One short scene

I've been working on the first scene of the Paris book for quite some time now.

Of course first chapters are hard. That's where you have to grab the reader's interest, introduce the main characters, establish the setting, and give them a hint of what the story is about (the contract with the reader). Which means you yourself have to figure out who the characters are and where you are going with the thing.

So the bits finally came together, with a bit of help from La Boheme, STEM, and Prince Valiant. All stuffed into a cafe somewhere in or near the Place du Tertre, 18th Arrondissement close to Sacre Couer.

(And I've been having a lot of fun getting speech to text to accept French names when taking a quick note during work. It has finally decided to accept Sacre Couer but nothing, it seems, will let it puzzle out belle epoche.)

Not helped by having to take my car in for a check engine light (it was due for the next service interval anyhow). Or continuing lethargy and pain -- they're going to hang a heart monitor on me next week.

And I'm spending some of my work time deep into materials science, reading lots and lots of manufacturer's datasheets. There's a product we build that was basically designed and managed by our department and it is sort of resolved to me at this point. So a company full of engineers, and I'm the one who is trying to puzzle out this stuff as we struggle to finally achieve a full Class A rating.

***

I have most of the stuff together for the Paris book now. I still have a chunk of research I want to do, because it is going in a lot of directions. Napoleon, but more than that, the Belle Epoche and the history of Montmartre. Fortunately, I can wait until I get there (that is, to the specific chapters) before I need to know more about parkour or the Palais Garnier or Les Invalides etc. 

It isn't that exciting a story for me, though. Not sure why. I set up this series to do some action but I'm not sure that making it chock-full of action sequences would do me better (there is a climb up Notre Dame de Paris, but even when she is clinging to the grotesques the stakes are "merely" personal. There's no grand goal here, no big plot, no ticking clock.)

Be that as it may. I'm looking for a bit of a kick by thinking about what story might be next. Besides; I've set as part of the style that every single book has a "next time" on the last page. Which implies I should have at least a sense of what the next book might be!