I seem to have my own little nanowrimo going, suddenly.

I seem to be on a tear with my writing. There's less smut than usual, although it's definitely heading in the correct direction with Misuko and Linia. I've settled on something quite significant, perhaps 30,000 words or so, following two threads that overlap for the first six or seven chapters (average length of about 2500 words). It'll become quite clear early on who the lynchpin/catalyst characters are. I've figured out a couple of fun things, such as Linia owning a motorcycle: "Like herself, an overpowered machine designed to deliver pleasure while accomplishing its primary objective." It's interesting to see how Misuko and Linia view the lynchpin, and how Linia deals with her own dawning realization that commitment and monogamy aren't necessarily the same thing.

I think I'm hoping to finish this up as quickly and completely as possible because I really, really want to get on to the first Caprice Starr story. I have the first three novels scoped out, and the fourth is in fragments, but it starts with The Director telling her

"You've made a lot of enemies on the Council. Yes, you've uncovered corruption in the Council, but not every Science man sees it that way. Some think you're on a witch hunt, exposing petty problems that aren't worth the bad publicity."

"Are you telling me to back off? Sir--" She had trouble saying that word. This was her Uncle David, after all! "Sir, the Council is supposed to be better than even 'petty' corruption."

"And I agree with you, Caprice! But if things around you don't quiet down soon, the pressure to 'do something' about you is only going to become greater." He slid a packet across the desk. "I hate to do this to you, Caprice, but I'm reassigning you. It's only six months, but it's out on Ceres."

"Ceres?" Ceres was an observational center in the middle of the asteroid belt. The upgraded computers there were now starting to catalog every minor planet in the solar system. "What am I supposed to do on Ceres? Watch the stars?"

"Yes," he said. "You're a member of the Council of Science. You do know how to follow orders, right?"

Whereupon, off she goes, only to get kidnapped and have all sorts of horrible, nasty, awfully nifty things done to her.

I've been reading a book on the way the Oil-For-Food program was corrupted by Saddam Hussein. What's fascinating in the way the U.N., by definition a non-state agency like the CoS (ooh, there's an acronym, no, no, I won't do it, don't go there), facilitates petty corruption in its bureacracy by lacking accountability for departments that want to "write a report on X," where X involves a lot of travel, junkets, bribery of local officials, etc. Caprice Starr is a good woman in a screwed-up bureacracy, and we'll see how well she handles the pressure.