The Early Murder

When Murderbot needs to withdraw from the world for a bit, it watches back episodes of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.

I've been re-reading Murderbot.

It isn't quite for the same reasons. I have everything I need to write the first four or five scenes of The Early Fox. I can't afford to let anything new in. I don't want to get sidetracked by new ideas or new directions, and my understanding of what I am about to do is just hazy enough that I could lose the thread if I delay longer.

Of course the week has been nothing but delays. Sick, so tired I can barely drag myself to work -- and hating being at work because I know it will only draw out the process; being there instead of getting the rest I need. I just haven't had enough clear thinking space for anything but my own versions of Sanctuary Moon.

Not to say there aren't things I still have questions about and will need to look up. But I've uploaded as much as I can into cache memory. I will wait until it actually comes up in-story to worry about how Lake Otero dried up or what the front gate of Holloman AFB looks like.

I've been poking at Clovis lately. Even though it is essentially settled that there were cultures before Clovis -- among other things, that greatest diagnostic artifact of all, the Clovis Point, is restricted to the Americas. It didn't evolve somewhere else and was brought here. Well, maybe Beringia, but Beringia has the tiny problem of being underwater now.

The problem is, while there is a Stemmed Point tradition that occurs in a few locations, either because we are seeing multiple waves of migration or because the current list of pre-Clovis sites is still too small, there's not really a defined culture to look at.

So I've been using Clovis as a way to try to understand what my White Sands Girl might have been up to. And alas, that's not a great help either, not for the kinds of details a story-teller wants. There is essentially nothing of organic materials left, aside from organic-origin -- mastodon bones and ivory.

The bones appear to have been butchered. That's pretty distinct. We know there were humans in the North where it is cold. So probably they were collecting animal hides to wear. Were they dressing them? Sewing them? Had they learned weaving?

Okay, there's a nice little bit of negative evidence; we don't have any pots. That's a distinction of many NA cultures anyhow, possibly cultural, possibly timing (pottery and neolithic revolution practically go together in other regions), possibly due to a lack of the right kinds of mud. But... we make adobe, and that goes back before historical records (I visited sites where Jornada Morgellon cultures were making adobe buildings). In an case, baskets were the thing, not pots. Which sucks, as pots are really, really wonderful for future archaeologists.

Okay, and we've got cave painting, and there's later evidence that cultures that paint walls also paint themselves. So it isn't a stretch to have a bit of red ochre...at least, I seem to recall hematite is in the area. Sigh. More things to look up.

Fortunately, those same rules of fiction that make me want to include details of diet and games and dress and behavior that we simply don't have, are the rules that allow me to leave out shit if it is too complicated to try to get it right.

The Pleistocene scene is written. 500 words. Still on the first page of what was called "I-70" in my notes (when I thought there was going to be a surprise closure of the interstate because of a missile test) and is now "Dune Drive." The missile test is off because I want to move those thematic beats to the scene where they enter Holloman AFB.

And this is the fun chapter for any book. The chapter when you find out how your characters are going to work on the page and how the themes play out and how you are choosing to tell it. Which is on top of first-chapter woes, where you are trying to entice the reader and get them up to speed with what's at stake, who the protagonist is, and some idea of the contract with the reader (aka what kind of ride they are in for.)

So every time I write a line of dialogue about, say. C14 dating, I have to stop and rethink whether that is what the reader wants and needs to know now, or if I am overburdening them. Especially since the dating is part of the controversy and I haven't entirely determined how I am presenting it to the reader.

I could really use more me time. Perhaps it is time to think about early retirement.