I haven't found the time or inclination to contribute to Murder Dollhouse or the nut notes I have on it. And I can't really give another thesis on firkin fanfiction like I did last week.
So I think I'll rabbit on about how tricky it is to work out location details. Especially since I know only what I've seen on TV about how America works. And I don't really want to set this in Australia because only Australians want to read about Australia.
Eg: The Miss Fischer Mysteries were hugely popular in my wide brown land, but nobody outside of Aus has even heard of them.
Mad Max has to be the statistical outlier because it contains unbelievable amounts of testosterone. So much that the US and most of the world has completely missed the fact that it more or less parodies toxic masculinity.
So. In order to reach a global audience, I have to have something that's globally understandable. Australia's weirdly sensible laws are not fathomable by Americans at large, likewise free healthcare and support systems that are funded (however poorly) by the government.
So... if I make up a fictional island nation that has a hybridised system of the twain, I can (forgive the pun) get away with murder. But if I do that, I have to boil up some history. Somewhere with the approximate land mass of the British Isles, and a hodgepodge of historical elements that explain why it is that way, yadda yadda.
Which means I can dip into assorted Polynesian languages to cook up place names, city names, etc, and have a logical, historically accurate reason why there's so many people of assorted shades of brown. And very few white people.
And, unlike Beauties and the Beastly, which failed to hold even my beta readers' collective interests, this one won't be written in the Victorian Travelogue style of prose. It was fun to write, but... meh to read. Shy of rewriting it whilst channeling Lemony Snickett, I'm not sure what to do.
Besides, I've only read the first three books of that series anyway.
Meanwhilst, I have some tales to tell. And ten weeks before I finish Clockwork Souls.