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.

Story Idea -- Sudoku Slaughter

 I watch the documentary "Wordplay" last night and had an idea for a murder mystery story. "Wordplay" is (in a nutshell) about contenders in a crossword competition. This one dude always comes in third and has a bit of a complex about it. 

I thought about someone who wanted to do a guy like that a favor, like his wife, maybe, who kills his competition so that he can come in first. Missing, of course, not only the point of competing in the first place, the rush that comes from being and beating the best -- but also the fact that these guys aren't just competitors, they're friends.

So, in my story, the third place guy would of course figure it out. He'd send his wife home in order to protect her, but they'd end up divorced.

In the documentary, the third place guy finishes first, but missed like two squares that he forgot to complete, so he ends up coming in third again. It's honestly devastating to watch (the documentary was really good) but a moment like that would be great in the story.

There are a couple of things. First, I don't really care about crossword puzzles; I'm not good at them and don't find them an enjoyable version of challenging. But I am a Sudoku fiend. I have eight Sudoku apps on my phone (all by Cracking the Cryptic because the other ones I tried are garbage) and play almost every day unless I get stuck and frustrated, in which case, I'll play Solitaire for a few weeks. The point being that I don't really want to research what makes a good crossword puzzle and how to make up clues and stuff that I can slip into the story, but I WOULD be willing to do that for Sudoku.

Sudoku has an interesting history and even though its popularity is more recent than crosswords but there IS a competition that has been running for twenty years, and it wouldn't be difficult to come up with a fictional one based on the real one.

I want the main characters to be two people who want to compete in this competition. I think the competition is still going but most of the people who played the year the murders happened haven't competed since. You have a building full of puzzle solvers, so a lot of people figured out who the murderer was but didn't want to expose her because they wanted to protect the third place guy. 

So, these are a couple of young people who come in, wanting to have fun and not understanding why all of their fellow contestants are also young and why there's just a pall over the proceedings. Maybe one of the two wants to understand and the other one doesn't care, and they can be foils for each other. Maybe the one who doesn't care is the one who accidentally finds out more information.

Anyway, we could have people involved in the competition who were there the year of the murders but they aren't competing. Maybe they're judges or the puzzle creators or whatever. If I wanted to go real dark, I could have the third place guy there and have him attempting to murder the nosy kids in order to protect his ex-wife. His life sucks now, anyway. His friends are dead and a decades-long obsession has been tainted.

That's all I came up with. It's much darker when I write it out but I'd want it to be like a Marple mystery where there's an emotional distance. I think writing about the competition aspects would be fun. And there were a lot of people in the documentary other than the third place guy who I thought were interesting. I will say that I noticed a sea of white, mostly male faces. I imagine Sudoku is a bit different, but then again the main two guys I watch on YouTube are white British dudes and my nemesis, Phistomefel, is German. I can never solve his puzzles without looking at hints. I hate him. Anyway. Just wanted to record that story idea. 

Character Profile -- China Romney

China Romney

Aliases or Nicknames:

None.

Era:

Pre-Rift

Appears In:

Beverlee Hills Mummy

Importance:

Secondary Character

Main Goal:

To be a flame ensconced in a block of ice.

Relationship to Other Characters:

Twin sister to Candy Romney, younger sister to Beth Wakefield, older sister to Jess Wakefield, daughter to Alice Wakefield and William Romney. Girlfriend to Zachariah Hahn. Besties with Thai Martinez, Ophelia Pierce, and our main character Nakia (aka Sunny).

Backstory/Infodump:

China has always liked the visual of her name: delicate, detailed, and deliberate. Inside, she feels anything but. Before the accident that left their mutual friend Ophelia paraplegic, she was closest to Thai, but Thai has pulled away emotionally, leaving China to rely on Candy who can't take anything seriously.

China spends most of her afternoons volunteering at a soup kitchen in L.A., which isn't so much a secret from Candy as something she doesn't mention. Candy is such a social butterfly that she doesn't notice. China's weekly visits to Ophelia IS something that she keeps secret on purpose. She loves her sister but doesn't like the way that Candy basically pretends that Ophelia never existed. 

When Thai insists on adding Sunny to the group, China correctly assumes that Sunny is supposed to replace Thai, so China resents Sunny, at first. It's easier than resenting Thai. But China likes the effect that Sunny has on Candy. Candy becomes more focuses and less needy of the affection of strangers. She also likes the effect that Sunny has on Thai. Thai seems warmer and more relaxed than she has in a long time. 

Eventually, China is the one who confides in Sunny about Ophelia and China takes Sunny to meet Ophelia. Ophelia confesses that Candy and Thai both visit her regularly and reveals that Thai gave her the first Prince Machiavelli. China knew that Thai's aunt was a Samoyed breeder but she never understood why Thai would change out dogs every eight weeks. It actually grossed her out a bit.

Meanwhile, China has been dating Zach, but Zach comes out as gay, which makes China feel exposed. She liked having the cover of a boyfriend because it stopped most guys from approaching her and now she has to confront the idea that she might be attracted to girls -- or not attracted to anyone. One thing is for sure, she is not attracted to boys, and she always liked that Zach was so "respectful" and never went any further than a peck on the cheek.

But this is a peripheral issue. The main problem she's been having for a while is that she is very interested in philanthropy, which is something very looked down upon in her family in general and that Candy is neutral on. She is shocked when Candy suggests that China apply to UCLA because of this interest. When had Candy started paying attention to China? It's a little scary. As much as she resents being so closely associated with her ditzy sister, it's also easy to let her sister be the interesting one while China fades into the background. If they go to different schools with different career goals, then China will have to step forward and make public the strong personality that she's always kept secret.

By the end of the series, China feels safe and seen in her small friend group, so glad that Ophelia has been reintegrated, and grateful to Sunny for bringing out the best in her sister and Thai. Although she feels the least emotionally connected to Sunny, she is the one who most strongly recognizes the strength of the bonds between the girls that Sunny has helped foster.