Beverlee Hills Mummy -- Outline WIP FINAL!!!

I should clarify that each book represents 1 year of high school, so we have Book 1 being Sophomore Year, Book 2 being Junior Year, and Book 3 being Senior Year. "Sunny", Thai, China, Candy, and Ophelia are all supposed to be around the same age, maybe a few months apart (except for China and Candy who have the same birthday). So, all the girls are or turn sixteen in Book 1, seventeen in Book 2, and eighteen in Book 3.

 
I'm going to have each book have three acts, with Fall, Winter, and Spring being the main focuses. Summer will happen off-page, so it can be referred to, but not focused on. (We can change this later if we need to but I can't think of any summer-specific plot points that I want to have happen right now.) 

• Book 1

• Fall

• Flashback -- Egypt
• Nakia's murder.
• Nakia's first game with The King.
• Flashback -- Afterlife
• Waking up in the Afterlife.
• Friendship
• "Sunny" meets Thai, Candy, and China.
• They invite her to lunch. Nobody eats.
• Prince Machiavelli takes to Nakia (probably because she's made of bones).
• Halloween party at Nakia's house (Thai's idea.)
• Candy gives Nakia a makeover.
• Kim & Jacki
• Nakia assigns Kim to investigate Jacki to get dirt on her.
• Jacki does break rules, but only to help kids. Synopsis of Jacki's personal and professional life.
• Dating prospects.
• Jacki's interim foster kid.
• Constant parade of rescue animals handed off at cookouts.
• Jacki's Pinto.
• One of Jackie's kids needs a fridge and Nakia tells Kim to buy the kid a fridge.
• School
• Nakia lectures a teacher.
• Beach bonfire (a bit triggering).
• Staff
• Bedroom is for a child. Personal interior decorator is embarrassed.
• Car breaks down.
• Cook is offended.

• Winter

• Flashback -- Egypt
• Ahmose's discovers Nakia's midnight senet game with The King.
• Friendship
• Nakia discovers each girls' secret:
• Thai's aunt's Samoyed business.
• Candy's boyfriend.
• China's soup kitchen.
• Skiing at Big Bear.
• Kim & Jacki
• Kim bought the kid a fridge but the kid was accused of stealing. Jacki handled it.
• Interim kid is gone, Jacki has a new pet.
• School
• Nakia excells at math and science. Tests into Calculus and Physics.
• Gets into heated debate with History teacher.
• Winter Formal Dance -- Nakia's first date.
• Staff
• Iz is also insomniac.
• Aryn is golf fanatic, "Sunny" has a great arm (or whatever).
• Boris has a pacemaker.

• Spring

• Flashbacks Egypt
• Nakia realizes that Ahmose isn't her sister.
• Friendships
• Discovering Ophelia!
• Twins' birthday party. (Jan 8th)
• Kim & Jacki
• Jackie and Sunny finally meet.
• School
• Gives class presentation in History class.
• School play (Meda's Lark).
• Staff
• Katie and Walter are dating.
• Ronan finds a bracelet lost during the Halloween party by a guest. Turns it into Kim.
• Sadie takes pH VERY seriously.

• Book 2

• Fall

• Flashback -- Egypt
• Summer nights on village roofs.
• Flashback -- Afterlife
• The King starts going off on his own.
• Flashback -- Atlantis
• Nakia follows The King to Atlantis but just misses him.
• Foreshadowing of eruption.
• Nakia makes a friend.
• Friendship
• Nakia gets to know Ophelia and the three girls start visiting together once a week to play senet (Nakia's version).
• Joins Track team with Candy.
• Wins a race easily.
• Candy is jealous.
• Prince Machiavelli hides from Thai when it's time to leave Nakia's house.
• Kim & Jacki
• Jacki has a case that involves a classmate of the girls.
• Her name is Blythe Holloway.
• She's on the track team.
• Her parents leave her alone for weeks and months and forget to pay the utilities and stock the fridge before they go.
• Her old boyfriend is trying to pull her into a life of crime.
• The Pinto is acting up.
• School
• Nakia resolves not to get into arguments with her history teachers -- immediately breaks that resolution.
• Quits Track team.
• Candy is angry because it lets the team down.
• This causes Nakia to spiral because she could never do anything right with Ahmose either. 
• Staff
• Victor is self-conscious about baby weight (trans).
• City doesn't like dogs.
• Iz gets food poisoning.

• Winter

• Flashback -- Egypt
• Ahmose brings Nakia to the palace.
• Showers her with gifts.
• Nakia is homesick, which makes Ahmose angry.
• Ahmose withholds affection.
• Flashback -- Afterlife
• The King disappears for real.
• Nakia is pulled back into the tomb (body horror).
• Flashback -- Atlantis
• Nakia loves Atlantis.
• Has a friend.
• Is learning about Geology and Astrology and clockwork and steam.
• Thinks about staying.
• More rumblings.
• Nakia confides in her friend about being a mummy.
• Friend asks priest to help Nakia.
• Friendship
• Prince Machiavelli adopts Nakia officially.
• Thai says she's not jealous but Nakia doesn't trust it.
• Excuses herself from senet for a couple of weeks.
• Kim & Jacki
• Nakia excuses herself from weekly Jacki and staff reports.
• School
• Nakia stops participating in class and extracurricular social events.
• Staff
• Nakia avoids her staff.

• Spring

• Flashback -- Egypt
• Ahmose whips Nakia.
• Flashback -- Afterlife
• "Risk" with The King.
• Flashback -- Atlantis
• Priest suggests Nakia as sacrifice.
• Nakia is tossed into volcano. It erupts anyway (if you can believe it).
• After the eruption, Nakia sulks in the ocean.
• Reflects on how disappointing humanity is.
• Realizes that The King has been avoiding her on purpose.
• Rises from the ruins to find her bones have been opalized.
• Renews her determination to find The King.
• Friendship
• Candy apologizes.
• Thai reiterates that she's not mad about Prince Machiavelli and that she doesn't intend to adopt any more Samoyeds.
• Ophelia comes up with her own version of Semet.
• Kim & Jacki
• Nakia tells Kim to back off on surveillance of Jacki.
• But gets the update, first.
• Blythe ran away with her older boyfriend.
• School
• Starts participating again, just a tiny argument with History teacher.
• Goes to support Candy's track meet.
• Blythe faints while running, dehydrated.
• Is supported by her friends.
• Staff
• Peggy is done decorating the house.
• Katie & Walter break up. Walter quits.
• Victor's dysphoria is better.
• Reckoning With The King
• The King reveals why he's been avoiding Nakia.
• Tells Nakia about lush.
• Shoos her off to live her life.
• Nakia can practice shaping her lush body over the summer.

• Book 3:

• Fall

• Flashback -- Egypt
• Ahmose forces Nakia to write a letter to her parents saying that she doesn't love them and never wants to see them again because she's so happy at the palace.
• The King gives Nakia a solid gold senet piece that he turned into a pendant.
• Flashback -- Afterlife
• More "Risk" with The King.
• Flashback -- Havenford
• Nakia tracks The King to Havenford, but the trail is cold.
• She saves a local girl's life.
• New mayor in town weaponizing superstition.
• Friendship
• Ophelia designs a beautiful 3D printed Senet board, asks Nakia if it would be okay to sell the designs.
• Candy talks China into going to UCLA instead of FIDM.
• Thai is vigorously planning her wedding (June 24th).
• Kim & Jacki
• Kim is retired from running Nakia's aliases.
• She is also not really needed for staff stuff either.
• She's able to fly home in between visits from Jacki.
• She isn't technically still supposed to be tracking Jacki, but she does update Nakia on Blythe.
• Jacki found her and brought her back.
• School
• School counselor talks to "Sunny" about college.
• Nakia's new History teacher is not as patient as her last two.
• Staff
• City quits, is not replaced.
• Ronan and Sadie get married.
• Iz is diagnosed with diabetes.

• Winter

• Flashback -- Egypt
• The King Dies
• Nakia is devastated, Ahmose is pissed.
• Flashback -- Afterlife
• More "Risk" with The King.
• Flashback -- Havenford
• Escalation of superstition, shunning.
• Nakia's friend group tries to sabotage the mayor.
• Friendship
• China's boyfriend comes out as gay.
• She liked being his beard.
• Candy looks for a condo building for the girls to all live in (all their own condos, of course).
• Ophelia is mentally preparing to be left behind.
• Thai calls off her wedding but remains engaged.
• Kim & Jacki
• Kim makes a cameo for visit with Jacki.
• School
• Nakia finds out that The King's tomb was discovered, along with several of his dynasty in History class. Refrains from getting into argument with teacher.
• Attends another of Blythe's art exhibits with China.
• China falls in love with Blythe's painting. (It's a still life of a cracked china cup with blood leaking out of it.) The tiered tray of tiny cakes is exquisite.
• Offers to buy it.
• Staff
• Iz is pregnant and everything tastes like pickles to her, so nothing she cooks comes out right.
• Now that Nakia eats, this is a problem. Iz starts to teach Nakia how to cook.
• Boris has to go in for a pacemaker check-up.
• Nathan gets stung by a bee.

• Spring

• Flashback -- Egypt
• Tomb discovered. The only remnant of her legacy is a pendant that The King gave to Nakia.
• Nakia thinks of stealing the pendant back, but doesn't want it.
• (The King will give it to Aura to return to Nakia in Beware the False Moon.)
• Flashback -- Afterlife
• One last game of Senet.
• Flashback -- Havenford
• Burned at the stake.
• Friendship
• Thai gets really close to her wedding date but calls it off.
• Kim & Jacki
• Blythe turns 18 but Jacki is still helping her.
• She asks Nakia to hire Blythe as a maid.
• Nakia would, but Prince Machiavelli takes to Blythe, so Nakia hires Blythe as her dog sitter.
• School
• Grad Night
• Graduation
• Staff
• Iz goes on pregnancy leave and everyone takes turns making their best dishes so that Iz doesn't need to be replaced.
• Nakia tries cheesecake for the first time (the name had put her off).
• Vows to wife it up.

Beverlee Hills Mummy Series Potential Expansion

 I've been working on the outlines for the Beverlee Hills Mummy Trilogy. Right now, I have three books separated into three seasons each: fall, winter, and spring (following the school year) with summer being summarized or referred to. But, I'm working on the story beats for the flashbacks and they could all be their own books, so I'm wondering if I should re-expand the series. I initially was planning for twenty books but that ended up feeling daunting, so I shortened it to a trilogy. JUST a thought exercise, I'm going to CONSIDER turning it back into a longer series.

I was thinking that because I want to explore Nakia's life after high school. Not "the college years" so much as the transition into The Rift. Nakia gets maybe a book to come fully into her own and then Aura shows up and is like, "hey, your old god/king is trying to rip the world into four pieces, and I need your lush in order to save it." Nakia has to come to terms with her mortality -- again -- but it's not even that easy, because we'll need four anchors, one on each mini-planet, kind of like magnets that can be flipped to bring the worlds back together at some point. 

The four will be Aura, Nakia, The King, and...maybe Coral? Oooh, or Darcy! Darcy would be interesting. She's Aura's birth mother. So, to bring the worlds back together, Nakia would have to work with The King and Aura would have to work with Darcy. That MAY be a bit too much drama. Other contenders of existing characters are Coral and Tom, but we could also make Lush (the AI avatar herself) the fourth? We'll see.

Anyway, I thought it might be too tragic for Nakia to finally have a real life only to have it ripped away again, but she's not like a battered kid who grew up wanting a spouse and 2.5 kids and a white picket fence. She just wanted to be comfortable in her own skin and a solid sense of belonging, whatever that looks like. She also has a bit of a savior complex, so as long as she gets to keep her friends, I think she'll be okay.

Okay, let's get into the extended series. First, if each season of each year (fall, winter, spring) is a book, that brings us to nine books. Then, if we follow her around for another three years (one normal, chill year), one leading up to The Rift, and one after The Rift, would that be three more books or nine more books? Let's examine that.

The reason each season should be one book in the main body of the series is because we're exploring the flashbacks (Egypt, Atlantis, and Havenford) in detail as well as dealing with a full house staff and the Jackie storyline. So, assuming Nakia spends less time living in the past, she is in college and doesn't have her staff anymore, and we're not following Jacki around, the books won't need to be as long.

BUT, do we WANT all of those things? AND, even if we don't, won't Nakia have new friends and new experiences that we could fill a book with? We also want to keep an eye on the girls. And, it's not much of a tragedy for Nakia to lose the life she's building if it's not currently important to her. I do want it to still hurt. And even if Nakia is flexible with what the world looks like, this is going to be incredibly destructive for the people in her life. It would be interesting, too, to see the different levels of damage done to rich people versus working class and poor. 

Also, frankly, I the Afterlife scenes are some of my favorite, and don't necessarily want to drop that just because we don't like The King right now. We can also get more nuance on Ahmose's character, follow Jacki's hijinks, and meet new people.

Okay, you've convinced me. Let's make the three years after high school one book per season. However, unlike high school, I think we definitely need summer included. Summer is kind of a lost season when you're in school (it was for me, anyway, but that's probably because I didn't have friends), but in adult life, you don't get three-month vacations from your obligations. So, that would be twelve more books on top of the nine. That's twenty-one. Hm. That's even more than I originally intended to write.

Although, originally, I wanted this to be a never-ending series like Sweet Valley High except with a linear storyline instead of all standalone books. Also, what if we DID include summer in the base series? Then we'd have twelve books for the base series and twelve books for the sequel series. OR, should we have three prequels, three bases, and three sequels? That would be thirty six, if we did one book per season, per year.

I don't know if I want a prequel series, though. Yes, we could give each flashback its own series, but those stories are so grim and are used as a basis to contrast with Nakia's new life. If I WAS going to do a prequel series, it would follow around Thai, China, Candy, and Ophelia. Hm. Okay, I kind of like that. If we explore their friendship pre-accident and directly after, writing about it in the base series, we'd have a lot more information to pull from to make the world feel lived in. Each season could be written from the POV of one of the girls, too. 

Okay, so I'm writing an outline for thirty-six books, instead of three. To be honest, this is about how many I wanted to write anyway. I only lowered it to three because that sounded achievable. For now, I'm going to finish the outline for the three. I have Book 1 mapped out, am mostly done with Book 2, and have a bit of Book 3 done. All that happens if I do expand the series is that the outline of the three books becomes an outline for nine books and we just fill in plot and character development.

I will say that I'm far more confident in writing a compelling trilogy than a hexatriacontalogy. Thirty-six books sounds like I'm trying to get away with filler but the truth is that I think I just have that much story, if not more.

Okay, good talk.

Beverlee Hills Mummy -- Outline WIP Part 5

Yesterday, I worked out the main story arcs for Nakia's flashbacks juxtaposed with her budding friendships with the Beverlee Hills girls, but I didn't work out b and c storylines for those. I think that's important, but today, I was working with Chat GPT to figure out what is going to happen with Jackie. At first, I thought we'd need a, b, and c plots, for each book, maybe some of them could overlap into larger arcs through the books, but then I was like, wait a second, I don't need Jackie to be a main feature of all three books. Like, the first one, yeah, because Jackie represents a system and systems have let down and/or "killed" Nakia three times, so when newly orphaned "Sunny" needs a social worker, Nakia doesn't trust her. She sics Kim on Jacki to find dirt on her in order to blackmail Jacki into leaving Sunny alone.

All Nakia really understands about "the system" is that it takes kids away from their parents, and being taken from her parents is Nakia's core wound. She assumes that anyone working within a system like this is corrupt, so she's surprised when Kim reports back and says that Jacki not only genuinely seems to care about helping kids, but she'll even break rules to do it. Nakia becomes mildly invested in "helping" Jacki with her cases, which backfires, which is fun plot stuff. 

I have so many characters in this story, I didn't want another one, so I was going to have Nakia investigate Jacki herself, but if Thai, Candy, China, and Ophelia are going to be the main focus of the books with a huge emphasis on the friendships that have let Nakia down in the past, then I can't have her be that invested in a tertiary character time or emotion-wise. So, I thought that she could hire a private investigator, but then I thought that she could just assign it to Kim. 

Who is Kim, you ask? Yeah, I've barely mentioned her. She's Nakia's personal assistant who manages all of Nakia's aliases. She's the one who informs Nakia that Sunny's fictional parents are dead and the only way to save their fortune and contacts is for Nakia to pretend to be Sunny. Kim comes to California to pose as Sunny's legal guardian, but, surprise, she's only twenty-one. Nakia is annoyed, not because Kim lied about her age in order to get the job (she started working for Nakia when she was thirteen), but because she looks young enough that SHE could have posed as Sunny and hired someone to play the guardian and Nakia wouldn't have to be here at all.

Anyway, aside from that, I wasn't sure until today how involved I wanted Kim to be in the plot, but she's the perfect person to manage the staff that she hired and to spy on Jacki and report back. Nakia already trusts Kim with the knowledge that she has aliases (although Kim doesn't know why), and Nakia doesn't let people into her confidence easily. 

Kim will be the perfect filter for information on Jacki. We'll be able to deal with her hijinks though Kim reporting to Nakia (telling, not showing, which will help distance Nakia from it emotionally even more). Also, Kim will be invested enough that she'll also initially report about Jacki's romantic and family life, which will help the reader get to know Jacki better.

But, in regard to arcs, we don't need an a, b, and c plot for Jackie for all three books. Once Nakia realizes that Jacki is competent and caring, she basically just trusts her to do her job, and Kim stops investigating her. So, after the first book, we'll only need Jacki showing up to check on "Sunny" and maybe we'll get some updates on her personal life and stuff as we go along.

Similarly, Kim's arc with Nakia will wrap up after book two because the purpose of Nakia's aliases is for her to have a network that helps her track down The King. After she confronts The King after Book 2, Kim will only be around to pretend to be Sunny's guardian and to manage the staff. Once Sunny turns eighteen, the staff will be dismissed when she goes off to college, and Kim won't be needed after that.

I don't want to drop Jacki and Kim abruptly but they will become less important as other characters become more important.

So. In nailing down the arcs for each book with Jacki and Kim, let's figure out some plot points. First, Jacki has a kid who needs a fridge, so Nakia has a kid buy him one and fill it with food. Nice. But someone accuses the kid of stealing the fridge (what, did it just show up full of food? Yeah, right) and the kid is in trouble. Jacki handles it and Kim reports back that Nakia's generosity backfired. They both agree to hold back the next time they want to step in. 

Jacki's jurisdiction straddles the rich and poor kids in Beverlee Hills, so one of her kids is neglected by his rich parents. This resonates with Kim who had rich, evil birth parents, and we'll need one more example. Oh, yeah. Actually, Jackie is an occasional interim foster parent and she has a kid living with her for a few weeks. I think, of the three, maybe the interim kid wraps up first, the fridge kid is wrapped up next, and the neglected kid is a thread that never gets satisfactorily wrapped up. We just have to assume that Kim and/or Nakia will figure out how to help at some point, because there's only so much Jacki can do. 

The neglect is harmful but not bad enough to risk taking the kid away and putting them somewhere worse. I think maybe we just end up with the kid in some sort of boarding school and have to be okay with that. Ooh! Wait, maybe the kid is a classmate of Sunny's. That would add an element to the story -- to see the kid from the perspective of a fellow student and also knowing private information about them. Maybe the kid, like Nakia and Kim, is figuring it out with his own friend group. So, rather than helping, they just watch, looking for an opening to help, like being spotters instead of saviors.

Okay, also, Jacki has a personal life that she has going on that I'd like to have Kim be nosy about. At first, she's watching Jacki, not sure what is important, so she shares everything. As time goes on, Jacki's personal life is less relevant, but if Nakia asks, Kim knows the answer. You can see Kim's character profile for more information on why she's so fascinated by Jacki but I don't think that most of it will be relevant to Nakia's plot, and the series is entirely from her POV, so there's a lot going on with Jacki that Kim will know about but Nakia won't, and therefore the reader won't. 

We'll just be getting snippets of information from time to time, which will help with worldbuilding and be generally entertaining. Also, Kim won't be sharing any of her back story with Nakia, so we'll mostly be learning about her personality through the information that she chooses to share and the way in which she conveys it.

Story Idea: Time Travelling Writer of Rights?

I was thinking about time travel today, as I often do and realized, I think, once and for all that if I had a time machine, I would not go back in time and kill Hitler. Not baby Hitler, not teenage Hitler, not grown-up Hitler. I am, sadly, a pacifist. What I would do is go back in time and cure homophobia and sexism and racism and transphobia and all of the stuff that makes the present day a human rights violation for, what? Eighty-five, ninety percent of the population?

All of the atrocities in history come down to some charismatic asshole thinking that he (usually) deserves more than everyone else, but he doesn't have more than everyone else, and that seems unfair. So, what to do? Let me look down at my naked body and make a list. Anyone who doesn't look like this should be subjugated. Yeah, sounds good. Let me gather up all of my similarly genitaled and pigmented folk who also want more than what they have, and we'll do something about this together.

At the end of the day, genocide, rape, and theft aren't about lust. They're about power. Social constructs are built or exploited in order for a ratio of few to fuck over a ratio of the many. So, if I had a time machine, I'd go back in time and remove any parts of the Bible that can remotely be used to justify a hate crime, and write, instead, all of the stuff Jesus said over and over and over and over until people walk way from the book with a toothache instead of existential dread. I'd go back in time and re-write all of the history books, scrolls, tablets, cave paintings, whatever in order to show that we, as humans, have mostly just been chill with each other since the beginning of time (whether it's true or not).

So that, in modern day, if some asshole wants to get up on a pulpit and fear monger about a group of people who fit a social construct, trait, or preference, people will look at him and be like, "bruh, wtf are you talking about?"

I'm not saying it would be an easy job. It would take probably a bunch of time travelling writers to keep up with the new dictators and pillagers, and then, of course, we'd have to look out for the assholes who go back in time specifically to do the opposite (writers of wrongs). There's always one. 

So, yeah, that's what I'd do with a time machine. And I think it would be a cool story to read/write. It would have to have enough plot to keep it from seeming preachy, but it could be really fun.

Character Profile -- Kim

Maeve Isolde Knight

Aliases or Nicknames:

Kim (nickname for all but family)

Knight Is Mutable (internet handle)

Miss (adoptive family calls her this)

Era:

Pre-Rift

Appears In:

Beverlee Hills Mummy

Importance:

Secondary Character

Main Goal:

To help -- but never to meet.

Relationship to Other Characters:

Nakia's personal assistant (usually digital), "Sunny's" legal guardian.

Backstory/Infodump:

Kim was born to very rich, very abusive parents. When she was five, she was unofficially adopted by a schoolmate's equally rich but kind parents. Officially, they only ever "kept an eye on her" while the birth parents were out of town, but practically, Kim lived in their house from age five to age thirteen, when her parents decided they wanted her with them.

Kim who'd grown up tracking her parents' phones and digital calendars found refuge in hacking in general, and knew that it was a matter of time before her parents wanted her back, so she prepared. She took on freelance hacking jobs on the dark web as early as age 11 and built her Bitcoin portfolios as well as translating that into traditional currency. 

When she stumbled upon Nakia's ad for a personal assistant at age 13, she was glad that it was a full-time gig because, I don't know if you know this, but hacking gigs on the dark web can get a bit dark. All Kim had to do was make a couple dozen aliases seem like real people who owned homes and vehicles, travelled, vacationed, and otherwise exist. She didn't know or care why this was the job. It paid well and coincided with her birth parents demanding she return "home".

She physically disappeared for five years, only contacting her adoptive sister a few times a year -- never around a holiday or birthday, and never the same way twice (in person, phone, email, text, etc and since she was a hacker, she could used emails and phone numbers that were existing contacts in her sister's phone). After she turned eighteen, she reunited with her adoptive parents and has Sunday dinner with them and her sister every week. She declines dinners when she knows there will be additional guests, and her parents have learned not to trick her into showing up to find guests there.

Her catching up with her parents and sister once a week is her only social interaction until she comes to Beverlee Hills. Two of Nakia's aliases, John and Jane Sinclair were booked on a plane that crashed. Unfortunately, the actors playing them really did die. Their daughter "Sunny" was "in school" and set to join them the week after. 

In order to save the fortune and contacts that the fictional Sinclairs had, Nakia has to pose as Sunny and Kim as Sunny's guardian. Nakia is pissed when she finds out that Kim is so young (twenty-one) because Kim could have posed as Sunny and hired someone else to play guardian. (Kim lied about her age in order to get the job and her hacking skills were better than Nakia's so Nakia didn't know until she met Kim in person.)

Kim, understands the volatility of incredibly wealthy and powerful people understands that she's on Nakia's shit list for losing not only the Sinclairs but also the two very reliable actors (not easy to find) who played them. So, even though losing the Sinclairs was not her fault, she intuitively (and correctly) understands that Nakia blames her and that she is on thin ice. She knows that Nakia made initial moves toward emptying out Kim's accounts and destroying her digital presence. Kim would have been fine, since Nakia has no idea who Kim actually is and Kim has plenty of money under her own name and several aliases. 

Kim doesn't know why Nakia changed her mind, but she's determined to win back her trust. Nakia has overall been a very generous boss and Kim genuinely likes her job. It's like playing digital dolls with real people and assets. Also, Kim's agoraphobic personality does not lend to her wanting to look for another job. So, when Nakia demands that Kim play Sunny's guardian, Kim puts on her big girl pants and moves all the way from Connecticut to California.

One thing that Kim did before she knew she'd be moving to California was staff Sunny's house with gardeners, housekeepers, a butler, etc. So, now, not only does she have to leave her home, move across the country for an indeterminate amount of time away from the only social circle she's comfortable with, and be surrounded by strangers. She does her best to avoid the staff in person, preferring to communicate through text and emails, but she does have to talk to people, and it's torture. She also has to interact with Nakia, balancing her almost worshipful awe with genuine terror. And she has to interact with Jacki, who is painfully observant. (Kim reminds Jacki of three kids in a trenchcoat because she's trying to hard to seem older and more experienced.)

Anyway, throughout the trilogy, Kim will be undergoing a similar set of challenges as Nakia -- basically, finding it hard to be misanthropic when faced with actual people, as opposed to successfully avoiding them. However, her core set of friends will be staff members, not the girls Nakia goes to school with. 

However, Kim's main arc will revolve around tracking Jackie, initially to get dirt on her so that she can be blackmailed into not monitoring Sunny too closely. Once she and Nakia realize that Jacki is genuinely trying to do good and only breaks rules to help kids, not herself, they get involved, sometimes to unexpected detriment to the kids they're trying to help. So, the trilogy will basically have Kim occasionally meeting with Nakia to update her on current events and get instructions on what to do next.

Kim is fascinated by Jacki -- not just her professional life, but her family and dating life. Jacki has a huge extended family that she is very involved with, and she actively dates, even though her schedule is so busy. Jacki has a very distinctive fashion sense, an unapologetic personality, and is, basically, awesome. Kim's whole job since she was thirteen was to manage the lives of fictional people, but to see a real person moving around in the world, so engaged with it basically allows her to observe the ins and outs, triumphs and sorrows of those things. 

By being a shut-in with a limited social circle, Kim gets to experience genuine love and connection and avoid intense rejection and cruelty. But Jacki's life is full of pretty good friends and acquaintances and frenemies and work colleague. Every human interaction doesn't have to be fraught with the context of good versus evil, best and worst. Most people are mid, most experiences are mid, and it's okay to be mid. The main thing that Kim takes away from watching Jacki is that she doesn't have to be so constantly vigilant against the worst cruelty that humanity has to offer. Most people who suck, suck midly to moderately, and Kim can survive that. She's survived worse.

I don't want Kim's arc to end dramatically. I want it to be the middle of her story. She doesn't need closure on her relationship with her birth parents, she doesn't need to get married or be someone's best friend, she doesn't need to be the smartest person in the room, and she doesn't need to be vigilant a hundred percent of the time. She just needs to be.

Beverlee Hills Mummy -- Outline WIP Part 4

You can see the full outline that Chat GPT came up with for me in this post. The foundations are okay, but there are certain nuances that Chat GPT doesn't get and there are things that I didn't tell Chat GPT that I want to have happen, so I'm going to work on the outline for all three books now. This may take a few posts because structure is my kryptonite.

Let's start with what I want out of each book in the trilogy. In the first book, I want to introduce all of the characters and set up all of the betrayals, the reasons that Nakia is a misanthrope (or, as Chat GPT pointed out, a disappointed idealist). There are three major betrayals that Nakia experiences in  her life.

The first is Ahmose, the princess who essentially adopted herself into Nakia's family when Nakia was four and Ahmose was seven. Then, when Nakia was seven, Ahmose brought Nakia to the palace in order to be her personal servant. A combination of superiority, possessiveness, and jealousy that Ahmose felt, along with absolutely zero consequences for her actions toward a servant, led Ahmose to justify abusing Nakia more and more severely. This culminates with Ahmose making sure that Nakia is sacrificed in order to be Ahmose's father's attendant in the Afterlife. Nakia is sixteen.

The second betrayal comes at Atlantis, after Nakia comes back from the Afterlife to find The King. Nakia makes a friend that she confides her secret in (that Nakia is a mummy) and the friend confesses to the priest or whatever of Atlantis and Nakia ends up being sacrificed to the volcano in order to save Atlantis. 

The third betrayal comes in America when Nakia is burned at the stake after a witch trial. In this case, Nakia has made friends again, but not the mistake of trusting any of them with her secret. She's not actually burned alive because someone finds out she's a mummy like I had originally planned. Instead, they just think she's a witch...for similar reasons that actual women were thought to be witches and killed.

The scope of the first betrayal is intensely personal. Nakia loves, almost worships Ahmose for several years, and that changes slowly. Her murder is personal. Ahmose, by this point in the story, hates Nakia and wants her gone. 

The scope of the second betrayal is less personal. Her friend doesn't mean for Nakia to be killed, she actually thought that the priest could restore Nakia or something. And her murder is not personal. She's a means to an end, it's her or an entire island full of people.

The scope of the third betrayal is personal but in a different way from what happened with Ahmose. Similar to Atlantis, it's a fever pitch of culty behavior and superstition. Plus, the politics of an evil man who wants to secure his power over this town. The friends she makes here don't betray her, but they don't save her either. She basically dies because her friends choose themselves over her (and because men ain't shit).

Book 1:

I want all three betrayals to play a part in all three books, but in the first book, we'll focus the most on Ahmose's betrayal and juxtapose that with modern-day Nakia trying NOT to get close to any more humans, and failing. I definitely want to at least mention that Nakia is sacrificed to a volcano and burned at the stake as additional reasons as to why she's so untrusting, but I want keep the focus of those stories to the second and third books (not to create mystery, but just because you can only fit so much into one book). 

In modern day, Nakia will be getting to know Thai, Candy, and China and finding them surprisingly charming. She'll also find out about each of their secrets (Thai's not-so-selfish interest with Prince Machiavelli, China's soup kitchen, and Candy's secret boyfriend -- along with the fact that all three independently visit a friend who was hurt in a car accident a couple of years prior). This is going to be the deepest personal betrayal and the shallowest form of the Beverlee Hills friendship that we see in the series.

Nakia hasn't just been let down by kids her own age and actively evil adults, she's also been let down by systems. So, since the alias that Nakia takes on is a minor whose parents just died, she is assigned a social worker. The social worker, Jacki, shows herself to be willing to bury some red tape deep in the desert, when necessary, and we get to know her better throughout the trilogy.

We'll also have things like parties and school and football games and other high school hijinks that Nakia will have to navigate. Nakia doesn't actually need high school because she's thousands of years old and self-taught. Also, she knows more accurate history than any of her teachers.

Book 2:

In the second book, we'll get to play in Atlantis (I'm really excited about this one. It's going to be like Greek Steampunk with gold and jewels everywhere). In this book, as opposed to the first book, Nakia's betrayal by her Atlantis friend is entirely unintentional and a result of trying to help Nakia. I also want to have Nakia realize, after the volcano, when she's sulking for a thousand years, that The King is actively avoiding her. So, the personal betrayal will come from that, with a more understandable betrayal that makes her want to avoid humans (forever) but not think that they're all terrible. 

Modern-day Nakia is deepening her friendships with Thai, China, and Candy, as well as getting to know Ophelia. This book has the medium betrayal level and the medium-level depth of friendship. I want the second book to culminate in modern-day Nakia finally tracking down The King and having him reveal to her why he has been evading her search (selfishness not cruelty or active rejection). He'll also reveal that Nakia doesn't have a human body anymore and she can change it if she wants to. 

Book 3:

In the third book, we'll get the witch trial story, the most nuanced of the three betrayals. There is an actual villain, similar to the first book (but less personal) On the personal level, Nakia isn't killed out of malice. Her friends' self-preservation keeps them from helping her. 

In modern-day, Nakia will be getting accustomed to her new adjustable body, she'll be eating for the first time since the Afterlife, and grappling with the nuances of all of the betrayals and disappointments humanity has put her through. This is the most nuanced version of betrayal and the deepest version of friendship that Nakia allows herself to have. We end the book with Nakia going into the direction of being able to finish the life that was interrupted when she was sixteen.

We're definitely more in synopsis territory but that's an easier way for me to write. When I'm done, I'll paste all of this in Chat GPT and let it turn this into an outline for me. Three story elements that I still need to add are the arc with Jacki (Sunny's social worker) where I can work on Nakia's distrust of social systems (with good reason), Nakia's interactions with Sunny's staff so that I can explore class issues, and Nakia's life as a high school girl so that we can explore what it's like to deal with trauma, heal, and move on. Essentially, her life was derailed and her emotional development was stunted once Ahmose started abusing her, and the trilogy is going to explore Nakia resuming her emotional development and moving on into adulthood, even though she's literally thousands of years old.

These are a lot of elements, but they are necessary in order to make Nakia a real person and to make this world feel real. I've described a lot of Nakia's emotional development through betrayal and friendship, but aside from being killed three different times, I haven't really explored plot. I'll need b and c plots for each flashback location in order for those to feel real. And in order to explore the friendship and betrayal themes, I'll need the characters to be doing something throughout the book. So, setting that around b and c plots with Nakia's staff, following Jacki around, and going to high school parties and stuff, those are the mechanisms I'll use to explore those themes.

I think tomorrow I'll figure out what I want to do with Jacki. I was working with Chat GPT today on that and it had some good ideas that I'm excited to think about more.

Character Profile -- Ophelia Piercy

Ophelia Piercy

Aliases or Nicknames:

Feels

Era:

Pre-Rift

Appears In:

Beverlee Hills Mummy

Importance:

Secondary Character

Main Goal:

text

Relationship to Other Characters:

Childhood besties with Candy and China Romney and Thai Martinez. Becomes friends with "Sunny". Has a dog named Prince Machiavelli, but Ophelia just calls him Mack.

Backstory/Infodump:

Growing up with Candy, China, and Thai, Ophelia was the natural leader. Thai wanted to be, but Ophelia was the one with the ideas. Thai and China were the closest pair of friends and Candy and China were twins, so Ophelia's role was to plan out adventures for the girls. She was the most naturally adventurous one of the group, and she used that tendency to make life as fun for the girls as possible, partly out of affection and partly to cement her place in the group.

In junior high, Ophelia was in a horrific car accident that left her paraplegic. Because she can't move her arms or legs, her superpower becomes planning. She wants to be a video game developer for people with mobility issues. 

After the accident, Thai, China, and Candy would come to visit. After a while, Ophelia realized that none of the girls told the other girls that they saw Ophelia regularly, so she realized that the girls didn't talk about Ophelia amongst themselves. In a way, she was relieved because she didn't want them bonding over their pity for her, but on the other hand, it was like she didn't exist unless she was in the same room with one of the girls. 

She started to purposely prevent the girls from planning to see her at the same time. She sensed that knowing that they all visited Ophelia, the distance that had grown between them might have closed up too tight to let her continue to fit in. One concern was that the girls are VERY wealthy and Ophelia's family is just comfortable (upper middle class). It was a distinction that was just starting to rear its head in junior high, and it's one that Ophelia is more and more aware of, even if the other girls aren't. 

The girls' families do help with Ophelia's medical bills as much as her parents will allow, though, so she feels even more at a psychological disadvantage toward the girls. She used to be the one who created a party wherever she went. What does she offer now? Survivor's guilt?

But Ophelia, like most teenage girls, undervalues herself. She is still the natural glue that holds the group together and there's a dynamic that they have together that they don't have without her. When Sunny comes around, Ophelia realizes that Sunny has a similar gluey effect on the girls, and starts to worry again that she'll be replaced and phased out. Instead, the group expands from Ophelia being a duo with her childhood friends to them being a quintet. 

By the end of the trilogy, Ophelia is full reintegrated into the group. Sunny is not just wealthy, she has ALL of the money, and can help Ophelia get her video game development financed. Sunny (aka Nakia), being someone who literally can't show her face to the world and has spent thousands of years in isolation, has a stronger empathetic grasp on the social and physical alienation that Ophelia is faced with. 

Author's Note:

In the last book of the trilogy, Nakia finds out about lush (see Worldbuilding) and is learning to manipulate her own body with it. She's also trying to figure out how to help Ophelia physically, but there's a responsibility, as writers, to not use lush as a magical solution that makes Ophelia "normal". First, because paraplegic characters are not often represented in fiction, and second, it's easy to take Ophelia's story in an ableist direction, and I'd like to avoid that.

Yes, being paraplegic sucks. I think that most people with paraplegia would agree with that. I haven't done a lot of research on it yet, but I imagine that it's physically and mentally taxing, not just dealing with a disability that severe, but also dealing with people reacting to your disability. (I have much more minor physical issues along with some mental illness and people are dicks about both.)

But people with severe disabilities AND fulfilling lives are underrepresented in fiction. Life is so hard even with control of your limbs, so when able-bodied person are confronted with the idea of losing that, it's hard to imagine any kind of life satisfaction for people with those issues. They become two-dimensional, heroic or pitiful figures, not people. And the way that people with severe disabilities are represented (WHEN they are), underlines that idea. 

I would like Ophelia, at least in this particular universe, to have an unrealistically high life satisfaction, just to balance all of that out. That said, this whole blog is about exploring all of the ways that one person can be shaped by different circumstances (hence, "a thousand" Auras), so I'm not opposed to exploring some parallel versions of Ophelia where she's still paraplegic but less privileged and seeing how she's affected by that. Or seeing what her life would be like if she had never been in the accident, stuff like that.

But another reason to avoid fully curing Ophelia through lush is that Aura has to gather up as much lush as she can in order to save the world when it's blown into four mini-planets. She has to go through as many parallel universes as possible and plunder their lush, too.

I'm still not sure how I'm going to keep The King and Nakia alive through all of that because they are characters in the Mended Era and their entire bodies are made of Lush. But, yeah, it would suck to cure Ophelia through lush and then take it all back.