I've been in Kyoto.
That's a big part of this experiment, this series, this attempt to not wallow for years with ideas and research but never actually write the book; to write about places I've been.
Kyoto is called the city of a thousand temples. It's actually got some 1600 temples and another 400 shrines. Depending I suppose on how you count. So that means that, no matter what I might have intended when I started plotting this book, eventually it was going to have to be about faith and worship and the unseen world.
Related to that, my current thought on the underlying super-plot is there isn't some singular and easily explicable thing with fake gods and atlanteans or whatever. I've realized no matter what I came up with, it would be a let-down. So instead there are what look more and more like gods or something that fits similar niches choosing to involve Penny in their games. That was one of the original conceits, after all; that Penny went to Athens and at the very temple of Athena atop the acropolis took the god's name. And after that it looked a hell of a lot like said god had noticed.
The London book, the brush with the supernatural is extremely muted. There's a little side discussion about modern mythologies and heroes supplanting older beliefs; Toutatis out, Doctor Who in. And some mysterious goings-on in the sewer and the open question of who was working against her all along.
My current plan is that at the end of the Paris book I'm going to finally reveal Jameson, a sort of Elon Musk Silicon Valley figure who has been name-dropped from the first prologue, and who turns out to have direct connections to several of her old friends and some of the things that have happened to her.
In any case, there are vague hints about Kitsune in this one, and some moments enjoying some of the spookier spots around Kyoto (I've been lost above the big Inari shrine -- I know!) But the closest the supernatural will get to a come out and slap you moment is when Penny holds the Mirror and becomes absolutely certain it is the Mirror.
And, oops, spoilers?
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So I am doing research. Reading about religions, which is a whole lot of fun. Turns out religion in Japan is both syncretic and, shall we say, ecumenical. The lines between Buddhism and Shinto get very blurred. And of course on the other hand there are so very many sects (plus Shinto doesn't have a holy book, and despite the legacy of State Shinto is more like multiple unique collections of ritual traditions.)
And about the thousand temples of Kyoto, because even though I visited at least a hundred of them (or so it felt) they all run together in my mind. So I'm doing the legwork to try to find which ones are most appropriate to the story I'm trying to tell.
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Which leads to a last. When I set out to write the Athens book the only subject I'd really delved into was the Bronze Age. I hadn't even read The Iliad yet. Japan, though; Japan has been an interest of mine for a while and I wrote a previous book and a long fanfic with that setting (more or less). I've got two bookshelves full of histories and stories and mythologies of Japan, castles and homes and traditional crafts, Kodansha's Kanji dictionary and other language studies, and a pile of manga to boot.
And I haven't the time to open most of them. This idea of writing a book in a year means all research must fall into the category of "do it only if you must." Even if the book is right there on my shelf and I read it once already!
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