Progress at the beginning

Been working on my new book -- not the India one -- still getting the characters squared away. There was one character whom I was having the hardest time getting a handle on. Every time I tried to imagine one of the other characters -- about whom I have a fairly good mental image -- interacting with this problematic character, I couldn't picture it. He was slippery like teflon.

At that point I realized that one of my characters was like a housemate I'd once had many years ago, and another was like this VP at a company I once worked at, and that I was able to call up mental images of most of the characters based on people I'd known, if only slightly. But I had the hardest time thinking of who this slippery guy might be. Then it hit me, I know exactly whom to model him on. I have a very clear image of this one guy I know and this will make working on his character so much easier.

Along the way of working on the characters, I've been inventing a lot of backstory for them: how'd they meet each other, and so forth. One of the boundaries of the book is that one character who is a software millionaire knows them all, and has invited them all up to his vacation cabin in Washington state. So I have been thinking of plausible ways all these people actually know one another.

And I've been making big-ass colorful charts with post-it notes and colored markers. That's the right-brain part of the exercise -- if I have that right. I always forget which is the right brain and which is the left. The non-practical one.