Whiskers on Kittens

Finally did the first Jackson and Sanchez scene. I have a feeling I'm going to revise a few times before I am happy with it. There's a hell of a lot happening in these last chapters of Part II.

I got a few hundred words down over breakfast. And second breakfast. Was glad I had a computer available for the next few (text is up to 30K now).

Glad because these are a few things I had to look up. Animal life (and tracks) at White Sands. Colors of various "warning, radiation" signs. The street address of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The dates of the kitty litter incident at WIPP, and the safety officer exodus at LANL.

The correct term for the Air Force field uniform. Oh, that was fun. Turns out the same year as my story, they are phasing out one style and bringing in another. Only, not across the whole service at once. Some of them are still back in a third!

Air Force slang. The correct branch of the Air Force for my pair (not that they are telling Penny). Ranks addresses and saluting protocol (I may have saluted a lot, but I was never an officer). What is a HEMI (that was a thing ten years ago, as of this story. Oh, well. Penny has already stated she doesn't do cars. Or Chrysler trucks). The contents of an abo knapping kit, shapes of Clovis, Folsom, and Western Stemmed Tradition points. Burlington (Missouri) chert. Genetics of the Solutreans. Kulkulkan. 

There was probably more but that's all I remember.

And, no, Spock is totally wrong here. Unless things really are different in the Star Trek universe...after all, didn't we already have the Eugenics Wars? Khaaaaaaaan!

The Trouble with Research

...is that it is volatile. I spent three days (well, I was doing other things, too). But three days just to track down a particular piece of art.

See, I'd seen it. I made a note to myself that I might want to use it. But that was when I was early in the development of The Early Fox and didn't know quite where it was going to go. So I read three or four books on nuclear New Mexico, on Navajo miners and Downwinders, as well as on ranchers and eminent domain in White Sands and on the hill that became Los Alamos.

No matter how much I take notes, and highlight passages, I just can't remember the stuff I end up wanting to use. So I try, these days, to parcel my research efforts out. I read just enough to make sure the plot points are plausible.

And I wait until I'm actually writing the scene before I read any further.

One downside to this is it is almost like cramming for an exam. In this current book, the geology of the playa plays a crucial part in the plot. But I already wrote the scenes that are heavily about that geology. I risk having forgotten too much when I come back to it for the final clue.

Another downside is a lack of front-loading. My new Nuke Museum sequence is going to take some absorbing of Los Alamos in the Trinity Test days. Ideally, I'd stop and watch Oppenheimer and do some more academic research and I'd let that sort of cook until I could basically write a short historical-fiction excerpt.

And...oops; Manhattan just dropped on Prime free. Of course, the same book I discovered the Noel Marquez painting in, is SCATHING about the Manhattan mini-series...

I don't want to lose steam so I'm skipping over the museum to do Penny's meeting with Jackson and Sanchez, and the end of Part II. Which is what I'm doing with Egtved anyhow. But I do worry that the stack of plot changes is reaching critical mass. At some point I need to go back and rewrite before I forget that what a Christie Pit is got moved to Chapter 8 so needs to be taken out of Chapter 4...

Also research-wise, the desert stuff especially makes this a very visual book, and that makes it better to do at home on the dual-monitor setup. I really do love writing in a cafe over a long brunch, but the phone screen can only handle blocks of text. I can't have pictures of the rocks and sand spread out at the same time.

I only got five hundred out today, but I still have a little time after dinner and -- now that I'm about to hit the "Test Bed," it is going quickly.

Good thing, too, because I've got shiny new idea syndrome. Ran into another article and I want to do the boat one, and the viking one. But no vikings in boats. For how lightweight these damn Athena Fox stories really are (and for how low the sales are on them), I really should be punching them out on a four-month basis.

Oh, yeah. And started the home folder and dropped a 500-word proof-of-concept on my "words about writing" book.

Frybread

I've been fried all week. Strange week. Have a lot of energy at work but collapsing in the evenings and thus, no writing done.

One day into the weekend and there's 1,700 words down. The whole Pueblo Cultural Center thing written. But...reviewing that work (after I woke up again, damn this sickness), realized I'd completely forgotten the mural. So now need to open one of my Kindle books, track that thing down, and slot it in.

On top of the open tabs I've got on pueblos of New Mexico, language groups, blue corn, and the Three Sisters. And oh boy is frybread a rabbit hole. Not just a million varieties, but history legacy and identity and, yes, even controversy. That is a hell of a lot to load on to one pancake. No wonder the stuff is nearly flat.*

These driving scenes are killing me. I end up talking about all sorts of strange things in them. The intent was to just make them contemplative, just a landscape passing almost as if in a dream. But I am not Tolkien. I can't fill three pages on how dry the rocks are. I couldn't even do it with a nice fat tree to describe.

And I'm not ready for the nuke museum scene. I wish I had work week still on me because dreaming up this one is good stuff for the mental back-burner. I have the edge of something with Penny imagining herself a Los Alamos wife (and it was wartime, so yeah, a lot of them were working inside the gates, too. Some even had degrees!) And somehow carrying this on to some sort of bad blood between a surly teen or an influencer or someone who damaged an exhibit, and blames Penny for getting in trouble over it.

Because I really do want that chase through the missile yard. And doing it with Penny half-thinking spies at Los Alamos...

But I'm losing my focus, so I'm gonna go watch the Tenth Doctor play the Fifteenth... 

* Frybread, described by many as an indispensable ingredient of a powwow...is made with wheat. Think about it for a moment.

Crime Novel and Museum Guide

My outline revisions now have Penny visiting two museums in Albuquerque before doing her hike into the desert. It harms the pacing, but it is the best way to set up stuff I want her to know for the stuff that happens in the end of Part II.

And I don't actually have to info dump. She can be showing learning "things" basically off-stage, with the scenes about...scene stuff.

I have this idea of her somehow experiencing Los Alamos in the 1940's via some of the exhibits. Bringing that more to life. It isn't exactly the core historical period but, really, the historical thing for this book is largely the nuclear age.

BTW, I write this on the 80th anniversary of the Trinity Test. 

I also, really really want to do a chase or fight scene around the rockets. It looks almost like a railyard out there, with these missiles on their sides lined up like detached strings of freight cars. I had thoughts while I was there of ducking in and out in one of those "chase through the railyard" scenes.

Only problem is, there's not anyone chasing Penny yet. There are at least two (possibly three) distinct things she does towards the end of Part II that changes that status and changes the game.

And I sort of want this to be real stakes. Not her imagination running away, not a confused Karen chasing after her because she thought Penny was a docent and is demanding she explain the Titan Missile Program to her bored kids. In the best of all possible worlds, this would be the fallout from some Good Samaritan act earlier.

I'm feeling a little better about the lack of side quests. I mean, I still don't have them, but she did do a few active things to earn clues, and wasn't just getting them handed to her. 

Anyhow.

I made another lovely trip to the ER. So understandable why I'm writing a bit slow. But it really does feel like I'm getting the hang of putting out a good 5K a week, and it is methods that can be expanded to more, perhaps significantly more.

Which is good, because I'm still having Shiny New Idea syndrome.

I still wish sometimes I was doing Actress Penny. Taking it even further; she actually did a bunch of movies of the sort of Asylum kind -- possibly mockbusters referencing more directly properties that I wouldn't be able to include in their original form.

So no skills in archaeology, or gunplay, or really much physical skill other than a rough-and-tumble physicality. But a skilled mimic with eidetic memory and original-Penny's gift of gab/CHAR 20 ability to convince other people. She'd be the kind of hero who could fake knowing guns well enough to bluff an enemy...but also able to somehow pull off firing the thing anyhow when things went sideways.

And the movies are a running gag, both for pop-cultural references that are entirely IP free, and as her version of the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook.

The more plausible/likely idea I had, though, is to take the idea of fiction becoming real, and two ordinary people getting forced by "the story" to take on roles of omni-disciplinary historian/linguist/archaeologist and companion good-at-everything-physical Action Girl archetype.

And make that the last chapter of the "Other Adventures of Athena Fox" idea I proposed earlier.

Those who can't do...

Made my 1200 over the end of the VP-8 scene, and then came back to the keyboard just before bed with a waterfall of notes that brings the plan all the way up to the end of Part II. Folding in that left turn to Albuquerque, a key revelation about Mary Cartwright (the Tewa-speaking NAGPRA representative who came out to the dig outside Holloman AFB), the fallout of Penny's unauthorized walk deeper into the missile range, the Demon Core, Clovis points...

But I realized today I've slipped again into a bad habit. I wanted to have clearer clues and have the plot change with each clue. I've done that, more or less. Even if there isn't a shooting at the giant pistachio until several chapters later.

But basically Penny is going around talking to people. She isn't having to struggle for these, not mostly. No disguises, no fights, no side quests ("Sure, I'll tell you all about the Christie Pit, but first can you take these corn muffins to a coffee shop in Taos for me?")

And I could have done something interesting at the Shroud Museum. Confront Penny with her faith (or lack of it), and at least give her some morally gray choices.

I haven't even done any plot-tangential delays to her "Go to the next location, pick up the next plot coupon" journeys. The best I got is I had her help a tourist family take pictures of their kids with the aliens.

I mean, sheesh, Michael Rennie could have asked her to help setting up the conference room.

The one that started as a side quest is now an integral part of the plot. "Dynel" (Penny doesn't know her yet, but was struck by the vivid color of the hair dye she is using) was just a thing Penny saw and maybe said something about. Now it is a crux moment for her emotionally, transitioning her from avenging Lon's death to being willing to listen and find a compromise with the new safety officer at WIPP.

I'm also getting increasingly uncomfortable on this one about all of these real people and places. The Shroud Museum is such a small (but earnest) little operation I really, really don't want to make fun of them or otherwise show them in a bad light. Hell, I sort of hate to be putting in print the word on the street; that the White Sands Mall is dying.

***

Anyhow, the Viking book (next part of Penny's Road Trip) is looking more and more likely. No ideas yet where else to put her on her cross-country journey in search of America. Very possibly Boston. Perhaps I can schedule another trip back to my own birth town.

Today's plot bunny, however, isn't a bunny. It is a turkey.

(image stolen from Poseidon's Scribe)

I want to make a writer's lexicon. Not a complete one, not one with all the APA-standard citations. Just what I am seeing in the field today, and what I've coined myself that seems to work (some of which are making minor traction outside my own notes).

And mostly just being cranky, clever, and talking about books and ideas and tropes and writing philosophy from a constructivist standpoint. The history of "Mary-Sue," what the evolving usage says culturally, how it may help or hinder a writer (particularly a beginning writer, against whom it often appears as a threat or even a weapon).

The downside is, well, having to do the work. Of doing the looking up of histories and usage and at least credit sources.

And that's the worse part. I can't just copy the Turkey City Lexicon, or five hundred pages from TVTropes, because those are copyright creations. Even if their CC status allows, it isn't right to do. I need to add value.

Which paradoxically means that a complete lexicon (itself quixotic) is morally questionable. Better to take selections and build upon them with original thoughts and writing.

Which does work because the original Turkey City, as with Diane Wyneth-Jones "Tough Guide" works, are the products of skilled writers. They are short precise stinging and to the point.

I...am not. Verbose, I can do.

(And I already have a cover concept).

Ode on a Grecian Mask

I got done with the VP-8 scene. Got through in one go. Okay, there's some parking lot conversation I want to fit in. There's just a little more business between Penny and Lon to get through.

So I've got the dig team, the NAGPRA liason, the conspiracy theorist, and the retired nuclear physicist all on the page now. Always exciting the first time you try out a character. Lon took three drafts to try to zero in how he worked on the page. And he is still too nice a guy.

Next chapter, I add Jackson and Sanchez and that's it for major recurring characters. I think "Michael Rennie" may come back for a brief scene and there's a docent at the Nuke museum in Albuquerque who has a big chapter, but I've almost got the whole cast in place.

Oh, yeah. The VP-8 was the thing they turned loose on the Shroud of Turin as one of the many ways people have argued over the authenticity of the thing. I may end up needing a sensitivity reader for Catholicism for the scene I just wrote as, funny thing, the people at the museum are believers.

But I referenced another of Schliemann's exploits. Might end up cutting that. I've really reduced Penny's rambles about Sir Historical Figure Not Appearing in This Story for this novel. All part of my distillation.

Distillation one way, decompression in another. My latest worry is I might have too many action beats going on. I've become too conscious of the way people in a conversation notice bits of body language and read nuances and assumptions into them. Sure, I came through theatre and TTPRG where that is always part of the dialog as experienced.

But I feel I might be overdoing it. Today, when I got to the cashier at my usual place to order brunch I saw the previous guy had forgotten to sign for his purchase. He was still getting water so I tried to catch the eye of the cashier so she could remind him, instead of a stranger shouting "Hey, you!" down the hall.

She hadn't looked at her side of the display, she just saw me trying to catch her attention so gave me a short "I will be with you in a moment, sir!"

But at that moment water guy stood up and saw me looking at him. So I caught his eye and made a scribbling motion in the air. He moved closer but figured it out on the way. Signed, left with a quiet thanks. And cashier lady turned around none the wiser and took my order.

Now, that's some fun stuff. All is grist for the writer's mill and swap out one of those items for a live grenade and you might have a story moment. But I am worried now that I am pinging on too much of this stuff now -- maybe I really am spectrum and it has taken me this much lifetime to finally start noticing all this stuff -- and I'm cramming more of it into the flow of my writing than I really should.

My dialogue is decompressed to all hell anyhow. Penny was never an efficient speaker, in dialog or narration, but now I have entire sequences of people going "Oh? Well, yes. You sure? Yes" at each other.

And for all my intent that this was going to be 90% lyrical descriptions of empty desert, there sure are a lot of conversations.

Is this just fantasy?

Placing your book in the right genre is getting harder and harder. More of that mighty algorithm, in which everything from YouTube recommendations on up is trying desperately to narrow down what specific niche it is that you like best so it can feed you nothing but that.

Being outside of popular genres harms your exposure and thus your sales. Falling outside of recognized genres...is the kiss of death.

Oh, guess what's leading right now? Fantasy. Romantasy may or may not be peaking. Cozy Fantasy might have managed to murder itself through over-tailoring. Urban Fantasy is heading in the direction of Steampunk, which still has life every now and then but the chatter on BookTok et al will only consider it if approached with ironic intent.

SF is not doing well at all. Nor is historical (outside of historical romance, which despite surging and ebbing through trends, seems likely to survive forever).

And YA dystopia? The punchline (my personal theory is that audience went off into k-drama to get the hit they were after). In any case, any publishing boom there could be fueled for decades on the backlog of manuscripts they've already seen.

There are readers hungering for something new, or at least something they aren't being offered enough of. There are strong fans of historical fiction. The problem is, this market is small enough in comparison to the big movers it can't really survive in isolation. It needs to be shared with the larger audience to gain enough additional sales in the "I don't usually read this sort of thing but..." that it makes back investment.

And that's not something the algorithm supports. Commodification of this sort leads to homogenization. Nobody wants to make the one cereal without sugar, the one orange juice with pulp. They want to be the same burger, the same hammer, but a few bucks cheaper than the other guy.

Anyhow. Writing is potentially less of a career than it has ever been. The boom of self-publishing is largely over as there is a glut of product and a buyer's market. (Most of the big successes were aggressive self-marketers, but even that has narrowed down to a very specific and rare set of skills -- not a route open to everyone.)

Oh, yeah. None of the projects on my table are fantasy. And one of them is arguably steampunk.

Boogie with a suitcase

Still sick. Three weeks now.

But still pushing, and put 1,500 words in the can today. I got a little slowed down with the first meeting with Lon Davis, as it took three tries to get where I was going with his character and what plot bites I was going to drop in that first scene, and what I wanted to save in reserve.

And I still need to go back and refactor Dylan a little. He has to be much more shy during the work scenes, and sillier in the off-work scenes. I need to keep taking lectures away from everyone, and I also want to firmly establish that he is in no way a love interest.

Yeah, so much for the love triangle.

But the first John Freeman scene went great. (I even nailed down his favorite guitar, which is a 1960s Greco in green).

The biggest problem I have at the moment, in fact, is that I've decompressed too well. I'm over 8K for Part II already and even though I'm moving the second body drop, I don't know if I have time for another clue before Penny has to go walk out into the desert -- and meet Jackson and Sanchez.

(Another side effect of the decompression is Penny has already managed to talk more about her family than she has in any other single book of the series. I know; I've been saving the bit about the Hofner Bass for two or three books now, but I really didn't expect to get to a very interesting bit about her big sister. Not until at least the Vikings book. Assuming I do that story.)

(Oh, and came up with another plot for the Adventures of Athena Fox idea. A golden plate with Mayan astronomical observations necessary to "do something" about a loose asteroid or something. Said plate, unfortunately, held in the high-tech penthouse of an eccentric collector with far too many well-armed bodyguards...)

So I'm now at 20K for the book and I might have it half-written before the cover creator I'm trying out even gets back to me (100 Covers is having a summer rush. Well, they shouldn't have given away those 50% off codes).

That's assuming I keep putting off Egtved, maybe forever. Because otherwise I'll have to stop and dive into the bronze age for a week or two.

Defending that which needs no defense

So there's this familiar hero's journey. That's the hero that basically wins because he is just so honest, earnest, believing in his cause and willing to fight for it, that he convinces those around him.

He brings hope back to the faltering rebellion. He wins friends and allies who support him. Sure, he is willing to take risks, he works hard, and he can fight, too, when the need comes (and surprisingly well) but really it is this power of personality that does the trick. It is like everyone else read the script and realizes he's the hero of the story.

That's what is underlying those White Savior narratives. The white part may be new, and problematic, but that goodness thing goes back way past Dick Wittington into Jason, Theseus, and Gilgamesh. (Of course they had, depending on the culture involved, the advantage of being really tough or really, really clever as a useful selling point. Yes, let's throw in with the guy who keeps winning.)

So I was pushing hard to get my word count last night and my playlist rolled through to the soundtrack of Barbarella.

Okay, it didn't hit me until the extended flight sequence; Pygar takes wing, and carries Barbarella into battle. Which she wins. And her good eye and her calmness under fire is a big part of it, but the whole thing wouldn't have happened if she hadn't brought Pygar's confidence back to him.

Because she believes in him. Take the sex out of it, and it is just like the typical male hero with their engaging grin and their, "This time we can win" speech.

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote...

I'm a quarter of the way to my desired word count for the day. Now just waiting for the work day to be over so I can get back to it.

As always, the times I can't write -- due to being busy, or due to feeling blocked -- are the times I get the most ideas.

So here's the latest plot bunny of the first days of summer. The Athena Fox Chronicles.

I thought of this before when KDP had this great idea about serialized fiction. Which didn't work out. And I've been working this past couple of weeks to push the social media marketing.

Turns out KDP has turned off the feature that let you put a preview widget on your blog. Still works on Facebook, though, so perhaps I'll finally get around to sprucing up my Facebook page.

Explored options for what is sometimes called Pocket Book (a trademark which has gone generic now), or Mass Market Paperback; the 4.25" x 7" format that fit into those wire racks you still see at airports (if nowhere else). Since I was a little kid reading science fiction I wanted to see my name on one of those covers. The larger Trade Paperback just doesn't feel "real" in the same way.

IngramSpark has that as a trim option. Probably not worth it just yet but if I do manage to get The Tiki Stars finished I'll bring that out in that format first. Just for the effect.

Anyhow, thought about posting excerpts on FaceBook and whatever else works. This blog gets about 250 hits a page so even if those mostly human, not bots, it isn't going to do much for my sales. And pretty much nobody sees the author's webpage I set up. I do need to spruce up my Amazon Author page at some point, though.

And thinking about excerpts reminded me of the thought of doing a set of shorter stories. Which, since the serial outlets turned out not to work that well, would be packaged in a single omnibus.

Originally the thought was to do some of the germs that didn't feel like they'd expand into a full novel.

But the better thought could be that these are explicitly presented as written by Penny, back when she was putting out scripts for that college video she did.

Which is to say, license to grab on to all the crazy fun that comes with letting go of strict historical realism. Or realism, generally. And the sop to my conscious is the framing story where older-and-wiser Penny apologizes for her college-age self and lists a few of the more egregious errors.

But write them as straight-up serious adventure stories.

Honestly, I posted today because I thought I'd jot down a few ideas and I didn't feel like opening the Scrivener series home file to do it. But right now nothing is jumping out. I'd like it to be a mix of oldies-but-goodies, and bizarre stuff that might be hot in the news but in any case not as many people have heard of.

And take the chance to put Athena Fox (because this would be that character fully realized, not a student cosplaying her), into places and situations I don't think I could do a proper job on in any realistic story. Like crashed flying saucers at the South Pole, or undersea cities, or.... well, why not do some period pieces too, while I'm at it?

But since none of those ideas are coming to mind right at the moment, I'll go ahead and start a new Scrivener home file and...try not to dilute my excitement by writing too much down now.

***

And I've got the first one. "The Stone Tape." Someone invents a "psychometric amplifier" -- riffing off Tom Swift's "Electronic Retroscope" as well as Nigel Keane's scripted BBC production and similar ideas used in the same author's Quatermass, specifically "Quatermass and the Pit." And the particularly invasive haunting in what is considered the worst X-Files episode filmed (the "Face on Mars" one).

Which underlines that the problem with both casual writing and well-trodden paths is you end up with trite and often-done ideas. But still sounds like a fun situation to build an adventure around. The focus could be on the psychic activity itself, the haunting so to speak, or on historical mysteries unveiled in the process. Or in the excuse to unleash a particular past on the present day -- perhaps a psychically resurrected Pharaoh? Or...just to both get to play with Victorian London and the Penny Dreadfuls, but to bring back something a little more obscure, Spring-Heel Jack!

Zombie Invasion

...and of course I wake up wanting to work on The Tiki Stars (and not the book I'm supposed to be finishing, or the one I just decided to edit).

Should not have listened to all that Les Baxter while trying to wake up (still trying to kick that energy thing that hit two weeks ago).

I was just thinking about how I am free to be less detailed in the descriptions on this one, painting a much more Impressionistic picture with quick strokes. And an entire opening scene sprang into my mind. One that touches on the world-building and the way I intend to present that world to the reader, the character of my protagonist (rough-and-tumble with a heart of gold, in this example), and lays groundwork for character and story arcs to come.

Trouble is, when I feel like this, it is usually just before I fail utterly to get more than three words written. Then take really ill.

At this point, I'm struggling enough with work I might need to retire early to get any writing done. Plus, I'm really missing theatre. If I could find some contract design work I think I'd rather like that.

Anyhow. Turns out I did start an edit on The Fox Knows Many Things, even if with what I know -- and what I think -- now, those notes would only get in the way. It really is the kind of work I do quickly, though. As opposed to charting my way into new territory: The Early Fox has just reached the edge of the clearing where I'm not revising old scenes but instead hacking into the jungle of completely new scenes.

My biggest plan right now is to explore an alternate to writing over brunch. Not because eggs cost so much these days, but because there's a natural slump when I leave the bottomless coffee cup behind (and start digesting), and it too-often lasts the rest of the day. At least when it comes to following up on the progress of the morning.

Maybe a Scottish breakfast (oatmeal) makes more sense. Ah, but I'm really wanting that big breakfast right now...

***

I hate being right. I still haven't kicked that thing and it's been three weeks now.

The Scottish Experiment was a failure. I ate at home, and...I didn't write. Not until far too late in the evening, when I somehow got it together to get through the Roswell sequence.

Did have one of those nice moments of discovery writing. For pretty much no reason (well, I'd included a mention of the Gort diorama in the description of the place), when time came to describe Random Museum Dude I decided to make him a ringer for Michael Rennie.

And then when I maneuvered them in front of the space exploration exhibit to name-drop the Drake Equation, I was able to work that into a little payoff. Well, probably only a payoff for those who remember the film, but still...

Anyhow that's 1,800 words in the can, and now on to a chapter I've been calling The Railroad, as the Lon Gunman runs Penny around Alamogordo playing with dead drops before he finally deigns to meet with her in person.

The Fox Knows Fewer Things

I've been putting together a cover order at 100 Covers. But not for the upcoming book. I thought I'd try re-staging the first one and possibly get some attention on the series.

And for some reason the book is very clear in my head at the moment. Okay, might have been I needed to look up her description of her parents for a conversation I was working on for The Early Fox. And I ended up reading straight through from that conversation to the end.

But for whatever reason, I feel like I could edit and it wouldn't even be that hard. Because I'm not thinking about trying to fix everything. I'm just thinking of sanding down a few really high spots.

There's seven I can think of right off the top. That I've been thinking of for a while. One of them that's important for reasons other than there being too much damned stuff.

The lecture on the Acropolis. I was still learning how to write this damned thing, and I was using her having a lot to say as a way to pace the scene and space out other description. I don't need that much padding or space or length. I can happily get to Spooky's dialog faster.

The conversation with the French couple. Alexander and Diogenes is too fun to skip but the whole sequence is too long.

The history discussion at Ariadne's store. It always dragged. Plus, the motivations are wacky and I know enough better know I could clean that up.

Penny's delve into some darker corners of the internet. I've made enough of a point about racist idiots; I don't need to underline them or straw-man them. There's entirely too much in both of these scenes about defending the plot, as well.

The talk with Vash at Oktoberfest. No, it isn't too long. It just kinda sucks and I should be able to write a tighter version.

The lecture about the Hermes of Athens. Just too long and too rambling.

The museum. I love the whole vibe of the scene with Penny running around looking at pots and flirting with Marcos, but she doesn't have to strawman the Dorian Invasion quite so hard. And there's more history here than is really needed. 

And for once, not a lecture; the spinnaker bit in the voyage of the Wanderer. Again I put it in for pacing reasons, but the pacing doesn't actually require it.

And there's quite a bit of trimming and clean-up I can do as well. Funny thing is; I don't expect to lose that many words. If it takes a thousand off I'd be surprised -- and since a lot more of that is in tightening up, I can easily make up that much and more by decompressing some dialog. I can even trade dialog and actual "business" for some of the place descriptions that go on too long.

Did I get that guitarist on the steps of the Acropolis? Because if he isn't there, I could happily add him in now. 

Epic Quest

Finally moving forward again with The Early Fox. Yes, I'm re-using some concepts and snippets of description, but still basically I hacked out almost a thousand words today on the Part II opening.

(And still not really happy with explicit "Parts." I might end up using the "vignettes from the past" as dividers instead. Or I might end up cutting those, leaving only the "White Sands girl" prologue and having the rest of the book in simple first-person, past tense, chronologically linear narrative.)

Which was also one of the big reasons to rewrite the "Pickup truck" and "Roswell" chapters so thoroughly. My first draft used au vis openings and that meant a whole bunch of back-filling in awkward past perfect.

That revised opening sequence, though, is finally taking proper shape on the page. There's a certain feel I'm trying to achieve with it.

Yeah, I've mentioned just how amazing the Horizon Zero Dawn series is at organic world-building, where your understanding of the world and the back story, the nature of the quest and the stakes evolve in parallel with Aloy's own understanding. Even on a second or third playthrough, you feel this opening up as the game takes you through these huge changes of perspective; from the Proving, where Aloy's world expands radically from being an outcast of the Nora to learning there are other tribes, history and politics in her land -- and some of those other forces have just taken an active interest in her, to when she enters Carja Lands, especially Meridian, and both enters a new nation and new (desert) biome, but also becomes an active part of political events there.

And it just keeps on, with the final revelation that you are trying to stop a techno-god from eating the world happening extremely late in the game.

Forbidden West has less of this, although the moment the Zeniths enter is a startling game-changer. It remains, however, a slow burn game. That opening title there is at least an hour of game-play in.

And notice how gentle it is. Three minutes, with a song to boot. Not a cramped cinematic of explosions and fisticuffs and world-ending stakes -- although these are very much there, from the start of the game. This is almost elegiac, and no accident, as her ride takes her through the territories of the previous game one more time before you move on to a new setting.

The other reason for why it unfolds this way is the story isn't just about Aloy trying to save the world. It is about her accepting the help of others, even if some of them will die on the way. Through the game, she stops being the one person who can save the world and begins to share her knowledge and skills.

Not really directions I'm going with my own opening cinematic. There is a thread I'm carrying through the book, the image of a woman carrying her child as she journeys to a new world, but for various reason The Early Fox is about cutting Penny off from chatty companions and letting her experience a desert solitude. So my Part II opening is about the lure and the loneliness of the open road.

Oh, and this is Penny's story. Penny without an existing role or expectation to fall back on. Which means, very possibly, the name "Athena Fox" will never be spoken within this book.

One more question for the cover creator.

Pronoun Trouble

 

I'm at least four months out on The Early Fox but am already thinking covers. Kindlepreneur is doing a thing with 100 Covers. 100 Covers wants examples of similar books on their order form. So back to Amazon -- PublishRocket does this now, but I am not in the headspace to figure out how that part works -- to find "similar genre."

There are more books showing up in my searches that take smaller liberties with history -- that don't require aliens or magic as part of their "Archaeological Thrillers." I still can only think of maybe one series so far, though, where the action is more towards Cozy Mystery and less wild shoot-outs and exploding helicopters.

But that got me thinking again about rewrite, relaunch, restaging...and POV. Because there are problems with doing this sort of thing in First Person, and advantages to Third. 

I originally picked First because the plot for that book had her mostly alone without anyone else to talk to, and because I really wanted her to talk about history. As of the current book I am working so hard at backing off on all the internal chatter even she has noticed it. First is also an easier POV to lie in. It seems paradoxical, but Third Immersive (the standard approach) is almost forced to reveal things about itself that a First Person POV can chose not to talk about.

The advantage to Third that got me thinking about this now is that so many of these other thrillers are more thrilling. More action. And it isn't as easy to look heroic and badass from inside. That bit of narrative distance of Third makes it easier.

In the case of the basic conceit of the stories, that protagonist Penny is often called and confused with "Athena Fox," First actually confers one huge advantage. And that is that they don't usually talk about themselves in the Third Person.

In the Japan books, my protagonist can be dealing with her complicated feelings about becoming the mask, as various people address her by her name or as "Athena Fox" -- but she remains the same person within her own head, as she is always "I" there.

The same thing with The Murderbot Diaries; the name "Murderbot" is rarely used. In fact, while the protagonist will at various points answer to "SecUnit" or "Rin" (a thin-as-paper disguise of an "augmented human" who works as a security consultant), it is usually "I" within its own head. The same way it isn't gendered, or even explicitly non-gendered (aka "it") -- again, simply "I."

(A problem immediately faced by the AppleTV show, as there is a male actor under the helmet.)

The other difference is in background information. A First Person POV can dump background but at the risk of attracting attention to the artificiality of the narrative. When a First says something like; "I was educated at the Sorbonne" it immediately implies that they are aware of the reader. That they are in fact narrating their experience. "Dammit, six years at the Sorbonne had not prepared me for this!" instead maintains that fragile fourth wall, keeping the reader from having to think about why they seem to be able to hear this person's thoughts.

This isn't hard-and-fast; the mirror scene alone demonstrates that you can't do everything in Third. But you can get away with more before you break that fourth wall.

To me, though, this is much like the secrets issue above; First is handy for when you want to keep secrets, but it is lousy when you want the reader to understand who they are and what they are thinking, because they just might not want to talk about it. And if they appear obligated to talk about it, it immediately distances from riding along in their skull while they have the experience, to being told about this great experience sometime after the fact.

Detail Diatribe

I'm up to where I stopped on The Early Fox. I've been trying all week to do a top-to-tail read. I kept having to stop for something, and by the time I got back I'd lost the flow.

I've been fighting off the weakness thing that comes over me on a regular basis. Didn't take any time off to rest this time. Meant it stretched on longer.

Today, finally, I read the whole thing. Reading as a reader would (or at least trying to). What are their questions, what might they misunderstand? Always important, but critical in the early chapters where you are lying out where we are, who our characters are, what they are up to, and why we should care. The last being, well, the plot. What is at stake; is the plot of the book I see, the handle toward my hand?

Okay, almost all the way back. I have the last scene to straighten out still. It works, but I changed a bunch in the last rewrite (kicked several plot beats down the road). I was struggling anyhow to get this pressure relief thing going, where Penny is basically in trouble at her job and she sort of turns that around to get sent out on an investigation.

Those beats still aren't quite happening. But my brain isn't there after a long so I'm heading to bed.

I no longer have confidence in writing. In anything I'm writing, in anything I will write. I passed my peak; I'm still learning new things, but I'm less and less able to apply them efficiently.

Detail is still part of it. I got sort of walked into a level of detail on this series. Now it is an expectation. And it is the process that is slowing me down. Not exactly the research (although I always want more time than I have), but what having all that to handle does to my writing sessions. It sort of infects everything, meaning I have more plot beats and character nuances and other things going on. Which I all have to juggle.

There's a place here and there, especially on the latest book (because I planned to do exactly that) where most of the distractions are pared away. Her first walk into the desert, I also kicked the beat of realizing the desert is a flourishing ecosystem until I do the bigger walk out to the test bed.

A sequence I am looking forward to, mostly because that has the first scene with Jackson and Sanchez.

The desert stroll I did is now pared down to Penny taking a walk and slowly kicking the impression other people gave her of White Sands as this bombed-out military wasteland. That's it.

I also realized today, in the read-through, that I don't have to dread the archaeology research. It is basically done. The detailed description of Penny working her first dig...that's written. Her late-night attempt to nail down the chronology of the thrice-dug grave is mostly going over the same ground.

Like I said, I don't believe in any of this. But I enjoy the process. Even if almost nobody is going to read it (and absolutely nobody is going to comment), I am still looking forward to the -- call it a technical challenge -- of writing some of those scenes.

Writing. As much as I still have a stack of research I already started and feel obligated to finish (reading a history of nuclear weapon secrecy right now), and as much as I know there's things ahead I will have to learn more about before I write those specific scenes, I am at the moment a lot more interested in writing the scenes themselves.

If only it were faster. I'm boiling over on ideas for the next book already. It is taking so damned long to write the current one!

AI Conundrum

At some point I'm going to finish another book. At that point, I'll need editing, cover art, possibly interior graphics. I am rethinking the latter slightly and may use a different layout for the next "Fox" books, but anyhow.

How can I tell that I'm not getting AI back?

Okay, already there was a big problem with editors and art and similar labor-intensive book services, and that was vendors geared towards providing a product. Their business model is not based on them understanding the needs of your book, but instead doing something of sufficient quality that you will pay them for it.

Can you get SEO advice from someone who actually knows the SF field? Can you get editing from someone who understands the peculiarities of historical fiction?

I pushed a little with my cover and interior artists; instead of sending them a reference image, I'd describe it in art-student terms; "...like a Toulouse-Lautrec cabaret poster."

On places like Reedsy and Fiverrrrrr, you don't even know if you are talking to the artist, or if you don't share a language and they are shoving your order into Google Translate. That makes revisions awkward, and rarely productive, as well.

Well, AI has made this distinctly worse. Even if there is a human hand holding the pen, you know that the person handling orders at the Art "R" Us you are contracting with just fed whatever you said into ChatGPT and asked it to spit out whatever it is they could do in an afternoon with a stock image site.

Not only do they not know anything about theory, history, or tradition of art, they've a business model that makes it so these things do not matter. They can get a result that gets them paid. Bottom line.

Which by the by over just the years since I published the last book have been so overrun with AI generated "stock" they barely even bother to identify it anymore. All of their efforts are to cash in by offering their own AI implementation for your needs.

Well, actually, most of them are going out of business. It has become much more difficult to get the typical stock that was used in so many book covers over the last few decades.

But there is still a moral and possible a legal ground as well. KDP stops you at several points during upload for a self-published manuscript for you to declare if you have used AI. As of the moment, this doesn't matter. But it could change in a moment, and every trend in the market suggests it will not change in a way that is good for those who declared.

The best outcome is that Amazon unveils their own AI engines, and declares their legal department has determined you must pay the extra charges to have their AI used on your work instead. Which contract by the by will also require permission to use your work for training data. No, I haven't heard any rumors of this. But KDP is so far from hurting for more books, they could easily dump all of the self-published works that used AI, probably without hurting their bottom line in the slightest.

How can I find these editors and artists now? What protection do I have that even a well-meaning person who I have contracted with before isn't feeling the crunch as real artists are being crushed under cheap AI crap, and is forced to sign with that devil in order to pay their own bills?

None.

Bad Kitty

The reason to write a history-themed book, whether history, alternate history, or "archaeological thriller" (which seems to be the only common catch-all term for "things from history impact a story set in the present") is to enjoy history. Both the well-known, but also the lesser know. Or, at least, lesser-known aspects of the well-known.

And sometimes that involves changing the history, because real history is too messy and hard to cram into a plot that has the right story arc to it with dramatic payoff and proper resolution, or is just has some inconvenient date or location.

My feeling is it is better to change it than to lose it entirely. As long as your changes are to the letter of it (June instead of July) and don't change the underlying meaning (it had to be July because that's when the monsoon season begins).

In July of 2014 an explosion occurred at the Waste Isolation Plant Prototype in the southeast corner of New Mexico. It released radioactive materials and caused the complete shut-down of all operations for a number of years. The barrel of waste at fault began at LANL (Los Alamos National Laboratories) during their own trouble years (specifically called out in some reports as between 2008 and 2016), and was the fault of the use (by apparently a subcontractor) of the wrong brand of kitty litter.

I really want this incident to be mentioned in my New Mexico murder mystery, set in early 2019. I want to (will) use as a clue, a silly little logo of kitty litter in the circle with a line through it, used as a jokey promotional item by a rival waste clean-up contractor.

That contractor, who is currently going by "EvilKitty" in my notes, (pretty sure I'm going for something like "Patriot Compliance Solutions" as the company got big at the tail end of Reagan's presidency), may be all over Penny's little mystery. And is the element that ties both plots together; the victims of the nuclear industry, and the Cold War secret that someone is willing to murder to keep. Oh, and also make a neater way of getting Lon Davis, the Atlas F site outside Roswell, and Penny's investigation of the dead body at White Sands into one single whole.

The timing is bad, though.

There was an earlier incident at LANL with some plutonium rods. That one was in 2011 and really kicked off the Los Alamos exodus that all but crippled their plutonium work for several years.

2011 is also closer to the ballpark for another important clue. Sand. The White Sands Footprints were discovered in 2009 and may have been because an unusual amount of sand had dried out and been lifted by the wind (a typical cyclic event of the dunes) following the drought of 2006-2008.

I decided I very much still want The Thrice-Dug Grave (which would have been a lovely title if I was doing straight mystery stories and not a series that was supposed to be archaeological thriller). For that grave to work it needed to have someone digging the body back up around ten years before the date of the story. Chose a zone around 2011 and this is pretty close to the sweet spot when Freeman would have left LANL, Juan Baca's body was dug up in search of The Source (aka the McGuffin), the refilled grave would be about eight years old when Penny dug it again during the Bell-Bleekman excavations just outside Holloman AFB, and enough white gypsum sands would have been in the backfill to provide an important clue.

But I really wanted this to happen at the same time the Test Bed (nearby in WSMR) got a final clean-up, and it would be really, really handy if someone could drop a matchbook...err, a cheap little pin with the cat piss logo on it at that site.

But not only is this jumping the gun on the shut-downs at LANL and WIPP, it almost makes more sense with the timeline and politics that much of this clean-up happened within a smaller number of years following the redirection of Star Wars from brilliant pebbles...and a ambitiously wunderwaffen-type effort to pull Project Pluto out of mothballs as yet another proposal Reagan might have been willing to pay for.

I know you are busy saving the world, but...

Side quests. 

It's a mechanism seen in so many games because it achieves the goals of lengthening play, letting the player put their stamp on their character through choices outside of the main campaign, and with chances to personalize (and improve) their gear, and of course to explore the world and the lore.

Like James Bond Plotting, it seems like a natural fit for novels as well.

Really, most of a plot is this already. There's two major forms going on; first is actually plot-related, but takes form as various odd errands that seem to be necessary just to get the clue or the part for the magic demon-defeating weapon or whatever. Second is stuff that builds character, builds world. The biggest difference is that even in games with a Reputation or Morality meter, non-game stories can build all sorts of important character growth into these side stories.

I had already intended the plot for The Early Fox to be heavily on having to do a thing for a person to get the thing to give to some other person so they would tell Penny the next clue. But now I'm thinking about the second kind.

C plots.

But it might just be that I manage to get a chest cold and spent a week out of work with a nasty cough and no energy and no brain. I'm slowly coming back to the book, and staring at my plot wondering what the hell it was that I was thinking -- something that must have felt so clear then I didn't put it in my notes, but now that fever has burned out more of the remaining brain cells, can't remember now.

But I got a lot of HZD done. And watching another Let's Play.

Aloy -- gets a lot of side quests. By Forbidden West she's got not just main quests, quests which grant weapons or armor, and collectibles, the new upgrade system requires so many specialized parts those become a quest form in and of themselves.

At least it has broken slightly with the "go here and kill everything you see" of Skyrim. Instead, it is "go here and shoot these specific parts off some of these machines." Which makes combat a lot more complicated and strategic as you are trying to balance getting all that useful loot against, well, surviving the encounter as well.

Aloy even lampshades this at least once in dialogue. "I get it; you want me to go there, shoot some machines, bring you back some parts."

At least the game has more excuse for the quests which are doing errands for random people. As opposed to people walking up to the full kitted-out assassin in black armor and a really bad reputation and asking him if he'd mind making a run down to the chemist for some sticking plaster.

Aloy, on the other hand, has a huge reputation for helping people. As of the start of Forbidden West she is the Savior of Meridian and Anointed of the Nora (she hates both titles. And don't bow, either. The Anointed doesn't like it). Plus Seeker, Thrush of the Lodge, and Chieftain of the Werak.

Well before the second game is over, she's also Savior of Plainsong, Champion of the Tenakt, and Ancestor Reborn. Take the last just as one example; the Quen worship the Legacy of the Ancestors, those figures of mostly-lost history who showed the way for their tribe to grow and prosper. Aloy is one of them returned in flesh. Yeah, maybe not exactly the person you'd turn to to pick up your laundry, but absolutely a person to do the impossible and save some lives doing it.

All of the titles above are basically titles of "wandering do-gooder." Seriously, though, she could be getting a lot of "help us out" quests just with her Focus alone.

Which does happen more than a little in the first game, as people come to her as "the Nora who can see the unseen." Yeah, welcome to being the only person after the apocalypse with a fully functional Google Glass.

Also one of the greatest diagetic excuses for a HUD that I know of -- because even as there are some clever ones out there, going back to at least Half-Life where the HEV suit contains the display unit that shows you that game data, the Focus is also a key part of the story. Not just a tool, but the way discovery of the Focus changes Aloy's life, and also as it turned out changed Sylens' as well and led to the awakening of HADES (and thus the plot), and of course quite a lot of plot-related "who has a focus, who can listen in to another focus" stuff.

By about an hour into the game, Aloy has the only gliding wing (sure, Gruda had one, but she killed him...and took it), and also (unusually for any tech left within eyeball range of the Oseram) the only grappling hook.

So they really should be coming to her all the time with "Hey, my cat got stuck in a tree. Could you grapple gun your way up there and glide back down with it? Only take you a moment."

But, no. They'd rather ask her to beat up a few machines.

The dangers of au vis

Au vis openings are always tempting.  It is nice to have something that makes a good hook, especially over a transition; a linking element, a match cut, even a Gilligan cut.

The problem comes when you need to backfill. And it starts with the backfill being almost necessarily in past perfect tense.

I have a new rule. "Any part of a story in past perfect should either be long enough to allow it to be dropped into simple past, or so short the question never comes up."

That is, either it should be a brief recap, or it should be a full flashback. Because what falls between ends up taking things that should be in a proper scene; that is, should be dramatized with full five-senses writing, and turning them into explanation instead. Basically, unless you work to fix this problem, the recap ends up being all telling, no showing.

I had two of them in the Roswell sequence. I had a hook opening with her driving a pickup truck, and I had a fake-out opening for the Roswell museum scene.

And I didn't even realize this was a problem. It wasn't like I had anything I needed to say about Roswell other than the way that one sketchy incident is heavily leveraged as the big tourist draw. Practically the town identity.

No, the problem is that I'm not letting the reader enjoy the experience of visiting the place. I don't need to give more information about the town. I need to have Penny experience it in real time, not in a rushed recap (rushed because otherwise I'd be either stuck in past perfect so long it would get uncomfortable, or I'd have to do the "slip" in and out of full flashback mode.

The driving is actually worse. There's a bunch of character beats here. Really, that's one of the three things the drive is doing; scene-setting, a little philosophical conceit, and a chance for Penny to do some stuff in character.

That was my big accomplishment of today. Realizing I needed to toss two more chapters and rewrite those.

(The real project today was looking over the outline and trying to figure out what actual scenes that make it into an actual novel. It probably needs more stuff happening. But not exactly plot. Maybe C plots; maybe some fetch quests.)

The Other Guys

I've been archive-binging at Mythcreants again (they have a lot of archive).  

Had a scary realization; I don't have a supporting cast.

Okay, this is understandable. For the New Mexico adventure, I'm consciously not letting Penny have anyone she can talk freely to -- partly to get a whole "Desert Solitudes" thing going (and concentrate on descriptions instead of dialog), but also to try to head off the damned info-dumps.

Even if both Dylan and now Luke keep angling for more screen time, so much so I'm already making jokes about love triangles.

And the original model was largely Tomb Raider, who in the first go-round pretty much only had Werner Von Croy as a returning character. The Legend trilogy gave her a support team, but they only barely appeared in game play (and were sharply reduced in number during Underworld).

Not to mention returning adversary Natla.

Setting a precedent for the Survivor trilogy, which admittedly started so grimdark it made sense most of the cast didn't make it to the end of the first game. Not sure why they kept Jonah but lost Sam. Probably too lemony for EA (that bridal carry after the big battle...ho-yay!)

Anyhow, what is scary is that not only have I never noticed before that I didn't give Penny a solid supporting cast -- I mean fully fleshed-out characters with their own arcs, not people who sometimes pick up the phone -- I don't even know how I could write these people.

This is when I'm four scenes into Part II and my not-really-an-outline is telling me I'm short of material. In fact, it feels like there's not enough story for the story, period.

Add that to the ongoing stuff at work, and...all I want to do is turn out the lights, put on headphones, and play Horizon Zero Dawn. I might not even leave the Sacred Lands.

The Name of the Cow

I got there. And before the weekend was out I pushed through almost 4K past where I'd stopped for rewrites, completing the "aftermath" scene that follows the body drop, and beginning Penny's sojourn down Blue Highways. In a rented Toyota Tacoma, though, not on a motorbike wearing a helmet painted with an American flag.

 I'm probably going to reconstruct that opener several times before I call it close enough. But I'm pushing on to Roswell. Again the difficulties of this approach are killing me; I don't want to go deep into conspiracy theories and I really want to avoid getting into any detail about Ancient Alien stuff. If for no other reason, than it inevitably drags in Penny's historical knowledge -- and her history with similar conspiracies.

And I'm trying for, not quite blank slate, and certainly not a reboot, but not having quite so much baggage.

And McDonald got his real name. That was always a placeholder, even if I was starting to take it seriously. But I like the idea of a very ordinary hispano name that leads many of the people Penny is interacting with to think of him as just a random old guy on public support, who died without accomplishment or legacy.

Which is also what motivates Mary Cartwright (who is also hispano, with strong links to Santa Clara Pueblo, but doesn't get a revealing name. So I guess she's taking over the "yes, intermarriage is a thing" point from MacDonald).

Juan Baca.

No, not "baka"

Or "bacta"

But one of the family names of original Spanish settlers which are still extremely common in New Mexico. So a direct link to idea of heritage and identity...all the way back to who exactly was walking along that ancient Lake Otero (and when!)

Sometimes still spelled "Vaca," shortened from "de Vaca," and, yes, probably has a direct connection to that famous explorer of the southwest, Cabeza de Vaca himself.

A Secret Test of Character

I got most of the draft re-written. If I push through tonight, I might be back up where I left off and be free to spend the weekend seeing how many chapters of the next part of the book I can push out.

The beats are better. Clearer, at least. Tom Bell is still turning ally too quickly, and Julian Bleekman isn't getting enough love, even when I gave him a whole scene to use. Also, pushing Dylan out just caused Luke to take over his slot as good-looking, sympathetic friend. At this point it would take far too little to tip it over into a full YA Love Triangle. And Miguel and Jesus can't for the life of them get any screen time.

But then, I only had 8K to work with. So I'm not entirely unhappy with all that.

No, the problem is, I've realized I don't like Penny.

I don't mean as a person. I don't entirely mean the difficulty of writing her. I mean that she may not be a good character to hang a book on. Or a good character at all, but that's part of the problem; I can't say if she is believable or nuanced because she seems so very unfocused to me.

She wasn't, after all, designed.

Penny is the result of multiple unplanned, on-the-fly decisions made to allow the plot of the first book to work. And others that were meant to aim her at where I had originally intended to go; to evolve quickly into a fairly typical confident, wise-cracking hero.

Instead I got a motormouth neurotic, bouncing between overconfidence and ruthlessly tearing herself down; both born of an extreme lack of confidence. And yet I keep writing her into situations where she needs to be brave one moment and paralyzed the next, physically competent but without the applicable training, deeply informed on nuances of history and culture yet with huge and surprising gaps in her understanding of even the basics.

I set out, in the current book, to roll back a few things I didn't like. A big one was getting rid of all the lectures and a necessary corollary was to make her less educated in the subjects at hand (because when you've got a motor-mouthed First Person protagonist, if they know anything about a subject, they are bound to blurt it out.)

I wanted to put her back in danger and make it relatable, which meant downplaying her history of (unlikely) successes and her hard-won skills.

But I don't like what I'm getting. She's sounding, well, childish. She's so out of her depth she feels like the damsel character the real hero will be rescuing when he shows up.

And as usual when Penny plays things close to the chest, it is hard showing the reader what is actually going behind that plucky cheerful more-than-a-little-ditzy mask.

And yet this is still closer to where I want to be. The Tomb Raider-archetype 200-casualty firefight in the streets of Cairo got dumped pretty much as soon as I tried to actually write anything like that. Like it or not, I need that world where a ten-minute training montage doesn't give you the ability to beat up ninja warriors, where snarky dialogue filled with pop-culture references doesn't impress the bad guys, where the minions have names and few problems can be solved by punching them in the face.

And yet, and yet, a book where these pleasures are still represented, even in mutated form. Where there still are those beats of adventure and heroism and wish-fulfillment. 

So I don't really know where I need Penny to be, much less how I would go about getting her there now that there are so many books already down. On the latter, however, I will say I am flirting more than a little with the idea of making a three or four book "America" cycle, part Jessica Fletcher, part Bill Bixby, as Penny wanders the blue highways being an amateur sleuth in various strange parts of rural Americana.

Need to see a woman about a mammoth

Worked out the plan, got back into it. One useful day of writing before the weekend ended. Wanted to push forward but decided to do the rewrites first.

The revised Dune Drive sequence went quick. And then there was a line about the mammoth footprints and I wanted Doctor Bell to mention how long they'd been finding trackways at White Sands. I know I saw that somewhere. There's even an amusing story about the first Harlan's Ground Sloth tracks; the discoverer thought he had discovered Bigfoot!

So I did a quick top-level search. And of course, there is damn-all from that angle on the animal trackways, because everyone wants to post and repost off the three or four releases by Bennet's team on the human footprints.

But...I hit multiple reposts and re-telling's of his first publicity release.

So The Early Fox opens with a Pleistocene sketch. Rather pastoral, because that worked for the book. Later, Penny gets a look at what are inferred to be the footprints of the woman and child (and mammoth).

And here's the problem. As of these early, pre 2021 paper findings, the child was around three years old and a bit of a weight to carry, especially on slick mud. And while there are other children who jumped in puddles (specifically, in the water pooled in the footprint of a Harlan's Sloth in one set of prints elsewhere) this one was only on his or her feet while the girl/teenager/young woman/smaller man put her down to switch arms.

And she was booking. Moving at a pace that, especially at her height and stride, would be close to a run.

Add this to the fact that essentially all of the other trackways (and this includes the majority of the animals as well) are traveling in groups. And to the oddity that she apparently sets out with the child and returns hours or days later without it...

There's a story here, and it might be a dramatic one. This is the trackway that crossed a mammoth both ways; it stepped on her footprints, and on the way back she stepped on its footprints. And actually; there was a Harlan's Sloth as well, though she may not have noticed it. It noticed her, or perhaps just her footprints, and got up on its hind legs to look for danger before turning around and going somewhere else instead.

Oh, yeah, and this was early and thus may not be deep. The first reports were before the radiocarbon tests and put a bracket of 15K to 10K BP on them; from the known opening of the ice passage to the extinction of the mammoth in NA.

So should I rewrite that, too? This is one of those cases in which the rewrites cascade; the scene I'm working on now is the one where Penny looks at her tracks.

The downside to going dramatic with the material is that it sets up an unanswered tension. She might be running from something. She is alone, which is unusual, she is in a hell of a hurry, and she returns without the child. That's questions the reader is going to have and the trackways -- and the rest of the novel -- never do explain what is going on or what happened to her.

But...there is another perspective. This took commentary from one of those many reposts I mentioned. To us, this is a strange and threatening land. Cold, wet, those massive looming glaciers (not terribly close to Lake Otero, at least), and truly insane megafauna. Even if the twelve-foot tall Harlan's Sloth with the eight inch long digging claws is a shy herbivore, and the mammoth is a herd beast (for all that is good and bad about that!) we've got dire wolves, sabre tooths, and lions; basically all your apex predator dreams, only three times the size (as Penny puts it, the Pleistocene is like Texas; everything is bigger there).

But that's the world she knows. That's the world she grew up in. It may be dangerous to her, but that freak-out level of "surrounded by giant monsters" may not be her world picture. I glanced over the existing draft, and yes I can increase the weight of the child and the speed of the girl and all of that but still keep the general flavor of the scene. Urgent, possibly important, certainly dangerous, but not this major thriller Clan of the Cave Bear set-piece of Pleistocene adventure.