Manhandling a Plot

Roadtrip Z
Still free, until April 9, 2023…

Welp, Amazon just killed Book Depository, as we all knew they would. The metastasis continues; it’d be nice if the signs of timeline healing I’ve been trying to focus on lately could also include some good new for publishing instead of ho-hum business as usual and fuck the writers, but apparently that’s entirely too much to ask for.

Plus ça change, and all that. Although there’s an arraignment today. Too late, not enough, and the criminal will be handled with kid gloves as he has been all his life, but still. Gotta take the small bits of hope where one can, even if one suspects one will be kicked in the teeth later. I can’t afford to spend time celebrating, and indeed this is such a lukewarm, dilatory response to high crimes and treason there’s not a whole lot to wave pom-poms over.

Anyway. Today is for a push to at least get near the end of a zero draft, even if I don’t knock it off completely. This heroine needs to find out a few things and there’s a fire in a certain district of New Rome to set; the “hero” (he’s not a nice guy, but then again, that’s part of his considerable charm) is going to have his hands full. Everything needs to be arranged just so, and the big thing I’m worried about right now is getting a traitor into a hired hack. I already know how the heroine’s going to respond, but I need this bullyboy to get his priorities straight and get in the goddamn mech. (He’s no Shinji, but it’s still funny.)

It’s raining steadily with very little chance of letup. Boxnoggin will be morose during walkies, but I’m looking forward to having sidewalks to myself for the run afterward. The trap-n-bass soundtrack does good things while I’m hauling my weary corpse along, especially if I need a slight break from manhandling a certain plot around. I’m in a peculiar state of hangover, both from copyedits and finishing the first zero draft of the year; my brain needs a rest from chewing itself.

I won’t get one; once I finish this particular zero too there’s no shortage of work looming to get other projects out the door. No rest for the weary or the wicked in this part of the world, my friends.

So. Today the heroine’s patroness gives her a few missing pieces to a puzzle, and if all goes well I’ll start a few (fictional) fires. That will set up the heroine vs. the traitor, and once the “hero” gets things sorted amid five-alarm flames and his wounded subordinate returns bearing news it’ll be time for the endgame, which may have to happen at a lunatic asylum since the villain’s house will be used for another scene.

…I’m going to have to think about that, though. It would be a shame to not use the asylum, since I got it set up earlier in the story. The Muse knows better than I do, I have to trust the story, yadda yadda bing-bong and all that. I should think our heroine won’t mind a chance to even the scales not just for herself but for everyone being held in that bloody awful place–but before solving that problem I have to write my way through a few others.

Suppose I’d best get started. Here’s hoping today will clear the (very low) expectations I’ve got in place.