Spanner R5 #amediting Update: Chapter 1 Is Done! (again... for now...)

Okay, I claimed that a few months ago. But after a few months' break, including FAWM and my first NaPoWriMo, I went back to the Chapter 1 HTML page and took another long look at it. I got a few new ideas in the intervening months and edited them in. I got some really cool ideas while editing (e.g. the fedora Willa stole from Henry Becket back in 1992 when they divorced) and threw them in. I found a couple continuity errors and corrected them. Then I made a few more tweaks. And now, for the second time, I can declare Chapter 1 done.

Except for that "for now" part. You see, I've finally started actually writing Book 0, Banned in Japan. I've plotted several scenes for the first two chapters and am working on an overall plot that will fit in the continuity of Book 1 Revision 5. Turns out Steve Jobs is not the first "posthumous man" Shira assassinates, and they're called "Ascended", and she takes out two more Ascended in the course of Book 0, and one of them was the killer guru responsible for the 1995 Tokyo subway nerve gas attacks bombings. And even he isn't the first Ascended she takes out, only the first she takes out in the series. Ostensibly Shira's there as an exchange student; however, she's really there on a contract, to kill a ghost.

Book 0 also introduces some characters who appear later in Book 1, possibly later. Previously existing characters who now debut here: baka-boy gangster Koji Mizoguchi, "world's worst kogal" Nenene Sasakawa, loli slavegirl Ayla Izumi (whom Shira rescues here), deranged detective Locke Holmes, the Tachibana sisters with mother Umi and cute male cousin Seika, and some of the major characters whom I couldn't leave out. Jennifer, both before and after the Blake Island incident, gets some side scenes and phone calls; Karen gets introduced as Shira's counterpoint (the teenage female Victor Laszlo); Henry Becket gets his first scene in the first chapter, in which as Secretary of National Security he browbeats the American ambassador to Japan and strongly hints that he does the same to the Secretary of State back home; Shira's dad Ric appears on tour with a Band with No Name side project (in Book 1 he makes his first appearance in Chapter 3); and others I'll likely fit in. An idea just popped into my head at just this moment: might Debbie be there too, trying to be something of a blond teenage female Golgo 13 only to find out her target is a ghost? And of course Leila, who plays such a central role in every subsequent book in the series as love interest and deuteragonist, should hover over the prequel as an "absent presence" at least mentioned every chapter and already clearly Shira's obsession.

Oh, and the chapters are numbered -13 to 0, with Interlude 0 ("Foregone Conclusions") coming before Chapter 0.

So as the plot of Book 0 develops, I'm bound to make a few more edits to Chapter 1. In fact, I just realized there's one edit I need to make now: the one about Shira having already killed three targets like Steve Jobs — that is, three Ascended. And so a-#amediting I go again...