Better late than never. Having wrestled with the site after changing plans and dealing with backend editor issues, I can post my journal for last week. Here’s the original entry:

It’s been another good week workwise—a wee bit exhausting on the physical front (see Jez’s post on our latest bike ride)—and I couldn’t be happier with the progress.

Review 17th to 23rd June 2021

My Writing Goals for Last Week

• Complete Action Steps (AS) 40 (all from Sparking Story Drafts by H. R. D’Costa)
• AS 41a
• Start on 41b

How Did It Go?

As you can probably guess, I achieved my goals. Woohoo! ?

Last week I predicted that AS 40 would be a complex and time-consuming beast. AS 40 is a seven-item tracking agenda, and I was dealing with the final item: time, seasons, timing, etc.

The Beast

The reason it was such a beast comes down to me. The information I was tracking was fascinating and lead me down a bottomless and twisty rabbit hole. You see, 99% of my story is set in Marseille, France, and the other 1% takes place in Glasgow, Scotland.

For the Glasgow stuff, I’m set, and if needs be, I can just jump on Kali (my bike) and cycle into the city. Marseille, on the other hand, is a might more difficult.

Rabbit Holes

You see, I’ve never been to Marseille. And that’s where the fun and games began. I needed to do enough research to layer in just enough detail to give readers a taste of the area.

Knowing that I have a rabbit hole problem (Pinterest et al.), I decided to lean on my meteorological training from the navy. A basic climate brief (a guide to weather, politics, people, and culture of an area) would be plenty to get me going. But, alas, the “basic” turned into an epic Street View and YouTube fest.

It was an innocent enough search. The weather I wanted for the story isn’t typical in spring there, so I moved everything to June. Then I checked for any local public holidays that could impact the timeline, and that’s when it happened. That’s when I got sucked into checking other months—for no reason at all. That’s when I struck story gold!

Story Gold

I found Quatorze Juillet or Bastille Day in English speaking countries. An idea struck me. The climax of any story is meant to be huge, and that includes a dramatic setting.

The celebrations for the 14th in Marseille block off streets for a massive military and police parade. The streets in question are vital to the story and will cause absolute chaos for Adam (hero) and his team.

And, there’s an insane fireworks display (4500kgs of pyrotechnics for 11500 fireworks) at night over the Old Port that will be the perfect backdrop to a particular scene—nope, not telling. As you can probably guess, that all lead to YouTube.

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The Apple Maps and Google Street View rabbit hole was the worst. It started when I looked at apartments, safe houses, boatyards, and commercial properties for my cast. And then mapping out their routes to work etc. I don’t even want to think of how much time was spent on that.

This Week’s Goal

• Complete Editorial Pass #7 (of 7): Odds and Ends (Sparkling Story Drafts) for Working The Asset.
  • AS 41b

Schedule

Thursday	AS 41b
Friday	AS 41b and Blog post
Saturday	AS 41b
Sunday	AS 41b
Monday	AS 41b
Tuesday	Day off–bike ride
Wednesday	Day off–bike ride

Have you ever been to Marseille? Do you have any anecdotes of time in France? If you do, just drop them in the comments section.

Until next time, thanks for stopping by, and take care.

Susan