My cover of Miracle of Sound's "Khajiit Likes to Sneak" is done. I'm not saying it is good. I'm saying I've learned what I can from that piece and it is time to move on.
Reaper started to develop a real stutter as my track count went into the 30's and 40's. I had to dial up the buffers, and that meant latency was too bad to do real-time monitoring whilst I played in new material. I was okay with the leakage I got around the headphones, though.
I'll post the final version. Probably after I cut some sort of video for it.
On the writing front, I scribbled out some trial scenes and the outline seems to work. It gets a little vague half-way through Act II, though, so until I fill in more of it I don't even know if I am looking at one book or three.
The overall planning scheme worked. Well enough. The trick to this one -- possibly to any historical fiction -- is to control the research. Do enough general research to rough out the plot, go into rough draft as soon as possible, and generate specific research questions from that draft. After all, if no-one is going to cook, I really don't need to spend days reading about food preparation in the Hittite Empire.
The "sort of" is because I need more general research before I can finish the outline. At least it is a little more directed. I don't need to look at "everything." My topics of strongest interest are:
The Luwians and Arzawa.
Ugarit and Canaan.
Phoenicia and Bylos.
Miletus, Sparta, Athens, the Peloponnese.
In the longer-term, more towards fleshing out specific settings; Mycenaean weaving (you laugh -- but I've already found a great web page.) Sailing (perhaps even ship-building) in the Aegean. Daily life in dei el Medinah. Pi-Ramses and the Way of Horus. Cretan mountain cults.
And Homer. Writing those sample scenes showed me that I need to find a certain something for the dialog so that it doesn't feel too modern (or too contrived.) I want to read a lot of epic poetry, in translation of course (I'm not crazy), and start to get a feel for a different way of speaking.
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