On a Boat

And finally, I'm at the chapter that I knew needed to be re-plotted from scratch. Which I'm working on.

Turns out there was more Italian in the last Venice scenes. I added:

Polizia
Butto salvagente (a phrase I heard while watching videos of ambulances and rescues in the Venice canals).
And a complete "E, Polepetto. Basta, basta!"

This in addition to adding "Mi" to "Mi scusi," and Signori and Signore in the first Italy scene. By the time she hits Padua there is a complete exchange:

“Buongiorno!”
“Salve,”
“Come stai?”
“Sto bene, grazie. E Tu?”

But then, Venice is also the scene where Nessun Dorma is sung, as well as La Donna e' Mobile and Vissi d'Arte is mentioned. Two words are singled out, vincero (how the aria is written) and amore (how it is often sung.) And can't forget the Acqua Alta, Piazza San Marco, calle, rio, campo, piazalle, vaporetto, osteria, fondamente, ponte, and sottoportego.

While I was at it, I went back and took the direct quote of Nessun Dorma out. So no more getting sued by Giuseppe Verdi.

>>>

I'm having trouble finding a place I want to work with on a cover. What I need is for someone who knows format and fonts and is a pair of eyes that has done books before. They might tell me my idea for the cover is stupid, that's great, too.

Especially since I don't actually seem to have 3d software loaded on any of my machines right now, and the more I work with Gimp the more I miss Photoshop (Gimp has the functionality, but it is slower -- Photoshop is a more natural set of actions to get things done smoothly).

Here's the rough idea:

I played around with flames and riot police and Acropolis/Parthenon, and thought about doing a tholos/tomb background, but simpler works for me. Have to do a stacked render to get proper control of the volumetric light cone and the balance of the lighting effects. Done it before though.

>>>

The only other major re-write is the third scene at the National Museum of Archaeology, and that should go much faster. The 6th of next month marks one year since I had the concept I wanted to write. I hope and even have reason to expect to have the larger edits done by then.

Sunk Costs

The little Venice scene I meant to add was going swimmingly. Until I realized this is a perfect opportunity to show off something the average tourist doesn’t get; the inside of a Venetian home. An insight into the lives of the working Venetians.

Which would get into all sorts of interesting discussion about Venice in the modern world, beset with tourists they are unable to do anything about because Rome is beset with debt and won’t throttle the destructive flow. Nothing sums up all of this better than what happens if you try typing “Inside a Venetian home” into a search engine. You get a zillion Air BnB links, because the cost of living has gotten so high and the tourists so rapacious working Venetians are selling or getting their houses sold out from under them to make them available to the tourist trade.

But not only is it a bit much to research, it is also out of the arc. I do want my protagonist to realize there is context she is missing. I want her to get a glimpse behind the paper-mache walls of Euro Disneyland. But her first chance to actually step backstage needs to take place in Athens.

Argumente

I'm up to the half-way point in the fix-ups and I'm burning out on it.

I knew the big Oktoberfest scene would be a problem. Not the revised teufelsrad. A little chat that's a bit of a conversation from Dune, with each of the players having multiple layers behind their words.

Well, it is done. It is stronger than it was, and fits the new flow better. I did end up with a ridiculously fast-acting drug, though. It is a real-time conversation and I made the moment when the drug goes into the beer specific, so...

Now I'm looking at an argument between various Italians that is only fitfully translated. This one will have almost no Italian quoted, though. The only word that will appear in the narrative in native form is "Rom."

And then there's the revised Sheep scene. Actually, I think I can blow it off, even though there is some fun stuff in it. I shifted some stuff out of the Oktoberfest confrontation and now that realization needs to go there.

Would possibly concentrate better if I didn't have to wear headphones through the entire day. My new neighbor will NOT stop making distracting noises (mostly a baseball game. Or whatever sportsball is going on right now). Seriously, I get more work done at the cafe. Noise, interruptions, and all.

Bluebs

And I got mired in the dirndl scene. The editing intention was to turn as much empty narrative into fully-dramatized scenes, and this was a good scene to put in some dialog and interaction. It is also an overview of Oktoberfest traditions -- I'm still meaning to add some of the things she got told off-screen to being told on-screen.

What I didn't realize is if I do this, it turns into a scene about boobs. I mean, a dirndl is really all about the boobs. It is a carefully engineered boob-enhancer. And for writing an immersive female character, getting all voyeuristic about anatomy is pretty much at the bottom of the list of things to do. Sure, it's not going to "breasted boobily down the hall" but, sheesh.

I don't care if she's having fun and the whole interaction could give some nice character interaction. I mean, sure, she's gushed over her jacket, her boots, and have you seen a dirndl bluse? Cuuuute! The way to look at it, though, is you could do the same with a male character pissing into a urinal but that doesn't belong in most stories, either.

In short, it distracts from the main directions of the narrative.

I've got the shredded scene lying around in pieces right now, plus scraps that are supposed to get stitched in somewhere if they fit. It isn't a hard task to make it work. It certainly isn't challenging. It is just a bunch of annoying text drags and revisions to take the material I've got and put it into a new shape that...isn't all about the boobs.

So finally got through that one. Although I still ended up looking at catalogs of push-up bras. Sigh. But I managed to make it through the scene without anything feeling like it was going too far. Now the revised teufelsrad scene, on the other hand...

Durn. This bock is a 7.9% ? No wonder.

Not dead yet

At some point I want to do a post-mortem on the 1-year novel. But I'm still in editing so it is a bit early.

So far the biggest take-home is the methods basically worked but I need to problem-solve things in the Outline I didn't realize I needed to a the I wrote it. I'm not talking about a more detailed outline. The narrative style outline worked fairly well for this particular book. But I only outlined certain bones of the plot and left out other things that simply couldn't be retro-fitted in.

There is no strong antagonist who is present and visible through the story. There is no strong love interest, either. There are, worse than that, no reverses to the protagonist's personal relationships. She doesn't need to chose, betray, get betrayed, be surprised.

Well, mostly. I realized most of this early on and I worked to put as much as I could within the framework I had. So Vash and Herr Satz are at least somewhat interesting and get a bunch of interaction and both have an arc in their interaction with Penny that come to surprising conclusions.

>>>

Editing is going quite well. So far. I did a lot of editing as I went, but that meant, progressively, I hit the early chapters more times than I hit the later chapters. So there are bigger holes in the later chapters. This is the main structural edit, not the grammar or voice pass. This is the one where I make sure the plot and themes and character arcs are as visible and sensible as possible.

So far I've mostly taken stuff out, in fact. Tightening in on the through lines. So anyway I'm at the 30K mark now, doing an easy but time-consuming edit in which I rip apart the dirndl scene to dialogue it out and shift some material from a later scene here instead, where I can dramatize it, too.

The next hole to repair is worse. That's the conclusion of the Vash arc. I've simplified what he's doing, but I haven't figured out what her plan is. That is a problem with the outline that is essentially inescapable; it pretty much had to say "Penny does something clever here."

>>>

Ended up taking a couple of weeks away from the trumpet and that might have been a good thing because I came back with the clearest High C I've ever blown. Nice tone up there, finally. Now I'm working on taking the puff out of my cheeks. With my whiny new neighbor I've given up on practicing at home, even with the practice mute, so I'm bringing my sheet music to work instead.

I think I figured out why the high B and A are so vicious, too. First, you are blowing that high C partial to get up there, then valving down. Which means already you have to push a whole bunch of air, and when you valve it you are having to push it through even more tube and a lot more bends and squiggles. Plus of course the partials are getting far too close together (especially the "false" slot, which is right in the middle of those two notes).

>>>

It is hot as heck and this marks six weeks since I started the levo or about due for a really bad slump. Well, I'm slumping. But I still got a half-day in at work. And editing.

Ten Months

Draft is done.

81.6 thousand words. Almost dead on.

That's more by accident than not. The original plan said I'd spend about 60% of the page count in Athens and I hated that I had to spend so much time on a side quest. Then I realized I was going to fall short and added more incident to the detour. At that point I was sure I was going to end up with too little of Athens, especially as I had no real ideas other than "go to some museums."

Well, the riot sub-plot got me 4K, Markos when I added him into the museum scene gained me 2K, and I ended up with 30K after she returned from the detour to Germany. So that means just slightly over half the text takes place in around Athens, which was kind of the point of this plot; that I could write a bunch of stuff about a place I'd actually visited recently.

So now for edit.

The first edit is large-scale tweaks. There are scenes I didn't like and need to be reworked, bits that didn't work, and misplaced emphasis in several places.

Example of the latter; don't talk about Nazi's until at least Munich. I know. She's in an Indiana Jones hat being chased through a woods by crazy Germans and there's even been swastikas (on a pot sherd, actually) and she's from Burbank. How could she not think about Nazi's? But I'm going to walk around it and point the camera in other directions because I don't want it to be one of the first things I say about the German people.

That's the first big one.

It cascades down in that what she realizes on the DB to Munich will be different. This is when she makes the distinct connection to cross-national racists, but even then I want to keep that a bit on the back burner. I hate the Dorian theory and part of the reason I hate it is the racist underpinnings of so much hyperdiffusionist but it is an easy target that makes it look too much like a polemic.

Plus, here and in the big Vash confrontation at Oktoberfest, I really have to sort out just how far I'm going into the social media pressure cooker.

The drndl scene is probably shifting into dialog with the dresser lady becoming more of a speaking role and interesting character. Possibly she's going to take over some of the "I learned from Robert" facts she got off-stage, and on-stage them.

The final gimmick in the Vash confrontation either isn't clever enough or needs to be told better. So that's a scene that's going to need some re-thinking.

Outis is going to "appear" in the Oktoberfest scene and that's a whole little sub-scene I have to write. Yeah, and at some point I have to decide if I'm going to allow a running gag about him being named "nobody." I tried it a few times in the final chapters but it can get confusing quite quickly and probably wears out its welcome as well. (No, it isn't his name. I'd say at this point that outside of Vash not a single male bad guy actually gets his real name. Penny had to name them all.)

The first night in Verona should probably be unpacked and made into a proper scene, complete with her finding out which door out of "Signori" and "Signore" that she's supposed to use. Really, all of Verona could be expanded into fuller scenes. And I'm not entirely happy with the "Wherefore art thou" scene, either.

The end of the Venice Chase gets expanded into a proper scene with a bunch of Venetians arguing. And an annoying kid translating when he can be bothered.

The "Sheep" scene just before the ferry probably gets deleted. It isn't working for me as it is and I want to try a different way of handling that business. Or maybe I can reach into the "Sheep" scene and twist it to be more about pigs and sorceresses? Yeah, it is a scene doing two things; showing Penny abusing her power for good, and riffing on the Odyssey.

The ferry chapter gets completely reworked. The stomach flu becomes only a nuisance, she talks about the aristeai in the "reading the llliad" scene because it is too late to set it up in the conclusion of the fight with Enceladus on Spider Island, there's a bunch more running around and, like I said, the "Sheep" thing may happen there if I can figure it out. That's going to take a few days to plot out.

Back in Athens, the third scene at the National Museum of Archaeology, the "Why did you stop with the Romans?" scene with Markos, is rebuilt so we can do the lightning tour of Greek history with the visual aids provided by the museum. And I really have to work in the reconstructed costumes that are on special display right then.

The speech needs work. I knew it would need work. Writing an inspiring speech is not an easy task.

She needs to do something a lot more clever to deal with Outis at the climax. It isn't working right now. Also Diana isn't anywhere near as dangerous feeling as she should be.

And that's the big ones! After that is cleaning up dialog to give more distinct character voices. And run the whole damn thing through Grammarly. Or whatever the Grammar checker I finally decided to buy is.

Or maybe I'll take a short break first and work on the cover art.

That's a wrap

Climax is done, hero won. Very close to ten thousand words on the button. Now just have a wrap-up scene to write in which the Art Squad character fills in a few details.

I'm so close I might take a day off work to do it. But then, I pushed through till midnight to do this. Surviving on '80s movie themes. Probably tainted the writing a bit, but it was always supposed to get over-the-top anyhow. It is just a novel with a slow burn. Origin stories can be like that. Maybe I'll open the next one with a pre-titles sequence.

>>>

I'm reflecting a bit on catch phrases. The original conception was a relatively sensible person facing ridiculous situations, and I thought I'd be using some variation of, "You have got to be kidding me!" over and over.

Well, it only barely happened. After she made the choice to tackle a seven-foot tall Greek carrying a huge sledgehammer. I think she twice remarked something along the lines of, "When I grow up I'm going to stop doing this" and there were two key places where she announced that the universe was going out of its way to fuck with her. Mostly with it being way more genre-savvy than she'd like. Worst case being after she's yelled at the gods (she's getting a little slap-happy) a boat shows up...and it is named Hermes.

I had two other mannerisms I had planned to use. One was that she sometimes forgets the right name and reaches for a series of similar-sounding but increasingly implausible substitutions. I think I only kept two; way back in Chapter One, trying to remember the name Pericles she goes "...Peristyle…no, that’s not right…Periaktos? Perestroika? Peri-Banu?"

The other part of the joke is that they are all appropriate, just not what she is reaching for. Peristyle being an architectural term appropriate for the discussion she is having about the Parthenon, Periaktos being from the Greek Theatre (and she is after all a one-time Theatre Bum), and Peri-Banu is -- this is really obscure -- a crater on the moon Enceladus.

This finally has a payoff when, trying to remember the name Aegeus as she is struggling to stay afloat in the Adriatic, she goes through, "Aegis? No. Aegisthus, Aesculapius, Aegyptopithecus..?" before realizing she's been wearing an Aegis and it might actually be important.

The similar trick is that when flustered she yell out a word in every language except the one she actually needed. I'd intended she yell "Stop!" at the Giant Mook about to smash the pot and get the correct word in Italian, German, and of all things Japanese...but not Greek.

Yeah, I never used that.

But I added at least two quirks.

First is she ended up needing to swear a bit. I mean, yeah, she's running for her life and getting shot and and you'd probably get a little profane. And the usual suspects are there. But I tried out having her say "Gods" or similar, and it seemed to work. And pretty soon I had her saying "Hades" as well. At some point she was going to say, "Great Hera!" and then stop with a, "I'm never saying that again." Never got around to it. She's not quite genre-savvy in this book.

Very late in the story, she starts saying, "I can do this." After the second one, "If I live through this, I'm coming up with a better catch phrase." Yeah, I'm dissing on the source material.

Well, okay. If she does have a catch phrase, it is "My name is Athena Fox. I am an archaeologist." It's basically her "Let's get dangerous." When she says that, it's generally before doing something crazy. Like trying to bluff a sociopath who has a bolt-action rifle aimed at her chest. (It doesn't work).

Yeah, the next book is when things get real. Not that she had it easy on this one. The main thing that's going away is Protagonist Aura. The Roman book is the one where people will keep going, "So...?" Or asking where she graduated from.

>>>

And I guess I've decided the Romans are next. Romans, Brits, London. Violence. This is the one that really tests her ability to act like an archaeologist adventurer, and forces her to own up to and try to improve in some of the places she falls short.

I think it works better that way, and the following novel being the reversal. Japan, complete with a total weaboo as a guide, and a situation in which everyone totally takes the Athena Fox act at face value and expects her to be able to pull off all the stunts. Except maybe they aren't. There's going to be a lot of second-act revelations in this one.

And I really need some sleep. I need to turn off the '80s soundtrack, finish the beer, and deal with the final chapter tomorrow.