Writing Progress

[davidgillon]

1500 words on Sunday that turned out to be deep character background/potential YA* rather than actually the book I'm supposed to be writing. About 1500 words yesterday, actually in the Disruptive Technology narrative - expanding the opening scenes in which my innocent protagonist gets pulled into a Homeland Security investigation because of her specialist knowledge - which with today's couple of hundred takes us up to 11,000 words. But today seems to be mostly turning into a research day. 

Googled so far:

King County Sheriff's Office Air Support Unit, and then an image search for cabin pictures of Guardian 2, the actual helicopter they're in. I didn't really get a lot of success with that last, but it's a Huey, and seating plans are easily googleable.

King County Child Protective Services - character background. Need to go back to that as I didn't get what I wanted.

Cis-platin related Ototoxicity - character background again.

Airfields in Seattle - I know the big ones, via work initially, but I'll need a private field at a couple of points.

And then I had to dig into Google Earth and look for a road suitable for the ambush site they're flying out to examine. Which turned out to be a real pain. I need several things out of the site - somewhere the ambush will work, which requires an open area, and who knew Washington state was so full of trees, somewhere the ambushees can evade the ambush, and all of it on terrain my protagonist will find difficult (because that lets me get a bunch of yes, I'm an amputee, get over it exposition in the first chapter). I found three places along US-12 east of Mount Rainier that would almost work, and for each of them I had to go down into Streetview to look at actual images of the terrain (amongst other things, you need Streetview to tell if the road is totally walled in with guardrails, which nixes going cross-country to escape). I did find one place they could probably evade across a weir, but getting my protagonist across that when she turns up to look around would be a pain in the ass. Then I went literally around the corner from that one, and realised that while my first draft has the access problem being the slope going downhill, the slope going uphill is just as much an issue, and if the road is sticking to the valley bottom, I really should look at that. And not only is there a handy-dandy ridge for the ambushed folks to get out of sight behind, and far enough from the road for my purposes, but there's a bluff overlooking everything that is a perfect spot to launch the ambush from. Mission accomplished, rewrite tomorrow.

* It's an idea I had at Christmas, but which didn't get written down, as opposed to the ones that did and spawned this whole project.

Comments

[ckd]

Well, it is the Evergreen State. When my family moved to western Washington when I was a kid, I literally exclaimed "Look at ALL THE TREES!" (This may have had something to do with moving from Utah and, before that, Texas.) I did not say that when I moved back in 2015 but I sure felt it. :-D

Presumably the KC Sheriffs are in hot pursuit or otherwise justified in leaving their jurisdiction, since US-12 doesn't enter the county at all (it doesn't even enter Pierce, which is at least adjacent to King); unfortunately the Washington State Patrol's aviation unit seems to be all fixed-wing aircraft.

[davidgillon]

They've been borrowed for transport by Homeland Security, 'we just flew out of their jurisdiction' is one of the points that gets raised. I'd really like to find somewhere closer to Seattle that works just as well, but a mile's worth of open space, on a steep slope, with a road at top or bottom doesn't seem to be happening.

[ckd]

Yeah, the open space is tough. It seems like everything in KC is either built up or forested. (Not that I get outside of the Seattle city limits that often, though, not having a car.)

[davidgillon]

I decided overnight that I didn't like that I was so far East, so started looking at new locations. Then I came up with a new twist, reversed the direction of travel as into Seattle not out, which is actually easier to explain plotwise and looked for places where there'd been logging, which will handily meet all the needs of being both open and difficult to access. So now I'm putting the scene up in the Acme/Wickersham area. Still far enough out that they can justify using the helicopter, but the location makes more sense within the plot.

Additionally googled: Reforestation in clear cut forests.