This week’s been a blur. The youngest has decided that he’s going to start acting like a two year old, so much of my time has been keeping the boys from killing each other. My brain’s been buzzing just trying to get the day to day stuff done that any time I’ve sat down, I haven’t been able to think of anything else. (Some of this is extremely personal family stuff that I can’t really get into, sorry)

Number of times I fell asleep in bed with my laptop open: 2

On the bright side, I finally found my DVD of The Mummy Returns. So now I can watch the movies and reiterate that Alexandria is not an Evey clone. Not in the least!

Next week, I’ll start outlining my character process and include a throwaway piece- what I dub the scenes I write and have no intention of including in a project. Usually they’re just to help me establish how characters relate.

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So this is my break from that. Since it’s an action/adventure serial similar to Indiana Jones and the Mummy (and all the wonderful novels and radio show that inspired movies like those), I get to play a little fast and loose with history.

It’s the same way that movies like “Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl” succeed. They give you just enough indication of the time period that it seems like it could be realistic without making it a true historical piece. Contrast the first Pirates movie with the third. In the first, it was established that pirates were hunted and the penalty was death. It was established that some groups branded pirates. However, it was just enough to establish some of the stakes that the pirates faced, but didn’t focus on them. It focused solely on the treasure and the Black Pearl. The third movie, on the other hand, became bogged down by details. While there were elements of the fantastic- Davy Jones and Calypso, the majority of the plot was about pirates being squeezed off the seas, trade agreements controlling governments. The series went from being a supernatural movie set in a historical time period to a period piece with supernatural elements. One was successful, the other… not so much. (And for the record, I did love the third one, but I’m a history nut. I don’t think it was as well written as the first.)

This story has a couple things that are tricky. There’s my MacGuffin, which is rooted in a historical time period (go artifacts!). So I have to make it fit without giving so many details that it seems fake- since too many details makes me feel like someone thinks I won’t believe it otherwise. Then there’s the timeline that the story is set in.

I want the location to feel believable, but at the same time, I’m not writing a travelogue.

Things I’m researching:

Alexander the Great
Nazis
South East Asia in the 1930s

The picture for this post is of Amice Mary Calverley, who I discovered while looking for inspiration in pictures from the 1930s. If it weren’t for real women like her, fictional characters from Marian Ravenwood to Evelyn O’Connell (nee Carnahan) wouldn’t have been plausible. I’d never heard of her until this week, but honestly- what an amazing woman!

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Inspiration comes from a lot of places for me. For the projects that I have notebooks for (and there are several) I have been inspired by television programs, dreams, movies, and even collaborations that fell through.

But this project? This one takes the cake. My inspiration came from a character that I’d worked up for a performance. And not just any performance… an ongoing performance that I did 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for almost 3 years.

Confused? Once upon a time, I worked at Disneyland. Sure, I started off at Autopia, then learned Monorail. But I quit to try my hand at freelance web design, and when I came back, I asked to work on the opposite side of the park. I learned Jungle Cruise.

For those who didn’t work Jungle, I bet you didn’t know that there’s an actual backstory to the Jungle Cruise. Adventureland is set in a remote outpost in South East Asia in the 1930s. The Jungle Cruise (the Navigation Company, at least) was based out of what had been a Victorian house and took tours and cargo through the various rivers. Granted, it’s impossible to conceivably take a tour up the Irrawaddy that ends after a jaunt through the Amazon, but it’s still fun.

A long time ago, one used to be encouraged to play a character. Adventurers, photographers, archaeologists- any of those types of characters you see pop up in those classed adventure serial type movies. Since I’m not much of a comedienne, I figured I’d make a character. One I could pull out if I got bored with the spiel, something to spice up the day.

Which is where I came up with the wide-eyed scholar who had come out to study something, only to wind up stranded out in the Jungle. She was book-smart, not street-smart in the least, prone to accidental innuendo (I got away with murder out there- it’s amazing how much of the spiel sounds unintentionally dirty. When delivered by a fresh-faced, wide-eyed girl, nobody ever thinks you mean it), bouncy and completely unable to deliver a tour without tying herself up in the microphone cord.

Near the end of my tenure at Jungle, I was working on a different sort of project, and decided to use her as an example. In trying to remove the specifics of Jungle (she had a wicked crush on Indiana Jones), I started to discover a more serious side to her.

So there you have it, that’s where the inspiration came from this. The plot itself came from a random thought I had while watching something on the History Channel. Then it grew from there. Bits and pieces come to me over time and I just keep writing them down.

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Right now I’m working on the characters and design (there will be some illustrations), and I will occasionally need some help from you, my friends and readers.

So what am I working on? Well, here’s your weekly hint. Right now I have a brainy heroine who was formerly saddled with the last name Tremaine. However, I was looking for a name for an English Lord and his son… and now they’re the Tremaines. Currently I’m looking through French last names, and hilariously, I keep picking ones that I’ve used for characters in other projects. Yikes.

I’ve decided to ditch having the English Lord be an English Lord. Knighting a ficticious someone is much easier than creating a family that doesn’t exist. Sir Tremaine it is!

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