The Key

Took the day off work to try to get some writing and associated chores done. 

Assembled my new keywords and plugged them into KDP. Chatted with my cover art fixer. All of this work in defining what the key elements are of all three books has made me think a lot more deeply about the themes and characters and everything. And oh yes, I still have stuff I learned in the beta read and am working on applying.

Wish I could get all three beta read. Wish more I could find the time to apply the notes I'd get.

Sometime in the last few days I mashed the first critical chapter into better sense. My beta reader told me there really weren't enough clues for a new reader to figure out who these people were and where they were on their character journey. Well, that was half of it. There was still confusion in my mind (and still is) that needed to be straightened out.

Twenty drafts. For one 1200 word scene. In fact, only six paragraphs of it. But I think I have a clearer definition of who she is in her life, her goals, her work, her emotional state, at the start of the book.

Anyhow, today was working on the "infiltration" sequence; from when she arrives back in Kyoto with an invitation to visit the cult headquarters, to when she leaves for Shirakawa-go.

I'd written 10,000 words of it. Wasn't working. Took over a day to break out everything that was in those scenes and chart them out. Then today, shuffled them around until I started to get a glimmer of how to make it work.

The weird thing is...well, maybe it isn't so weird.

Anyhow, the result of a very long, two-coffee day today is 3,000 words of notes that are mostly about the psychological state of four people. Deacon (the charismatic front-man of the cult), Sakai (the ambitious and short-tempered head of security), Takeuchi (the chief operating officer of the business; more-or-less the Scott Evil for this bunch). And Penny.

(Uchuu doesn't count; he is pretty much open about everything. And Ojiisan is being cagey so...okay, there's a few words there about him as well). Uchuu is the idea man, the mystic, the one-time academic who fell completely into the Ancient Aliens hole and ended up inventing a religion. Ojiisan? He's a close relative of the Emperor though not in the line of succession and he's there because he's been studying Kusanagi all his life. And Penny is there -- not that she knows it yet -- because he is there (the Imperial Household Agency is worried about him but for various reasons can't take more direct action.)

Spoilers!