When Pigs Fly

I'm still plotting on the London book. I hope this isn't going to be how the series goes. I'm telling myself the problem is in trying to use the real world and be somewhat realistic about it, but it could be I'm just pants at plotting.

Well, I guess the holes are getting smaller. Each time I circle around, I find a remaining gap, but the rest of the structure is firmer and firmer; more interesting, more connected, more grounded. So there's that.

And I'm changing history. Partly because it would be too much work to find a real thing that works, but more because if I shift things just a little I can use real things that are real interesting. And, yeah, I'm changing names anyhow. I didn't mind making fun of Golden Dawn in the last book, or naming major museums -- it did bother me a little naming smaller but equally real commercial establishments -- but with the politics of this one the various and sundry organizations for the Field School, the Northern Line Extension, the Zero Station, and many and sundry clubs involved in urban exploration and metal detecting and so on are all going to be fictional.

Back somewhere in my notes is that this is a series where the unlikely happens. Where the idea of the Adventure Archaeologist who speaks seven languages, can translate Sumerian Cuneiform like reading a shopping list, who has traveled the world taking risks, exploring, climbing, fighting, etc., etc., meets the real world. And sometimes works.

So I'm not going to send her to Paris and have her clinging to the side of a random office building. No, she's going to climb the Eiffel Tower, dammit! I might not have a robbery at the Louvre but it would at least be at Musee d'Orsay.

So this is what I nailed down today:

There's a real opportunity here for her to learn Urban Exploration and practical climbing skills, but I'm not going to really go into it. The theme of this one is Underground. It is almost Campbellian, in fact. So she may hear of Parkor, but she's more likely to meet Trainspotters (of the London Underground variety).

(Yeah, that's MIT. And dammit; the old name for the Steam Tunnel explorers of M.I.T. was "Vadders," and you know where it comes from? Colossal Caves! Which opens up retro-computing, James Dallas Eggbert, the Dungeons & Dragons hysteria, M.I.T. "hacking," the Great Atari Burial...)

But that's the next book. Or somewhere later. In fact, this one I'm backing off again from any real talk about Lara Croft or Uncharted or any of that.

I also might not have much time for Panto, the Old Globe, etc. I'll see...when I finally get to outlining the damned thing!

Quote Mine cave-in

I still have a couple wrinkles to iron out in the plot of Fox and Hounds (don't like the title, but haven't found a pithy fox quote that fits England.) Research might help, so I'm starting a new book on the so-called British Resistance Organization. I also watched an episode of Dad's Army. And the complete two hours of ITV's Christmas Panto Cinderella, with the usual who's who cast of British celebrities.

Thing is, every other page of the stuff I'm reading now has some pithy quote. Just this morning, in an article on St. Pancras, a quote from Kenneth Clark on the gothic revival; “...is that it produced so little on which our eyes can rest without pain.”

And that was a mild one. The tidbits are bad enough...the man who may have inspired the Napoleon of Crime is buried at Highgate, where I've already been advised to visit and intend to set a scene if I can. That's also a discovery of the morning.

Heck, even a mention of the Cybermen from Doctor Who can't resist describing them as "Quippothic parodies of humanity." No, that's not quotable (although it is pithy), but it does underline the delight in language of the writers I'm reading now.

I probably should have organized my research folders already. There's this gray zone when you haven't quite decided if something going to be in the book but you are already discovering details you will want if it is. Thing is, no matter how you attack it, it bulks up too quickly. Even without the machete edit I'm doing now, you have ten things in the notes for every one that gets into the text...but then you also, as the actual evolving text reveals new needs, have ten new things to look up or at least re-look up for every one that gets safely transferred from your notes.

It is not an exact science.