Will no-one rid me of this troublesome abbess?

I hope I am turning the corner soon on the very slow, very late novel. I'm still wading through chapter 2 (3?) and only 6K in on a planned 70K book. But once I've solved the last of the hiccups and figured out how to tell this story clearly, I should be able to lightly revise the existing chapters that takes me up to around the 2/5 mark.

Right now, she's still on the Metro out of Abbesses station in Montmartre, headed for the Louvre and having a discussion -- text chat -- with her manager/friend Drea.

This evening I started with a quick read-through and light edits. Stopped at the wingback chair to look those up and make sure that is the word for what I'm thinking of, and appropriate to the scene. Then stopped again to check the rules for punctuation around parentheses.

I'm still unhappy with italics, but it doesn't seem reliable to try to switch fonts within the Kindle system to set the book excerpts out. So all of Huxley's words are in italics unless he is being quoted. But also text chats and some foreign word are using italics.

And that's a problem; if I italicized the bits of French in Huxley's text, they'd be flipped back to plain text. I never feel that italics for other purposes really feel right when you are italicizing the whole text. Plain text is still plain text. It doesn't magically become emphasized or "hey, I'm a foreign word" just because it is surrounded by italics.

And oh yeah, my quick bit of research on Hawaiian comfort foods was still open on the browser and this time I noticed the discussion of Plate Lunch, which led to Meat and Three, which I just had to look up because it seemed like something I could use with my Tarheel, Amelia -- if they have those in North Carolina.

And, yes, they do.

But so it goes. I think of it this way; a writer is one person. The readers are legion. (In my case, a very small legion. Not even a full cohort.) So Reader A doesn't notice all the stuff you messed up about the Napoleonic Wars, because that isn't their thing. But they know all about how to prepare a proper cup of British tea, and will be unhappy with you when you get that wrong. Reader B, of course, has a completely different set of blindnesses and their "own special skills," which make them a nightmare to people like us. That is to say, writers.

There is a terrible lot of fact checking.

And not to harp (too late) but the main reason I've been doing rewrites for the last several months is not, as some of my readers seem to think (and certainly do opine) trying to get more stuff in there. It is trying and trying to take more stuff out. Trying to find the parts that are essential for the story and trimming down to that.

Over time, though, I've realized you rarely get that one perfect detail or the one perfect way to tell a scene. Instead they are always compromise, and you will drive yourself crazy trying to find that one optimal solution. You really do have to accept something that will work, and get on with the story.

The Lost Tomb of Maui

Come on; legendary figure and hero-god. Why not on the front of what seem to be called in the trade "Archaeological Thrillers?"

Plus, I've been reading up on Wahiawa, Dole plant and everything. But I've decided that Sometimes a Fox isn't the book for Drea to get some time on stage (she grew up in what she calls the bad part of Oahu, and never went back.) The Paris book is going to stay in Paris.

I've worked through most of my a-chronological loops now. The Drea conversations are the last one to get on paper in this latest revision.

But in all of that work, I also figured out, finally, where I am on branding and how I am really trying to place the books.

It isn't this:

 Actually, few of those are really the format "Former SEAL teams up with hot scientist to uncover deadly secret of a mysterious past civilization." The first is a rather delightful series that is very travel-oriented and the history is solid, too (the writer is an actual historian) -- and takes only small liberties with the stuff.

What I'm doing is Romancing the Stone, or any of those episodes of a long-runner TV show where the cast goes on a treasure hunt or archaeological excavation and conveniently falls into all of the tropes of rolling boulders and so on.

Played for comedy, in short. But also for the fun shenanigans you can get into it; almost all of these, right up to the recent The Lost City with Sandra Bullock as an ex-academic who sort of regrets all the money she is making by writing archaeological thrillers with a bodice-ripper twist -- until she and the hunky photo model for her covers are abducted from a book release party...

The Athena Fox books aren't a series about tomb raiding. This is a series about a otherwise normal young woman who keeps falling into situations that even she recognizes are ridiculous.

Well, okay, I knew that. What I wasn't sure of is whether I should be branding in that direction and selling in that direction.

And this also settles where I am going with the character and future plots. Elements of the Japan book (A Fox's Wedding) were a struggle for me, and the struggle was that I was trying to push her out of the status quo of ordinary girl with the intention of making her eventually a seasoned adventurer.

I think it works a lot better if she is a singed adventurer. She's still "ordinary" Penny Bright, but as she learned in Japan she doesn't need to don the mask of "Athena Fox" in order to get out a scrape. Because she may not like it, but she's been there before...

Love's Labors

I had a picture of Sacré-Coeur on my desktop as reminder. This breakfast I noticed tiny white blobs. Yeah; there are love locks on those fences, now. I found a tourist photograph dated "four years ago" so it is contemporary with the events of Sometimes a Fox.

It is also the 150th anniversary of the birth of Colette. She's in the news right now.

And speaking of contemporary; I'm finally out of Chapter 1, but I haven't quite figured how I am handling the out-of-chronology sections of the book. The style I chose to write this series in is First Person "Immediate" Past, and something I'm calling "unconscious narrator."

The latter is not that uncommon. We've moved on from First Person accounts that are dressed in a framing story, whether a diary or a, "My word, Major, how ever did you survive?" Instead we are just listening in to the inner monologue of the narrator as they go about their day.

It is a form that constrains some of the usual ways of managing information. Whereas in other forms of narration you can drop in an explanation of when Alice and Bob were classmates back in high school, or how Phlogiston Theory works, or what exactly Eve purchased at the hardware store the previous day, in this kind of unconscious narration you need to create an excuse for this sudden woolgathering.

That's fine, I have some comfort with working those tricks and where I can push it. But there's this sequence of Penny alone and cold on her first night in Paris that I want to have the same immediacy as the main text. For structural reasons, though, it can't be told chronologically with that main text.

I have to try a few versions and see how I like them. First off; set it off in its own scene, tell it in simple past, but bracket it lightly with past perfect -- with, that is, a sort of framing story that makes explicit that she is casting her mind back into the past.

Other than that, I was able to save most of Chapter 2. Light editing; I moved the clues from the steps of Sacré-Coeur to the (un-named in the narrative) breakfast place I was going to when I was staying in Montmartre myself, and reworked the Ozymandias stuff.

I'll see how much I can save of the old Abbesses/Louvre scene, though, as I construct my new Chapter 3 "Chevaliers de Sangral" riff.

***

Speaking of Dan Brown...

I was browsing on Amazon and although I still don't have a name for the kind of book where a historical mystery (usually a dangerous artifact or a lost treasure) is adventured after in a contemporary (and usually globe-trotting) setting.

But the covers and titles are very recognizable. As much as I like the "Fox" titles, and the current covers, they brand it as somewhere in the Mystery Cozy zone, with the not-uncommon quirky 20-or-30-something female protagonist.

"Artifact" titles are only a subset, I see by reading lots of titles. The better template is pairing a historical identifier with something ominous.

"The historical period and/or figure that has lots of thrillers written about them already (of) portentous warnings of fire flood and death to come."

And I wanted to try to make it work. I've got big recognizable history things. And I've got adventure. The thing I haven't got, though, is the kind of world-changing secrets that drive a thriller plot. Penny isn't digging up a vase that summons the Greek Furies. (That's one "R," please.)

I did try. I tinkered. Came up with The Athenian Legacy but it sounded like it would be a sprawling family saga about Greek shipping tycoons or something. Secrets of the Blitz is either a talking-heads BBC documentary, or a how-to book about American Football.

Kusanagi has graced the cover of more than one book, and for once Penny is actually searching, and finding, a named artifact. Unfortunately she actually finds the Mirror, not the Sword (spoilers!) and most of the story is...well, it goes in some other directions. There are ancient astronauts, but that's the beliefs of a weird cult and the story doesn't go too far into what they think is going on.

So that was a loss.

Buffalo buffalo Italian buffalo buffalo buffalo...

They still haven't gotten that good English butter back in the store (although I did pick up a jar of Colman's). So on impulse picked up some Italian-made buffalo butter.

The jollof rice is coming along. Got some tips from a Ghanese fellow at work.  Finished a project at work that's been taking far too long, too:

Fairly simple bench, but wired for three different voltages with various quick-disconnects for them. That took a while.

And I'm finally done with Chapter One on Sometimes a Fox.

Downtown

Cold and alone in the ice-fields of Hoth, at least I’ve got my ride — tauntaun!

He might be ugly but you know what they say; he smells much worse inside — tauntaun!

(With apologies to Petulia Clark).

One of the things I say when I’m answering questions about writing is that structure repeats. Think of the prototype paragraph so beloved for class essays; opening statement, exploration, recapitulation and conclusion.

Well, it is only a guideline (insert pirate here) and one breaks up the structure, but that basic idea is seen in not just the paragraph, but the sentence, and in the novel itself.

Or in the chapter. I’ve been pushing very hard this week and somehow managing to get a little bit of writing done every day and I am finally down to the final scene of the first chapter.

Where I need to sum up what was presented and what was learned; basically, (since this is that all-important opening chapter), driving home what that chapter had to say about what the reader can expect from the book.

Brief mentions, in other words, of the main elements at play; the excitement of the treasure hunt (and the form it will take), the delights of Paris (both as the romanticized tourist destination and as the real city), the art of history (understanding that the past is a different country, and they write differently there.)

And briefly on Penny finally growing into her own as an experienced traveler, who still makes plenty of mistakes, and more than half expects another adventure (she’s right).

Of course, when I looked at the new formatting, with the epistolary fragment from Huxley set out in its own block surrounded by white space, it felt too short.

So last night was experimenting with what more he could say without giving away too much too early. And without straining my still-poor understanding of just what Montmartre looked like in 1900.

Catch 2

I have trouble sitting down and writing because it turns into something I’m “supposed” to do. So there’s pressure, and it starts to feel too much like work.

So I try to get a little writing done at work. That didn’t work any better; at work, I’m “not” supposed to do it and that makes it too hard to concentrate.

Still in Chapter One. Or it might be Chapter Two; I write in Scenes, and I make the final decision where chapter breaks fall while I’m getting ready to compile.

But I got through the scene outside the Basilica of Sacre-Coeur. And I got through the scene at the Eglise de Saint-Pierre du Montmartre. And I’ve started the scene back outside Sacre-Coeur, on the wide steps leading all the way down the butte to the Parc Louise-Michel.

All I have now is for her to puzzle a bit over the next clue, read a bit of Huxley’s book, and start to realize just how much she struggles with trying to understand the context within which he is writing.

I’m re-formatting so the clues from Huxley’s book are presented as epigrams for my own chapter headings, and the full-length quotes from the body of his text are set out either in italics or, if Kindle supports it, a different font.

The next chapter will (probably) be the first flashback scene and I still haven’t decided how to handle those.

Yeah, yeah, I’m writing a dual-time novel with Proustian loop-the-loops. Oddly, though, it really is the most sensible way to tell this.

I did originally mean to take this full Tomb Raider, with sword fights on top of airplanes and so on, but I’m relatively happy to have what is more a light adventure-mystery with travel and history elements.

I’ve been reading a new series on Kindle. Young and somewhat naive academic travels to some picaresque location and runs into a historical mystery. The big difference is this writer has accepted you need to bend history a little. In this case, alchemy is real. The writer is a trained historian, though, and his stuff about Newton and the Great Fire and all certainly convince me. And the second book, which I’ve begun, begins with the final days of the Sun King (and, yes, in that book his protagonist gets to be fish-out-of-water in Paris and, one presumes, at least a little Versailles.)

So at least one other person thinks that a little history and a little fun with location (a big confrontation in the first book takes place under the dome of St Paul’s, and there’s some derring-do around the London Eye.) And do it without filling the place with bad stereotypes and history with alien magic and crystal skulls.

Anyhow. Sometimes a Fox is largely the recovery phase (in that scheme of action-recovery alternation of scenes) for the previous book, a relaxed time where Penny can reflect on what she has learned and how she has changed since she first boarded that flight to Athens.

This, wrapped in an exploration of how we understand history, with her struggles to be the proper academic historian she thinks she should be, the playfulness of the steampunk crowd, and the potentially harmful excesses the treasure hunt gets into.

Wrapped, of course, in a treasure hunt across Paris.

I don’t need all of this in the first chapters, but this is where I have to lay out for the audience that we are doing a treasure hunt, what it will look like, and excite them with it. And show them Penny finally growing into the mature and experienced traveler she was going to be. And seed the idea that there are other conflicts in play; the potential abuses of the treasure hunt, the difficulties in understanding writings from an earlier age, her mixed feelings about the adventures she seems fated to have, etc.

Which is why I’m several weeks and the sixth revision in on these dratted opening chapters.

Once I’ve got this story open, it should relax. I should be able to save a big chunk of my existing work, too, and I’ll be close to the 40% mark within a week or two.

Slow Motion

Progress in the Steampunk book. The working title is still Blackdamp, largely because it would look good on a cover, being short and having lots of good places for a nice steam-fantasy font to go a little crazy.

That, and it inspires me for some Dickens/Joan Aiken hardship and poverty in the bad parts of my floating cloud London-analog. Although I'm still not sure what character works best for this, but a chap with the working name of Steerpike (yes, conceptually stolen from Ghormengast) is growing on me.

But I do need to clear Sometimes a Fox from my work list. I am still in Chapter One, and I am fighting my way paragraph by paragraph through it.

I think, once I've gotten through the business of getting the story set up properly and rolling in the right direction, I should be able to tweak much of the existing prose and shove my way through at a much brisker pace. But this is such a tough set-up.

I understand why Hollywood changes so much in history and in other source materials. Hollywood has a finely oiled machine cranking out story beats. A hundred departments are expecting a story beat of a certain kind of shape and form that they can then do the things they do with music and costumes and cinematography and all that.

I so very much get it. The first chapters are character. I need to set up certain character moments and lay certain expectations out and the map is getting in the way. The map, and history, and, well, reality. My task would be so much easier if I could plant the thing I need her to see or interact with or talk about right when the character path needs a specific thing to be seen or interacted with or talked about.

But, no, the statue of Saint Denis is at the Paroisse, and the line to get into the basilica of Notre-Dame leads around to the left, and so on and so forth. I can cheat some things; I can make her somehow fail to react to the view of Paris from the steps and pick that up only from the observation area a short way down the hill.

But I can't change the history. That is a difficulty throughout this series but it is really a problem here. Sorry, no Society Of Secret Secrets went around building obscure clues into every monument of Paris. Or, even more presciently, mostly the ones that are big tourist attractions in 2019. (And somehow, none of these clues got bombed out, plastered over, or otherwise lost in the history of several wars and massive reshaping of the Paris landscape).

But that's just the job. What is making this slow is the brain. I'm under the weather and the weather is overwhelming everyone. My state is underwater and I'm cold, wet, have a cold, and working too hard at my regular job. I get home and I can't even read what I've written.

Three times in the last few days I wrote a new version of the steps of Notre-Dame sequence (a half-dozen paragraphs) and every single time I forgot completely one of the reasons it needed to be re-written in the first place.