Fiction in the Time of Cholera

The nice thing about writing contemporary fiction is you can just go to the website.

Except not today. I was just looking up stuff on the New Covent Market Garden and it took longer than it should have to confirm that it is wholesale only. In any case there's a five pound entrance fee. 

All of my usual map sources and route sources are full of red flags and closure signs. And none of these applied in November of 2018, when the story is set. I used to be able to look up hotel prices, even. Well, that's not a good guide now! 

Maybe I need to become more clever at using the Wayback Machine. Of course, things like Expedia are all php-everything so you still wouldn't get the old data...

***

One of the many things I'm trying to do in Fox and Hounds is play upon the stress between London the stereotypes and London the real city. Right in the first paragraph, I have Penny thinking that she knows better, and it isn't going to be all fish & chips and double-decker buses. And is promptly undercut by the passing of a double-decker bus. 

After all, this is a town that built a reproduction of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. Of course, it also built a really big ferris wheel. Like everywhere, they have to live with those stresses; history and tradition and tourist draw versus, well, the rest of life in a changing world.

So I'm sending her to Trafalgar Square, the Tower of London, the Globe, Highgate Cemetery, and Battersea Power Station. And at least one chip shop.

I'm trying hard not to do the all-star cast of what's familiar to American audiences. But there's a problem; a lot of those same properties are popular there, too. So, yes, Harry Potter is getting name-checked. As is Doctor Who. And at this point in the manuscript I've also managed to name check and/or quote from J.R.R., Douglas Adams, Downton Abbey, Dad's Army (okay, that one's not so well known out here)...

And I've forgotten what else. I'm still struggling with the first diary scene. Partly because I'm also trying to organize the last half of the book and there's a lot of plot lines that didn't get picked up properly in the first half and will likely be re-written. And a lot of thoughts that I need to have some things that are a bit more exciting happen.

Not just for the excitement per se, but to develop some underlying themes. The most out-there idea is meeting with some 410's in Brixton. A more plausible idea is a "race" with a Black Cab against a deadline.