Jones the Spy

Finished restoring my dad's old mandolin. He bought it when he went off to the Army, because "it's lighter than a guitar." So Korean War vintage, mass production. Which is sort of cool. I made a point of not replacing any hardware and not stripping and re-finishing anything but keeping the marks of a well-used instrument. Except for the fingerboard. That was too deeply gouged to be comfortable to play.

And I got a new locker to keep all the instruments in. Working too hard on the novel to have time to record anything just yet...but does mean I can keep practicing that bass part...

***

Starting the fourth and final part of the Japan adventure and the completely expected week of reviewing the shape of the book and seeing if the original plotting still makes sense. I have to do a little more work on the cult, particularly, how they cult.

They have to be keeping secrets because otherwise there'd be no mission. It makes most sense for plotting if they are set up onion fashion, like Freemasonry, with ever more esoteric secrets revealed as you are initiated into the higher orders. These guys are even color-coded.

But there's more work to do. The reason I like to outline loosely is the reality that when you get deep into a story, the choices you had to make have compounded. For instance; I had been thinking of an episode at a high-tech gym for a while. As I was working on other scenes, I realized it felt a little "dry," like not enough actual plot was happening. I got the idea to have Deacon opening the gym and for Penny to end up climbing "Cliffhanger" as part of the scheme to get him to invite Athena Fox into the cult.

But with that scene, and a couple of other scenes that were already in the outline, their plotting is starting to be more obvious. So it is inevitable now that the moment Penny shows up at cult HQ, Deacon is going to ask; "Why are you spying on me?"

A few days work, and I know where I want to go with it. It's a very Penny direction. She outright admits it, making up a plausible reason that lets her stay on anyhow. And then choses to go around telling everyone there during the various introductions, "Me? Oh, I'm a spy..."