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.