like they are unfolding at almost a relaxed pace but when you hit the end of an episode you feel like you just saw a novel's worth of material.

You know, that's the most irritating thing about Pubby. Not the weird site, not the reviews going missing. That what I really want to do with the books I'm encountering is sit down with the writer and show them other, possibly better ways they could present their story.

Those who can't do, teach.

(Actually, I have a whole thought going on now about right brain versus left brain books. That some books speak to the one and some to the other and that is why the techniques and the reader response are so different. It isn't just fanfic: I'm seeing on Amazon as well these books with poor story-telling technique but vocal fans. Something different is speaking to those fans. Something us left-brainers aren't doing.) 

Breaks

 My workplace is shuttered for the rest of the month. (We had a worker test positive.) It was going to be a short week anyhow, what with the holidays. And we're all getting tested.

With tap water and an overnight trickle charge I was able to get my old battery to start my car one last time. Then I drove to O'Reilly and put a new one in right at the curb. Other than that, though, I walked and I intend to keep walking.

I am feeling the change in my health. By the time the gyms open up again I might even be ready to go back. 

***

Walking is great for hashing out plots. I still don't know if I'm actually changing anything, or just rolling over what I already came up with until I can accept it. The basic premise for the next Athena Fox book is exactly what I put in the "next time..." blurb of the last book. One of Japan's "New Religions" collects archaeological artifacts and their charismatic leader has already noticed Athena Fox. An equally mysterious Japanese ministry tricks Penny into coming to Japan so they can use her to find out what the "Ascension" that is happening in only two weeks is all about (and if they are looking at another Heaven's Gate, or worse, an Aum Shinrikyo.)

So basically they want the actress. To play the role and to nod head around some of the worst excesses of pseudo-archaeology, Ancient Astronauts, triple DNA and all. So this is coming out of her "be an archaeologist or be an actress" choice from the last book, but to her dismay, she finds she's not a good enough actress, either. There's some hard work, including with the Takarazuka Revue, there. A contact which also informs and confuses her on not just gender roles and expectations in Japan but the uneasy relationship between the mask and the player.

She's also sadly out of shape. She recognizes that too, even as she recognizes that some of this is the mysterious and flamboyant Ichiro trying to shape her to his own ideals. So she's getting the chance to work out and get back in touch with her physical skills -- in of course spectacular Japanese scenery. And there's a minor note here with Bro Science and health woo; the cult is quite rich on the proceeds of get-healthy-quick charms and tonics.

And there's ninja. Of course there are. And her otaku friend Aki, on headset in Boston, giving her tips on Japanese culture that are drawn from anime and manga and are not always helpful. 

So this is basically character beats. It gets me a chance to do a soft introduction to some ideas of bad archaeology; the fixation on Artifact, and the Ancient Astronauts nonsense. What I don't like, is that this is little of the Japan I experienced and researched. There is little here of post-war Japan and less of ordinary lives, as in the process of presenting an attractive Athena Fox, Penny is hanging with the rich and upper class, doing clubs and parties and high-end tourist digs.

So it is kind of the James Bond view of an exotic locale. At least I can leverage some of my previous knowledge of rock climbing, workout culture, health woo, Japanese society and language. But it is also leaving me with an uncomfortable amount to learn about the New Religions, UFO cults, the history and the para-history of the Ninja, changes in the modern Japanese fitness landscape...

I've got a long reading list already. 

***

And to add to the reading list; I joined Pubby. Not sure yet if I am sticking with it. I got my first review there but it hasn't posted yet so I haven't been able to look at it.

I went through this on my first novel. While I was sending it out to publishers and waiting to hear back I wasn't able to let go. It stopped me from being able to write. In that case, it lasted almost ten years.

It has been a terrible struggle to keep writing while I am waiting to see if my Amazon numbers ever kick up and for readers to give me actual honest appraisal, both what I am doing wrong and what they like and would like to see more of. I can't trust the family and friends (well, unless they say something negative. That I trust!)

I need to throw more advertising on, as well as kick that third or even fourth book out there. But at the moment Fox and Hounds is still showing one single rating (not even a review, but a rating) of one star.

It looks terrible. With a single one-star, it looks like it isn't even a real book. I can't send anyone to that page, via advertising or anything else, because they will look at that rating and go away.

The best route I have right now is to not-really-trade reviews at Pubby. (They get around the Amazon restrictions on review trades by anonymizing a reviewer pool, and they get around the no-pay-for-reviews by the fact that you are only paying the host to be there. You earn "points" to allow your book to be made visible to other reviewers by turning in your own reviews.)

BTW, Amazon has modified their stance slightly. In the current FAQ, they answer "can friends and family leave reviews?" with the somewhat vague but heartening assurance that being friends, on social media or elsewhere, won't automatically get a review taken down. Elsewhere, they've indicated that for their purposes, "family" is defined as people sharing a household.

Pubby rotates a very small number of selections and there is no way to save anything. As far as I can tell, merely clicking on an entry commits you to reviewing it. And the only books that made me really itch to review (or to give the writer some helpful hints) required things I didn't know if I had or not...and couldn't find out unless I clicked!

My review of Pubby, in other words, is a terribly organized badly designed confusing mess.

And I really need to have more things that need to be read. I am itching to start putting scenes together.

***

Oh, and hashtag DisneyMustPay.

The character formerly known as "Prince," now known as "Prince" again.

 After going around in circles on it all week, that character is probably a member of the Japanese Royal Family.

Maybe.

See, following the surrender, what is called the Collateral Branches were trimmed off, de-nobled, leaving only the direct male line descendants of Emperor Taisho as actual nobility. Or in the Imperial succession. There are only a dozen actual nobility left in Japan, all of the Imperial Family -- so few, in fact, that it was seriously considered quite recently to change the rules and allow an Empress on the throne for what might be the first time since Himiko.

The official side branches from before 1947 have basically died off as well. So this isn't like some noble families, where you could find a bastard son hanging around in the fringes somewhere if you needed a character.

That's why I worked so long on it. Sure, there are powerful corporations (the daibutsu were also largely dismantled after the surrender, so there isn't that kind of direct connection to power noble in the past, powerful owner of a company today. This ain't Cyberpunk.) But an essentially secular and worse, corporate guy just doesn't hit some of the things I want to hit.

***

I've also been learning about the economic bubble, the central bank. And all sorts of weird class stuff is showing up although it is never quite neat about picking sides. The ninja grew out of poor farming communities trying to protect themselves. Among the legends surrounding the kitsune is the accusation of being a fox-friend; having an unfair advantage over your neighbors, which was generally economic, which ties pretty directly to merchant class and control of the rice...and Inari is goddess of rice and sake and of merchants, who are the ones who pay for all those vermillion torii gates around the Fushimi-Inari shrine.

And thinking in other directions. Kyoto has the Silver Pavilion and used to hold the Golden Pavilion, burned down by a man who became the protagonist of a book by Yukio Mishima, who became the protagonist of a movie...

***

And I am back and forth on the make-up of the cult, or even if I want to use the cult. The actual I.M. Pei designed Miho Museum has been described by several people in "Doctor Evil" terms, although as I mentioned before it is more an art appreciation society than a cult. But their avid collection of artifacts is exactly the kind of thing I need my cult to be doing in order to give Athena Fox a foot in the door...or rather, for Ichiro/Sanjiro (he might end up with an older brother) a terrible idea to make use of a certain actress he's seen in action...at San Francisco's Asian Art Museum.

I still haven't set any scenes. I still am not sure if there is a bunch of fancy parties and Yojimbo talking stuff or what the end game is. I'm not even sure I can fit that snowmobile in. But I am really fixed on the idea of her singing "Yuki no Shingun."

***

Now if I could just keep from having a total crisis and having to stop even thinking about the story for days on end...

And now I just found out about Nara Dreamland, which was abandoned in 2006 and demolished almost exactly two years before my story is set...

Or did I mention a big chunk of the action is in the Kyoto/Osaka/Nara triangle?

Rating Wars

 I got my first rating on Fox and Hounds. I also got my first 1-star rating. On Fox and Hounds. I await with mixed interest to see if there will be a review, or if it is just a drive-by.

As it only has the one at current, it really doesn't look good.

The Japan book is moving slowly. I've reached the stage of trying to marshal the material into scenes and groupings. My latest analogy is level design for games. In many games, one "zone" (which may be several different technical levels) will have a particular theme, decorative style, gameplay element to highlight, etc.

At the moment the only zone that is coming together for me is the action sequence leading up to the climax; somewhere in snow country, pretty much all reindeer games against hired security or similar. Outdoors and snow and snow-related stunts (including driving a snowmobile, for which I am willing to drop a few bucks and get out to Tahoe to "research.")

And this is also a bit of a psychotic break for Penny, with her separation from family over Christmas and the holidays and the cold weather and her sort-of-betrayal by Ichiro and overload of both over-commercial Christmas and being in a foreign land isolated by culture and language...anyhow, this is the "Here's your damned 'Christmas Cake'" sequence.

At least that's what I'm planning.

There is also something about Old Kyoto, the old Geisha district, staying at a Minshuku, visiting the Fushimi Inari shrine, trying on kimono...and I'm not sure how or if this ties into Osaka Castle, the Toei Studio Park, and what I'm currently calling the "Ninja Club."

And even more nebulous is the "Tokyo hotspots with the flamboyant Ichiro, and some sort of Oceans 11 thing."

***

Probably why I gave up trying to work last weekend and went back into Skyrim.

There is an exploit I'd been hearing about for a while. The first part is the there is a potion that buffs Restoration spells, but due to the way it works it also causes items and potions that improve skills to improve them more.

The second is the Enchanting/Alchemy carousel. You make a potion of Enhanced Enchanting, then enchant an amulet of Enhanced Alchemy.

Well. It turns out the latest patch fixed the exploit. Restoration no longer changes the skill enhancements. That means that even with maxed-out enchanting and alchemy, you get stuck around 17%. You can't make gear powerful enough to make a potion powerful enough to advance to the next percentage. Not with the highest normally achievable skills.

So there are various ways in the vanilla game; quest objects that apply a buff that can lift your skills above 100. 

Or you can use the console to artificially pop your skill levels up. And it turns out having a base skill of 200 is vastly more effective than any combination of gear and/or potions achievable without exploits or hacks.

So much for my Alchemist build. The best potions you can brew in vanilla game are vastly outpaced by the skills you were intending to buff with them. The nastiest poison is maybe 24 points of extra damage, and an early-game bow does that already (Imperial Bow 12 pts, steel arrow 12 pts.) And that's before stealth bonuses, or the regular bonuses of the Archery tree.

There is no easy way to build a character who has ordinary iron weapons and beginner skills and achieves necessary competence through the potions they brew.

On the flip side, though; once you are over the threshold (around 40%) the carousel works fine and you can end up making potions that increase your enchanting 10x base. At least that's where I stopped. The way the skill buffs work, though, by the time I could wear a diadem that let me make potions 10x stronger, I could take that same enchanting skill and make a weapon that delivered six hundred extra points of magical damage.

So not really balanced in favor of potion-making.

And also really unbalancing anyhow. I tried going out with my 600-damage bow and armor that was tank round proof and it was, well, boring. 

Although I do want to open up the game again, punch up some potions into the 1000x range, and see just what wacky side effects can ensue...

Click-through

 I've moved a small number of copies of Fox and Hounds. I have no way of knowing which are going to friends or family, other than that most of the friends and family I know don't read on the computer, so eBook sales are less likely to be them.

It is very difficult to trace through Amazon whether someone who saw an ad went on to buy a copy. But from both best-guesses of the above, and the click-through that Amazon thinks it has identified, my ratio of advertising cost to sales made is around 10:1

That's not in my favor.

I am still behind the power curve on this. Having two books in an associated series looks like it may be helping. I have more energy on Fox and Hounds and I don't think it is all advertising or something attractive about the cover. I think I can trace some of that to giving away the first book and people being interested enough to at least look at the second.

So I still want that third book. I am really thinking about pushing myself to get four out there before I take a break and do something different. Not that Sometimes a Fox is a good stopping place. It isn't even the place where I run out of cities (I still have Bangkok, plus the States and a little bit of Alaska.) If anything, A Fox's Wedding closes off the origin story.

***

On my third week of walking to work every day. Walked nine miles on Monday. Been feeling good; have been doing a full work week, too.

The timing is nice here. A chunk of A Fox's Wedding is going to be Penny getting back into shape after letting it slide for a bit too long. If I can continue feeling better -- or at least, well enough -- I might be able to get back to the gym and refresh my memory on rock climbing. And even better, get out to some snow and mess around with skis or dangerous machines that do things in snow (whatever the rental options are there). Because I'd love to have some direct experience to draw from.

***

The plotting is otherwise going slowly. I do want this to be a simpler book in general. Not a lot of history, less dialog, more focused in themes and plots. However, at the center needs to be some cleverness, meaning I need to do some more structured plotting about who told who and who thinks what when.

Oh, but I also have (minor) edit notes for Fox and Hounds, and I discovered that when you create a series on Amazon it wants a cover image (which it never prompted me for). And there's a way of putting the third book up as a pre-sale. So I've been haunting ShutterStock again.

n!

Fox and Hounds is currently ranked #6,000 in "War and military action fiction." I'm not sure how it got there. I'm quite sure I didn't pick that as a category. Perhaps putting "London Blitz" in the keywords was a mistake.

So what does that imply? Does that mean there is a book currently at rank #1 for selling 6,000 copies? Well, that's not the best assumption. If you sum the series of positive integers you end up with 12 million total copies sold. (6,000 + 5,9999 + 5,998...)

Not implausible, but more likely that Amazon has more grain available, by weighting copies sold by how recent they are, say. (And, actually, with the weighting that #1 book probably sold a hell of a lot more than 6,000 copies).

The talk around eBook circles is dropping a thousand bucks on placed ads, also reviewers, GoodReads presence, and the like. Actually, the best way to push an eBook is to have a strong social media presence, enough of one to make pre-sales and to generate a first-day buzz.

Another thing that apparently kicks even harder than reviews is editorial comments. (And for reviews, the number of them weights more than the ranking. The big boost for reviews is around 20, though; after that the gains are incremental). Chasing down commenters is even more difficult than chasing down reviewers, though. At least reviewers, there are aggregating services that plop willing reviewers in front of books desiring reviews. For a feee, of course. In social currency or in money.

As part of those social circles, booktubers are a growing thing. But it seems at this point -- well, certainly in circles that self-identify with that name -- to have gotten a little echo chamber. (You know, with all this echo chamber crap that's going on in the partisan rhetoric right now, does anyone still remember what an actual echo chamber was and how it worked? Didn't think so!)

Booktubers are starting to write books, which are getting reviewed by other booktubers. And like everything else on that corner of the eyeball-hungry internet, it thrives on controversy. Books that get talked about are books that have a reputation. Sometimes good; Andy Weird and Brandon Sanderson are getting talked up. More often not -- lots of frightening YA is getting talked about.

It is very critical commentary and I probably shouldn't be watching so much of that. Because my own confidence is...low.

And that's the problem with all these higher-pressure sale tactics. I am caught in the conundrum of not knowing if it is worth it. Are my books so shitty I'm not only not going to get sales, I'm going to make people hate me for convincing them to buy them? I need readers who can tell me if I'm screwing up and in what ways (and with luck those are ways I can fix). I'm unlikely to get those readers if I don't push. But I'm unwilling to push when I don't know.

Which means I find myself spending a weekend making weirder and weirder settlements in Fallout 4, watching Bones and Dorkness Rising on Amazon Prime...anything but write.

Although I did just download Aeon Timeline. Maybe that will work a little better towards working out the GAANT-chart like dependencies of the Kyoto plot.