The Lost Tomb of Maui

Come on; legendary figure and hero-god. Why not on the front of what seem to be called in the trade "Archaeological Thrillers?"

Plus, I've been reading up on Wahiawa, Dole plant and everything. But I've decided that Sometimes a Fox isn't the book for Drea to get some time on stage (she grew up in what she calls the bad part of Oahu, and never went back.) The Paris book is going to stay in Paris.

I've worked through most of my a-chronological loops now. The Drea conversations are the last one to get on paper in this latest revision.

But in all of that work, I also figured out, finally, where I am on branding and how I am really trying to place the books.

It isn't this:

 Actually, few of those are really the format "Former SEAL teams up with hot scientist to uncover deadly secret of a mysterious past civilization." The first is a rather delightful series that is very travel-oriented and the history is solid, too (the writer is an actual historian) -- and takes only small liberties with the stuff.

What I'm doing is Romancing the Stone, or any of those episodes of a long-runner TV show where the cast goes on a treasure hunt or archaeological excavation and conveniently falls into all of the tropes of rolling boulders and so on.

Played for comedy, in short. But also for the fun shenanigans you can get into it; almost all of these, right up to the recent The Lost City with Sandra Bullock as an ex-academic who sort of regrets all the money she is making by writing archaeological thrillers with a bodice-ripper twist -- until she and the hunky photo model for her covers are abducted from a book release party...

The Athena Fox books aren't a series about tomb raiding. This is a series about a otherwise normal young woman who keeps falling into situations that even she recognizes are ridiculous.

Well, okay, I knew that. What I wasn't sure of is whether I should be branding in that direction and selling in that direction.

And this also settles where I am going with the character and future plots. Elements of the Japan book (A Fox's Wedding) were a struggle for me, and the struggle was that I was trying to push her out of the status quo of ordinary girl with the intention of making her eventually a seasoned adventurer.

I think it works a lot better if she is a singed adventurer. She's still "ordinary" Penny Bright, but as she learned in Japan she doesn't need to don the mask of "Athena Fox" in order to get out a scrape. Because she may not like it, but she's been there before...