Well, that was quick

Sat down and wrote most of the prologue.

It doesn't work. It doesn't work so much, I'm cutting the prologue entirely.

The idea was to have Athena Fox, within the framework of the lecture Penny records at intervals and which I'm been using as the prologue in several of the books, get angry about the Mound Builder Myth. This would allow me to context some of the background of the various waves of colonization that have passed across the Americas, talk a bit about the history and still-ongoing racial tensions, and even touch on the connections to Ancient Astronaut beliefs.

I mean, I do have a whole Roswell sequence in this book.

But it is too much. No matter how much I tried not to say much of anything, the whole point is making an info-dump and it would be better not to do that. I can better work in this stuff much closer to when it matters in the story.

I can also demonstrate it. Show not tell. 

Plus it gives Penny too much background meaning there's less excuse for her to be learning stuff later on, and let the reader learn it along with her. And I made a point at the end of the last book that she's putting the fedora down for a little and I wanted to keep this one far from her past and her Athena Fox identity. Pushing that stuff into the background until she just becomes that slightly quirky cozy mystery lead with a few secrets and a surprising aptitude for survival.

The Paris book really got out of hand with talking about her previous adventures.

So that means my first chapter is the White Sands girl instead. So still weird -- third person one-off, almost the "Reluctant Conquistador" opening. With the main story beginning 23,000 years later.

Yeah, that's a leap even for Kubrick.

And that almost made me stop and hit my research right now. The downside to working from a light outline; you've got to do more planning as you start each new scene.

It almost made me stop because I needed to write that chapter before I could finally get to my protagonist. Then I realized why. I am strangely parsimonious with description (the reason there ends up being so much is that I describe so many things). The thought was in my head that I couldn't go and write the scene when Penny first looks out on the playa, because I wouldn't know what had or had not already been described in the chapter before.

And normally this would be so. When I get back to the Tiki book, the first scene at the bar (which was also a flashforward scene, but I've dropped that idea) was also going to do grunt work in describing the place. And this is perhaps not how I should be doing things. Maybe I should deal with going through a description more often, keeping it in the reader's mind instead of expecting them to remember. Maybe they will feel less overwhelmed.

(Seriously...I agonize over this stuff so much because I don't have reviewers, editors, commenters or beta readers. Too shy for the last, too impatient -- and broke -- for the second...and so on and so forth. Am I saying too much? Too little? Not clear? Too obvious? Too dramatic? Too understated? I don't know and I don't have a really good idea about how to know.)

Anyhow, not actually a problem for this one. In fact, duplication is probably something I should aim for here. Because it may be the same place, but it certainly isn't the same landscape. It isn't lush, but it is green and it is a lakeside. Lake Otrero, which dries up and is the source of that white gypsum sand 23,000 years later.

And, damn. Now I'm wishing I could do a match cut.