You win a few, you lose a few.
I was looking up and down 54 and thinking about ghost towns. There's a cool one close to Orogrande (which itself is pretty weird). I got tempted by thoughts of abandoned silver mining towns, by Old West associations, or even by graveyards (cue "Ecstasy of Gold.")
But in the end, I didn't need to do a whole scene about Penny turning around the truck (and sending a text to Lon). I can just pick up with her meeting.
So I move on to thinking about my Alamogordo sources, but it felt a little too grand tour to send her to every notable thing in that town. And then I realized I could just set this upcoming scene at the burger joint. That hits a couple of useful plot bits; this changes Penny's relationship with "Dynel," and means the sheriff can say "You were seen in his company" when he goes asking around. And I do love a hub location. I sent most of the cast to the cafe in the last book, enough to make it a running gag.
Besides, I'm saving the giant pistachio.
It ain't all winning, though. At the same time, I realized I really need to go Oop North to interview this one guy. It wasn't right to leave Native Americans out of the story of White Sands, or the atomic age in New Mexico, so I had that in the story. And now that I've involved NAGPRA and have several key native characters, I have to do it. I have to send the story to the rez.
That does give me more freedom to focus in. To basically drop any cowboy stuff (another book, right).
Largely, this is still moving to third-act territory, where all the basic settings and the cast are all here, and the reader won't have to go on learning new things. It makes sense to focus in.
I was also increasingly feeling I needed to focus in on New Mexico, and Egtved Girl didn't make the cut. I decided I was happy losing all of those vignettes except for bookend scenes; "White Sands Girl" (I still can't figure out which exact numbered trackway she was, but she was the one moving quick across mud, carrying a child, and encountering both a columbian mammoth and a Hanson's ground sloth. Busy day.)
And Valentina. Who encountered a whole hell of a lot of nothing (more nothing than most of us will ever experience) but had an even busier day.
But at the same time, the museum scene had been evolving (I haven't written it yet, even though it happens quite a bit further back than where I currently am). And I thought of a cool thing I could do that would both pull the threads together, and fill out the necessary space for Penny's epic hike through White Sands from I-haven't-decided-yet to the Trinity Site.
So...Lozen out. Lozen in. And Egtved Girl might still make the cut. But...the way this is being done, it takes a lot of the pressure I was feeling about having to do enough research to pull off 1-2,000 words on "woman walking" at various random points of history.
In any case, I'm pretty much plotted through to the end now. I've stopped updating the outline, but I have place-holder chapters out through to the end of the current act. Now I just need to find the focus to write (the hot weather is not helping!)
