Edit

Yeah, that's what slow going on a scene usually means. It means the problems are bigger than that one scene. The new version is simpler in some ways (I'm kicking some of the plot revelations down the road) but in another way more complex; the Egtved Girl is now not just theme, but plot. 

So that's gonna take a couple more days.

Progress on bigger writing questions as well. Sort of. I went looking for editors. The pro a friend turned me on to is asking over $6K. That's not affordable, even if I thought I had a chance of matching that with a publisher's advance. I checked out Fiverrrr but they have a standard rate system that is a bad fit for novel length; pretty much everyone topped out at 50,000 words and above that it was "write and ask me and we'll negotiate."

Reedsy was worse, but in a different way. Had to request bids. With a sample. And as I went through the actually finished books I've got, I couldn't find a single sample I didn't want to stop and edit myself right then and there.

Did I mention? Before I threw the Paris book at an AI beta reader, I deleted the last chapter. Just took it out. The AI didn't notice, and I hardly noticed. It's been at least a year since removed two characters from the Athens book and I didn't regret that either. It isn't that way on Kindle, yet. I still want to do more before I update the file.

So I need and want edit. And that takes time. And that's just contemplating light edit. Maybe just proofreading. What I really want is developmental editing and...

I've barely got time to write a book once. I went back into my blog and the first words on paper (screen) for the New Mexico book were last April. Which wouldn't be so bad, but there was significant time between the last book and those first words!

But throw something else into the mix. Every full year I work sweetens the pot for retirement, sure. But that doesn't mean I have to finish the year. Every month puts a few more $K in savings (very few) and that's a good thing too.

And grabbed a copy of Obsidian to start taking more methodical notes for the SF novel. Brett over at ACOUP has given me lots of interesting ideas about everything from low intensity warfare to the definition of a polity. The picture of the Blue universe is getting clearer and clearer in my head. (The new working title: All Systems Blue.)

The list of SF books I might want to do is getting longer all the time.

At some point I will retire and I will still be short of money. Be pretty pointless to retire from a good job only to work at Wallmart, so I expect and hope to be doing something with some degree of fulfillment, artistic or otherwise.

I miss theatre. I enjoy writing. Whatever it is I do in retirement, it would be better if it at least paid costs (the difference between a business and a hobby is that a business sometimes breaks even). 

How it all falls out at the moment is that I should lean in to the last mile here. Keep working, because that brings the money in and also helps keep me on my feet working at finally climbing out of long COVID or whatever it was. Walking to work most days and bit by bit it is...well, not as bad as it was.

And somehow find enough time in there to finish ANOTHER book. One in a genre that sells, and put the work into it to help it sell, and see what happens.

And now back to my current book and finishing off the last killer mile for Penny, down the Jornada de Muerto after a killer on a horse. 

Aye-yi-yi

Shoved the most confused book (the Paris one) at the AI and it didn't tag it as Archaeological Thriller. It liked Adventure, Historical Mystery, and Cozy Mystery for this one. But it still name-checked Dan Brown. Ah, the flip side of stochastic algorithms. Sets containing "Adventure" and "Archaeology" will contain so many cites of "DaVinci Code" that's gonna weight the result something serious.

AI isn't about finding the best example, after all. It is about finding the average and then looking as much like that as possible. Plus a die roll.

So maybe I should wait for that developmental edit. But...after having to crawl through the whole Paris book because I'd never set up the file for exporting in rtf, I really don't feel like dealing with deep revisions.

The New Mexico book, maybe. It is still in draft.

Well, actually, it isn't finished. I'm at the climax but I have a whole Hello, Clarice to get through. And then I really do need to read my new book on Victorio, because I think my Mescalero Apache are acting out of character. And I got a coffee-table book on the Jornada (well, actually, on the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro).

Anyhow, there are enough little problems with the other four books to make another edit round advisable. Preferably with a human, because fighting with an automated grammar checker over sentences in two languages in a dual-time novel with flashbacks is just not fun.

The only reason I'm worrying about cover artists now is I've got an order ongoing right now at 100 Covers. Oops.

And I've chosen titles. Not the best...just the best I could come up with:

The Gift of Athena

The Zero Room

The Mirror of Amaterasu

The Montmartre Treasure

The Drake Equation

One part thriller, one part archaeological thriller. Best I can do.

Really, I'm all about the next book right now. There's nothing I can do with the final chapter of the New Mexico book while I am walking or at work, but I can think world-building for "Blue" and take a few notes. 

Eliza, Eliza

I'm in the final sequence of the New Mexico book. It is getting simpler all the time. I just dropped thirty-five bucks on a book about the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro but I went and wrote all 300 words of the vignette set during the Juan de Oñate expedition without it. Might want to read up on Lozen before I write her vignette, though.

I'm still on the fence about whether I will spring for editing, much less developmental edit, on this one. I have larger bread to fry.

Because I need to explore other stories. The four (soon to be five) Athena Fox books I want to think of as back catalog. Potential income and name recognition as I write new stuff.

I narrowed it down to three options for triage, but before I reach out to a professional, I reached out to one that plays a professional (and a human) on the internet. Hey, I had a chit courtesy of the subscription fee I already pay to ProWritingAid.

I trust it here because I'm not looking for value judgements and I'm ignoring the insincere praise; I'm looking for pattern recognition.

Without prompting, without the prod of knowing what I wanted to hear so it could regurgitate it back to me, the bot identified a genre. No, a sub-genre; "Archaeological Thriller," which is so new it still doesn't have a standard iconography.

I trust the AI less on whether the book I showed it checks the right boxes for that genre. It may be entirely ignoring the genre when it went on to talk about plot character and theme. But it produced a picture that works for me; of these books (or at least the first one) as sitting comfortably within the Thriller genre.

As an option within that genre I hadn't had clearly described to me until I found the Paul Tomlinson books, and hadn't really connected to the Archaeological Thriller sub-genre despite there being examples out there.

Paul Tomlinson calls this particular flavor the "Amateur on the run" thriller. 

It works, it has an audience, it is fairly straight-forward to stage for (that is, covers and keywords, advertising and blurbs).

This does leave open the question of whether the other books fit as well. The Athens book had almost the classic on-the-run profile. The Kyoto book could be considered a "wrong man" thriller, even if it dives early into more of an infiltration or even caper. But the Paris book is clearly treasure hunt, without the elements of pursuit, paranoia, or mistaken identity (although there are the elements that critic John Cawelti talks about; disguise, invisibility, and conspiracy). And the London book is essentially mystery, with Penny in the driver's seat for most of it.

I can't ignore how close I slide to cozy mystery, but there are both textual reasons (something I'll get into in a later post -- tentative title; "The Mystery as Post-Processual Archaeology") and stronger market reasons not to go there.

Penny and her journey is still the selling point, with the mystery being the excuse for it. She remains outsider to the cultures she encounters. She makes friends but largely fights alone. And the action is physical, much more in line with thriller (or urban fantasy) than the more cerebral process of detecting. Like Nancy Drew, she may be smart, but what she has aren't cases, but adventures.

So thriller is the right umbrella. Not cozy, not mystery, not history, not travel.

I am also feeling strongly that leaning on the dual role of Penny Bright/Athena Fox is not the right approach. Part of her hero's journey is becoming the mask, part of the wrong-man thriller is being mistaken for the mask, and there is much humor in the way the real world either echoes or fails to echo the kinds of situations a fictional archaeologist-adventurer would encounter. But this is better thought of not as theme, but as part of the character package, like Nero Wolfe and his orchids, or Bones and whatever uncatalogued neurodivergence she is supposed to have.

The iconography and other genre traits of Archaeological Thriller are still being formed. As evidenced by not a few writers choosing the term "archaeological adventure" or even "archaeological mystery" instead. The Amelia Peabody books are more genteel, and could certainly drift towards cozy mystery, but are still being staged as thrillers.

Where I want to and believe I should lean in my staging (advertising, blurbs, keywords, etc) is the amateur hero, finding surprising strengths within themselves. And, again within that particular thriller umbrella, exotic settings, unusual situations, masks and disguises, conspiracy and mystery, and being alone and often on the run, unsure of who they can trust and up against impossible odds.

I don't need to emphasize archaeology, history, or even the exotic settings (they are assumed to come with the meal). And I also see no good coming out of trying to emphasize the retro, or the idea of movie situations made real, or any of that.

What I am planning is a re-release. And there is an additional wrinkle.

I need to drop the cozy titles. I can get series/brand recognition through other elements than having "Fox" in every title. It was feeling like a stretch anyhow.

I checked with KDP and they are find with issuing new books under a different title, as long as there is a clear "previously published as..." in the description. Done this way, this would give me a chance to release five books on timed intervals. And possibly sweeten the pot with ARCs as well.

Developmental editing is still on the table. I will do another line edit, at least. There's enough small stuff even I have noticed to make it worthwhile.

Thrillers and archaeological thrillers, oddly, converge on titles. There is a strong tendency for the MacGuffin in the title, as well as something more conceptual. The only difference is that the archaeological thriller almost always has something clearly historical about one of the title elements.

Which again underlines how the archaeological thriller is a thriller. And once more helps me understand why this is a good brand fit; if anything, the Athena Fox stories are a better thriller fit than they are an archaeological thriller fit! (Since the latter trends strongly towards world-threatening artifacts and well-armed heroes, where the former can more easily support an everyman hero and a pure MacGuffin that never actually does anything.)

So thriller titles, basically. With, when possible, a historical name in there. I can get an "The X of Y" out of most of them pretty easily.

And covers. I do not understand what book covers are doing with the human figure now. We went through the floating heads phase. We did (and Urban Fantasy lingered) on the black-leather-against-burning-city look, somewhat aped for a while in the more protagonist-led military SF (swap out the black leather for power armor). There was the very small silhouette for a thankfully brief moment, now we seem to have the slightly larger back-to-the-camera silhouette. Still not an attractive look.

So leave that off. Thrillers, in particular, go for a conceptual cover and whether it is a one-shot hero or a series hero, they get identified not by having their mug on the cover but by having their name.

This leaves artifacts, settings, and symbology as the big cover elements. All generally with a dark thriller-esque look to the rest of it. Settings are more likely when there is something big and archaeological and easily recognizable, like the pyramid group in Cairo. After that, it stops being archaeological and more generic thriller cover, with modern city or exotic city being largely obscured with dramatic lighting.

I am not enamored of artifact titles or artifacts in the cover (and, yes, the AI had at least one to suggest for me). The dotted-line-on-a-map doesn't work for me now, either, because I don't believe in the retro thing as being a good approach.

But that doesn't mean I can't use graphics. And sometimes these graphics might be a map. Or have map-like elements. But this is what I'm getting out of the current (and not really there yet) cover design I have over at 100 Covers; graphics are cool for a thriller title, and I can go something more graphically interesting without losing the strong genre identification (and the thumbnail readability).

What I don't know now is the timing. I need to finish the current book. Not sure if I'm going to release "formerly titled The Early Fox" to eBook with nothing but the basic edit, or send that one through a longer pipeline first, or wait and save my money (developmental editing ain't cheap) for a book I feel more positive about.

New covers, I'm sure of. New titles, probably. At least some editing, certainly. But deeper editing? That's the triage, still, and to really decide I need to be talking to a human.

Too much?

My cover came back with revisions. And the same mistake was still there. I'm not talking something subtle like the wrong cacti or architecture that is clearly Guadalajara, not Taos. I'm talking a full coastline.

So I sent them a Power Point.

I'm going to stop going to the cover mills and hire an artist direct next time. Still want to redesign, possibly rename -- and that comes with having to re-write, because KDP might get cranky otherwise.

***

Oh, and I was slowly building the info on KDP. Kindleprenuar has a nice little web widget that will let you drape your book description in Amazon-approved HTML. They are rather restrictive as to what they allow and how it needs to be done.

Of course, being the age this is, there was a "spice this up with AI" button on the page. I tried it. This is actually, in my opinion, one of the things AI is best for; to recognize the trends you are stumbling around the edges of, and give you a funhouse mirror version of them so you can be reminded of what they look like. It is an expensive, power-intensive, possibly immoral way of drawing a circle around what you hit so you can recognize the barn you and others have been aiming at.

Here's the "call to action" it ended with:

For fans of fast-paced thrillers and strong female leads, "Footprints in the Sand" is a must-read. If you enjoyed books like "The Da Vinci Code" or "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"...

Hilarious. About as on-target as my current cover artist, though.

The final chapter

Another week, and weekend, of not a lot accomplished. Some of those stupid little plot wrinkles to work out for the last chapter. Every time I thought I had it, something else came up; "Where did he put the horse trailer? Why didn't the police take the computer? Why didn't he reload?" 

Put on some '80s music and did the third revision of the Dynel scene, the scene I hadn't realized I wanted. I think it is going to work now, along with the second (or is that third?) revision of the scene with the cop. Neither of those had been in my outline, by the by.

Oh, yeah, and Charlie Bauer and the German expats who were leaving Alamogordo (the German Air Force training center at Holloman AFB closed the year of the story) came to life briefly, then went away again. Giving Dynel's bully a name a backstory and an excuse was too much apologizing for his behavior and it took away from her. And this added scene is the one where she finally gets her own voice.

I'm going to need even more concentration for the next sequence. The "thrice-dug grave" worked with a fairly simple revision (Penny was being too flippant, and her former digging buddies were too at ease with her new focus). But now I've got a showdown with "Major Bob." One of those scenes where I have to balance an emotional outbreak, frustration and failure, against actually getting some useful plot information.

That, and I had to go back again and clarify who exactly knew what about what had been secretly removed from where. It may be a MacGuffin and some of it will never be revealed to the reader, but I sorta need to know so what happens looks like it happened for a reason.

And once I've gotten through the final chase and confrontation I still need to go back for some clean-up. The nuke museum scene might end up simpler. I may not need to touch on NERVA engines there at all (it also might be too early). And there's two other places I could hit MAD; if nothing else, Technical Sergeant Johansen could explain all about it within the Lambda Logs. That sequence talks about it at length.

About the only thing I'm sure of for that scene is Penny needs to see the game boxes and bobblehead because ever since the museum, every time she finds herself in a ruined and radioactive facility she's been cracking jokes about "the little blue guy."

I was about to say something about how important Dynel's scene is here, since there are so very few female characters in the book. Intentional. I didn't want Penny to have anyone she could lean on or confide in. I wanted her isolated.

Really, there's Dynel -- who only talks in this last snippet of a scene -- and Mary Cartwright. Except that Mary's aunt has a scene and there's a conversation. And a server at the Pueblo Kitchen has a few lines. And there's a saleswoman at a fleet rental company Penny calls at one point.

And then there's Senior Airman Sanchez. She's got two scenes, with lots of lines. 

So, no. Dynel isn't "the only other woman in the book."

World of Bunnies

So here I am, watching Supernatural. Or playing Satisfactory. Or messing around with ComfyUI. And sure, sometimes it is because I'm tired, sick, or my BP is 188/107, I've a splitting headache, and I don't want to do anything until it goes down again.

But seriously, I bet I would be writing a lot more if I was getting paid for it. That sense of accomplishment is only half there when nobody is reading and nobody is commenting. Makes me feel like Jeremy Hillery Boob, making nowhere plans for nobody. Of course if I got paid, it would be work. But I kinda need work.

Anyhow.

The new idea is still fighting with the original idea for which one I write first. "Blue," and Tiki Stars. Oddly enough, both of them are "Old Earth," where Earth isn't a factor in the story, being far away from the action. In Tiki I had the idea that the back story would change from episode to episode; Earth would usually be out of the equation, but the why would change. At least in Blue, Earth's fate is a known thing. They are just on the other side of an expensive wormhole. Oh, and the Venus story I was playing around with, Earth is clearly in the sky. When you can see it through the clouds. What they don't know is why it went radio silent and the ships stopped coming (they theorize a lot).

Also in both, these are somewhat Outer Worlds shaped commercial empires. Tiki is out in the colonies where various companies are so strong entire planets are basically Company Towns. Blue, it is more like a mercantile empire, a technically democratic bureaucracy that strongly supports trade, expansion, and other business interests. Which is natural, as they started as a for-profit colony.

Oh, yeah, the bunny for the day. As I was taking a walk, I passed a place called the "Dessert Cafe," which is fancy ice-cream thing, and two actual cafes name-dropping "Marrakesh" and "Nomad."

So, taking a page from the sadly-undersold Cozy Fantasy genre, a cool coffee-and-pastry place in an eclectic trade town at a crossroads along a Silk Road of sorts, in the middle of a fantastical desert, on a lost colony world that is slowly rebuilding and is currently at a schizo-tech vaguely early Renaissance period with empires both growing and long-gone, and remnants of a long and terrible interstellar war including the alien survivors who are now integrating into the human society of this backwater world.

I am so not writing it.

That's the thing about the writing mind. Ideas are easy. Taming them is hard.

***

Got another thousand words done on Early Fox. And I feel like I'm shorting the relationships. Like the end of the Dynel arc. I know what happened. I have pictures in my mind of the strange uncomfortable but almost sweet relationship between her and Charlie after the whole "Footloose" scene. But I didn't have the space to go into that, not when the focus is Penny and her story is figuring out a mystery.

With some angst on the side, of course.

That tips the scales towards Blue, because that's a framework that could support a lot of angst. I mean, interpersonal stuff. Because it is a Hornblower-esque, young person joins the (merchant) navy and grows in responsibility through various adventures.

The tiki story is more vibe, but mostly, it is modern pulp so there's a lot of action. The pacing of pulp doesn't seem like it will leave room for long quirky romantic conversations.

Dean Drive

 

Finally got the cop scene written. And now Dynel has dialogue. A scene, even. Probably not her real name, though. "Dynel" is another Penny coinage. She was struck by the bright artificial color of the girl's hair. Just like she saw a resemblance (she'd just seen a poster for The Day the Earth Stood Still) between a guy she'd just met and the actor Michael Rennie. (She also gets the lyrics to "Science Fiction Double Feature" wrong, but that's good; lyrics are copyright.

She also keeps making cracks about "them good ol' boys" after she fancied a resemblance between one of the two archaeologists out of the Gault Site in Texas and one of the Dukes of Hazard. Good thing I hadn't seen Supernatural until this weekend; I might have named them Dean and Sam. Still the wrong state; those boys are from Kansas.

That one is totally one of those road shows, like Route 66 or Knight Rider; differing from those "every day a different small town somewhere in America" of X-Files or Bones or The Fugitive or so many other shows by the '67 Impala that is pretty much a third character.

Penny only has a rental pickup, which is going to get wrecked four scenes from now. But at least she made it on to Route 66. The Winchesters, though, have better taste in music. So far she's made reference to "Hotel California," "Luckenbach, Texas," "Wichita Lineman," "Secret Agent Man," "Sixteen Tons," "Hard Knock Life," "The Sky is Crying," "We Work the Black Seam," "Il Triello," "Tequila Sunrise," "Ghost Riders in the Sky," and oblique reference to "What a Feeling."

Jack Reacher, for all his faults, has much better musical taste.