Boom Headshot

 Woke up with a splitting sinus headache and called in sick for the day.

But the phenylephrine worked. I'd paid a gal on Fiver to give me a cover opinion, and not only did she concur the new cover made a better fit with the book's contents, she liked the old cover, the calyx, and asked me for advice on 3D. Oh, and gave me some tips going forward with the new one.

But while this was going on hacked and plodded and worked my way through most of my remaining plotting problems step by careful step. Even got a bunch of the work notes transferred to the working files.

The plot and themes and arcs all sort of works and I know how the book paces and what is going to happen in each part. There's less happening within the cult itself now, but to compensate, more meaningful plot is happening in Tokyo, making it a better thematic stage (moving from traditional Kyoto to neon and robots -- and internal and external plots are moving to a new stage here as well.)

The sequence I'm calling "Hikikomori Nights" is one of those good ideas; it keeps growing. It's allowed me to fold in "Sukeban Deka," some "travel on the cheap for Tokyo" stuff, the right-wing sound trucks, more about the Yakuza, and of course the outsiders of Japan; shut-ins, otaku, homeless, immigrants.

Other sequences which are coming along nicely from the original germ are "kurisumasu ni wa kentakki" and "Guns and Monet."

But a lot of rewrites. Half of that is moving scenes around for a better flow, then going through fixing the pointers (all that "yesterday we'd been at the Golden Pavilion." Well, now that is happening tomorrow instead...)

The other half is stripping out a lot of stuff. There's a long discussion on what "artifact" means, and that both is getting cut to a single discussion instead of re-appearing 2-3 times, and getting a lot taken out.

And then there's new scenes and recasts. Before I can move forward to the Tokyo chapters, I need to rip apart a short talk I've got in Godzilla coming back from the Not-the-Miho Museum, and turn it into a longer scene at a sushi place in Kyoto, with flirting, life stories, and bad chopstick handling.

And then the shinkansen, and I really need to finish reading that book on the Takarazuka.