Boring

And I was doing so well. Did a quick revision of "batman or superman" (which brought it up to 2,000 words) and got 400 words into the UX scene that leads off the whole "Apache" sequence.

And then found a better way to do it. I almost didn't do it. But every chapter has either one of the doggerel clues or (more frequently) some pithy quote from the same imaginary book. I danced around doing something with trains, or about the "little bullfighter" starting to sign his name as Picasso, but realized there was a better way to proceed.

I've been building up various plot threads throughout and the upcoming small climax is where several of them come together. Except I didn't build enough of them far enough, and I just don't want more "empty" scenes that don't have actual emotional beats happening in them. That's the big problem with this book, really. There's lots of material, but there isn't enough emotional plot, not enough confrontations, changes, other interactions. Just a sort of plodding discovery of each new step in a mystery that I gave away long ago isn't actually leading to anywhere.

Anyhow, the best way to bring in some of the material I want for the crux scenes (Apaches, the steampunk garden party, and the climb of Notre Dame de Paris) is to do one more dual-time narrative. To go into Huxley's voice and tell the full story of the death of Carles Casagemas.

And I probably should make sure that Huxley pére could have been wounded in Hartbeesfontein, but I can always look that up later. The date is just so very convenient, though...

***

And I just drafted the Casagemas scene. A mere four paragraphs. After all the reading up I did -- including some extremely detailed opinions on the inspirations behind his small but notable oevure, and a quite pungent review of the "Genius" series available on Prime -- I didn't find the need to say very much more about Carles, Genevieve, and the Hippodrome Cafe.

One of the things I say over and over when I am answering questions from novice writers over on Quora (I'm a novice myself, but at least a well-read one) is how much you don't know until you put it down on paper. Turns out I was able to put in much more about why Jonathan Huxley needs to return to England than I thought I would. And I also discovered I can lay in all that I really need about the Casagemas suicide without actually having to name Picasso.

It is probably terribly obvious. I'll have to be satisfied that I snuck Suzanne Valadon into a different scene and that's gonna take a sharper eye to spot. And I am so sorry there's just not the appropriate space for a little story going on about her and the kid that grew up as an Utrillo. 

Spam spam spam spam

On impulse looked at the "people who bought this also liked" for my second book, the one set in contemporary London with the dual-time narrative featuring the London Blitz.

So what gets associated with this? Crime thrillers, a few mysteries, a fair amount of historical fiction. A bit of W.W.II, some Roman...and a hell of a lot of Vikings.

Why Vikings? Only the algorithm knows. Increasingly, the algorithms (quite possibly, being driven into strange corners by intrusive SEO) are going crazy. Google search results, YouTube, all of them are returning stranger and stranger results.

Progressing slow but steady now on Sometimes a Fox even if I have to go back and rework an already-drafted scene after I realized there's story beats that have to happen there if they are going to happen at all. Well enough, in any case, I may indeed put it up for presale within the next couple of weeks.

The steampunk book should be next. Honestly, I'm a little tired of writing at the moment and may need a break. A different problem, though, is that every Athena Fox book leaves me wanting to have told the story differently, or told an entirely different story. A story set in the deserts of the American Southwest, with a straight-forward mystery -- even a proper body drop -- without all the language craziness and with, finally, a chance to do some actual archaeology again.

All I'm saying is The Early Fox might distract me from all the world-building I'll need for Blackdamp.

Assuming I have any brain cells left after dealing with a UL inspection and testing, and a whole bunch of reading about torque trying to bring us within ISO 9000 et al. And my shop is filled with engineers developing two new products, so there's that as well. And did I mention upcoming surgery...?

 

made three bucks

Someone has been reading the series on Kindle Unlimited. I'm tempted to throw the Paris book into pre-sales just so they know it is coming.

That's three bucks in page views for this month. I made more over the same period in an old set of meshes I have up on Renderosity. And significantly more than both in sticking to a steady 40 hour week...coming very close to clocking in and out exactly on the hour, even. We'll see how long I can keep that up.

But I'm still looking at several weeks to finish the book. Just completed the first draft of the "Batman v. Superman" scene. Which after a long look (and clean-up) of my outline got spliced with Amelia talking about the La Boheme love triangle she's gotten in the middle of. 

Since I reworked the themes, the Batman/Superman is more a running gag up to the climax than it is a theme. The Japan book was all about masks and I don't need to go over that ground again in the very next book. But it does provide a couple of amusing beats, including the last of the Proustian loops, the "New Mombasa" scene.

Yes, my outline would be impossible for anyone else to read. Very efficient, though; according to information theory, that's kind of how it works. 

I did stop briefly to make the final choice of UNC for Amelia, mostly so I could have her quote "I'm a tarheel born." And look up the best metals for making your own lock picks. And of course the confit de canard with pommes sautees -- which is on the 2024 menu for Cafe la Boheme de la Montmartre, even if I am very very much soft-peddling any connection to a real place with that name in, err, that same location. And locations for Parisian hackerspaces but none of the real ones were convenient for story purposes and I've pretty much decided I'm not going to do a visit.

I am sending Penny to 125 rue de Lafette, though. Unfortunately that did get mentioned by Umberto Eco -- it is that well known -- but oh well. I've got the Inverted Pyramid in the story already, so...

Dance magic dance

Got the results from the CT scan back. Never have I seen the word "opacity" repeated so often. The pain is still with me but the minutes I forget it are coming more often now.

Deep in the parkour training scene on Sometimes a Fox. Tired and unfocused and that leads too easily to running down more of those tantalizing tidbits Paris is so full of. Watching Fred Astaire now. Before that another dance on film, this one a 1908 from Edison featuring the Bowery equivalent of an Apache Dance.

That's an Apache there. You can tell by the cap and cravat. Pronounced "A-pasch" in French. It is odd just how much the dance attributed to them gets around. But an oddly appropriate side quest for me to go on, given how often Penny goes on about being a dancer.

Sometime during the week I was watching a video about the spiral pattern of the arrondissements over a late dinner, and discovered I'd completely screwed up a mention I'd made of the tax gates. At least that bit of narrative was a quick rewrite, but it made me conscious again of how much I don't know and how much I don't even realize I'm missing. So I've been trying to cram in a little more about the architecture and history of Paris, the layout and how you use the current metro, and, oh right, a few things about how the "southern accent" (US, this time) is changing.

And of course this isn't a training montage scene. I am actually not against Penny picking up some useful skill in far too short a time -- my main reluctance is having her become a skilled fighter whether this way, or more honestly. But this isn't going to end with Penny being a skilled traceur. The beat in the scene is her starting to accept the way she's mangled her flight-or-fight response into a place where, when she is frightened, it makes her charge right in. And this isn't a smart way to proceed.

But there will be one parkour payoff. One upcoming moment when she actually gets a parkour stunt right. That being the "Apaches" scene.

And the parkour scene is done. Minus inevitable edits. This brings me to the end of the detailed outline, which means I've got a bit of work organizing the remaining 20K of material to finish out the novel. I'm really wanting to build up the Steampunk Garden Party at Parc des Butte-Chaumont into a whole Agatha Christie of revealing conversations. No idea if I can pull it off. But aside from knowing I've got a "you and I are much alike" conversation with the rival treasure-hunter, a meeting with some cataphiles, Amelia gushing about her artist lover and Penny finally admitting that she might, sometimes, be a badass, I don't know how the stuff between finishing parkour and landing at the garden party plays out.

Broke my censor

Monday wasn't as bad as I feared.

Okay, sure, three projects did hit at once. And my head was still pounding. But at least it wasn't stabbing pain -- well, not most of the time -- and I still had a little leftover tylenol with codeine from a root canal.

Which kind of tells you how bad the pain had gotten.

I yelled at someone and there were a few times in the day I had to sit there and hold my head in both hands but for all of that...it was one of the more productive days I've had this year.

And so was today. Or at least I think it was. It could be that pain has knocked out my internal censor, and let me stop second-guessing and judging myself all the time. I certainly was acting productive, staying on my feet or on the computer all day instead of nursing a hot chocolate in the back of the shop as had been happening a bit too frequently of late.

Maybe I've just gotten angry and stubborn. I'm going to try like hell to put in full regular hours until and unless HR themselves tell me to take a sick day. And aside from being, well, in pain I'm feeling great!

Today was only four hundred words but the novel, too, seems to be benefitting from whatever this is. Maybe I actually am thinking more clearly than I have in a while, and solving the scenes I was getting hung up on, or maybe I'm just so impatient and sick I'm more willing to accept compromise, but whatever it is, there is actually the slightest faintest hope I might have a complete draft before April has vanished in the rear-view mirrors.

I can understand why so many artists sank into absinthe. Pretty sure acute sinus infection is not nearly as attractive. I would really rather this pain be gone. 

Before the dawn

Nasal polyps. Growths that form in the nasal cavities and as they grow, progressively block them. This means stuffy nose, stuffy head, post-nasal drip, sinus headaches. It also basically lowers the threshold of various histamine-type reactions, meaning it frequently leads to asthma and even to what is called NSAIDS Syndrome; a nasty allergic reaction to a whole family of anti-inflammatory drugs like aspirin.

(More technically, one of several similar problems rooted in a disregulation of several metabolic pathways. Named Samter's Triad when first discovered, the specific strong brochiorestriction reaction following intake of non-steroidal (corticosteroid) anti-inflammatory medications is given the lovely acronym NERD -- NSAIDs-exacerbated respiratory disease or aspirin-exacerbated... Anyhow, about .7 percent of population but upwards of 22% of long-term asthma sufferers.)

And all of this can cause sleep apnea, meaning drowsiness, lack of concentration, and once again, increased susceptibility to infection.

All of this is my excuse for why I didn't figure it out. Too many different symptoms pointing every which way. And Kaiser, like all HMOs, is very compartmentalized. Having a family doctor who is familiar with your history and trained as a GP doesn't come across as cost-effective in their books. So they have specialists. Very good specialists, but also overworked specialists. Making efficient use of them pushes the system towards targeting a specific complaint and focusing in on that.

I call it the Kragen's Auto Parts of health care. "Hi; I'd like to order a heart valve replacement for a 2009 male Caucasian..."

So I was just limping along with increasingly frequent sinus infections, sinus headaches, and poor sleeping. Until December when it suddenly got much, much worse. And I'd picked the wrong item from the Kaiser menu so there was months of following the plan to solve some completely different problem than the one I had before we could finally cross-step.

So now I'm finally scheduled for CT scan and seeing the surgeon and hopefully getting surgery scheduled as soon as possible. And my allergist, who has been doing "wait and see," will finally see about an aspirin challenge and otherwise doing something other than prescribing more and more medications that treat the growing symptoms of a different problem.

But.

I've missed so many hours due to nasty head colds and episodes of severe fatigue HR is getting ready to kick me. And if that happens I lose medical care. I need to keep struggling on and somehow get perfect attendance even as the symptoms get worse and worse -- and somehow schedule all these doctor's visits off the clock -- until I can get what I hope will turn things around and set the clocks back a few years to where I was properly productive.

Perfect timing, of course. Right now we are repurposing my shop, buying new equipment, and very possibly changing my role in the company. We have a new prototype all over the tables right now and as usual at this company, everything is do-it-now priorities.

And of course simultaneously we have UL testing on another product that I am de-facto project lead and (oh hell no) lead engineer. I have been poaching real engineers when I can but there's a lot of work and a lot of pressure.

If only this was happening a few months later. I am looking forward to these changes, but they are happening now just when the strength I need is weeks away.

But.

Acute sinusitis. A very nasty bug got into my frontal sinuses and there's little that can be done. Sinuses too blocked for it to properly drain, and by the same coin, rinses and vapor and all that crap can't get up there. Infections of this kind are usually viral so don't respond to antibiotics (I'm on one anyhow). Oh, and I can't even take pain killers.

Stabbing pain, so bad I am almost unable to sleep. Pain so bad I am squinting both eyes even as I type this. Since Thursday (and there's another two days for HR to complain about). And it just won't end.

Monday is going to be...delightful.

We are not smart

 

Right after posting, I realized the problem isn't that I am writing too slowly. It is that I spend so much time feeling too stupid to write.

Well, instead of trying to figure out how to write a smart story when I am dumb, why don't I set out to write a dumb story?

Like the Asgard approach, this is smarter than it seems at first. What I mean is, give myself permission by doing a story that by genre and style is fine with shoddy world-building, plots full of holes, paper-thin characters.

And I do have one I've been thinking about. This approach could possibly take care of some of the issues I had with the idea, even.

Par for the Course

I should not have been hanging out in the write-o-sphere. Too many nice discussions on Quora, videos on YouTube, stuff like that.

The scene I am on is a perfect place to step back from all lectures, all the time.

Already, I was picking this as a place to come down hard with five-senses, but that was for other reasons. Anyhow, this seems like a good scene to try to communicate thematic points without someone sitting down and talking about them -- and this include using the narrative voice of my protagonist.

How exactly do I get across concepts like dérive in a 2,000 word scene of French people running around an office park?

Oh, but that's not the worst.

In the great battle between Pantser and Outliner it is recognized by both that discovering and bringing out the themes of your book, as well as the essential conflicts, core character development, and related deep-structural elements, happens in rewrites. So no surprise; I am changing what is on the table and where I want to focus.

Originally, the internal conflict that drives Penny for this book was whether to take up the mantle of hero. Amelia came on board first as an ordinary tourist to act as a mirror, reflecting the way that Penny has grown from naive tourist to experienced world traveler (as much as she might protest). She was useful as someone who understood the arts and could turn inner monologue into dialogue. Still talking-heads lectures, but one step more in the direction of being actually interesting. With that in there, it was a natural step to let he be a comic book geek, at least enough to start throwing the hero label in Penny's direction.

But on reflection this didn't work. She just got done fighting yakuza and nearly dying in the snow to answer that one. And looking into the mirror of a goddess, which should really finish off any questions of appearance versus reality. At least for a while!

So where her conflict is, has been changing as I write. It was largely behind the several rewrites, of what has become a process so long I may end up with cork-covered walls and an absinthe addiction before it is over.

And when I hit the parkour scene, I realized my first take (she's physically afraid of the challenge) is defensible but doesn't advance the important themes.

So I'm trying to define the themes of the book, find ways of bringing them out in this scene, and do it without spelling anything out with talking heads and idiot lectures. Right. This may take a few more weekends!

Skip to my Louvre

The Conversation from Hell in now back in draft. And this weekend I plugged on through (against the trials and tribulations of new medications) to revise 1,300 words of Penny walking from the metro entrance to I.M. Pei's Inverter Pyramid in the Louvre Carousel.

Speaking of which. I am flipping back and fourth between French and English spelling in my notes, and in the text. Sometimes it is the Eiffel Tower, sometimes le Tour Eiffel.

(As a tower, it is "le." As "The Iron Lady" -- a frequent nickname -- it is "la." Aren't gendered languages fun?)

I'd probably use the French terms more often but Speech-to-Text throws fits at French. Or maybe it is just my French. Lately, with my exploding sinuses, it is throwing fits at everything, but it is still a good way to take notes on the fly. The scenes I just finished re-writing were not in speech-to-text. Or on the phone. I needed the real-estate of the mini and the two monitors connected to it for all the stuff I had to shuffle around or consult.

(Actually, whether I am getting faster at typing or what, I rarely cut-and-paste the material I am re-using. I drag over the bit of scene that has a new home, but then I re-type it, adjusting it to fit in with the flow of the current scene. For today's work, I could not find where I stuck the notes on religious buildings around Montmartre, but it made more sense for the scene to fly past that. But, oddly, I finally turned up something today that explained why there is still a martyrium in the area, after all the revolutions and gypsum mining and so on. It ain't the original.)

I am hopeful but rather less than sanguine that I might have a draft finished by April. Which would put it five years after the time the story takes place. And I don't know (and have stopped wanting to know) since I started.

I still need to revise the Egyptian Room scene, significantly. The Charles de Gaulle shouldn't take much editing; a big thing I've been doing is moving some "beats" around to give character and theme development better arcs, and there is some stuff in there that may need to be moved. And then I'll finally be in the parkour scene at La Defense where I left off for this last round of revisions.

I have dreams that the next Athena Fox story will take a different direction and, possibly, be easier. One problem I've had with this one is there isn't enough plot, and the plot beats unfold far too frequently in a "studying this artwork and knowing a weird detail about an Impressionist painter..." way. The Desert one should be able to have a lot more plot beats that are someone saying something incriminating or someone shooting bullets through a door. Hell, it may be the first story I write that has a proper Body Drop!

I won't need a Murder Wall to work that plot out, though. I will be doing a world book for Blackdamp, though. I finally realized that when I did a test draft of Alice's first scene (the first scene in the book) and I didn't know how many people there were in her class. So I'm going to ballpark the population figures and economies so I have some general grasp of things like, is there a whole street of goldworkers (or whatever appropriate cottage industry) or is there only enough work for one weird guy that does the stuff in his whatever-the-steampunk city-has equivalent of his garage.

And learn about Venus. Bought my first book already. I'm hoping I don't have to learn too much chemistry -- time consuming stuff, that -- but I am very afraid it will be far too important...

That book is looking to take a lot longer than April Next to write...