I had plenty of time to write today! With the weather the way it is (it rained all last night, all day today... so much precipitation, it must be [insert ludicrously small volume here, as ill-advised humor about living in desert and consideration of "a lot" of rain]!), there wasn't much to do at work and I want sent home early. Plenty of time to write, plenty of time to do additional research as well. Not much writing, mostly researching... figured I had an extra day for that before the 28 scenes-in-a-row, getting down one scene / the gist of one scene a day (depending on writing time available) before the end of the month.
I did research today. I guess my post will be about that. Mostly trying to figure out the opening scene, which introduces the world and conflict (which is, after all, the first scene that I'm writing and honestly had no idea before today where to go with it.) Spy stuff, right? I'm so glad that I put in the minimum 5 seconds that I did doing research on it, because there's so much you'd never guess (as well as a bunch that you would, but, seriously-- did you know that "Agent" Moone isn't even technically an agent?)...
the world and conflict
It turns out that the post-Cold War era is exactly as uninteresting as they say it was, for international intrigue (at least in the non-supernatural world.)
And I can't just undo that whole cloth, otherwise the book wouldn't be post-Cold War. Part of the point is how boring everything is. They even considered shutting the CIA down after the Soviet Union fell, you know that (totally real, not making it up)? It was for only a brief time, and I'm not sure when that time was, but, hmm, maybe it fits the timeline for this book, and heck I don't even need to look it up-- that's the CIA, Tetragrammaton is a different agency entirely, though closely related (maybe even just a bureau within the CIA.) (Is Tetragrammaton an official agency of the United States government? I don't think so-- the whole premise is kind of silly-- but who knows, maybe a similar company does exist in reality, and even if not, there's always supernatural piggybacking off of available resources ("company" = agency jargon for "agency."). But it can't be mere piggybacking off of the infrastructure, it has to be a definitive entity, otherwise the supernatural world would exist outside of mundane political structures and the Cold War bits would be meaningless. The dangers of looking at things too closely-- of course, Finn not knowing himself, it's not that crucial to answer.) IF they're truly considering shutting down the company... one of the oldest, greatest, deepest and truest conflicts in espionage, real and fictional, is that between field and headquarters.
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