Plotting Ideas

So, I've been in a dearth of writing the last few months.  I really feel much better, except for when the muffin decides to kick me in the stomach.  That is not so fun.  But I'm still arid of ideas.

Lucky me, my dreams came to the rescue.  I had a very long, involved dream about an archaeological dig. So I decided to go with it.  Why not?

Here is where I ran into my first troubles.  One, I don't know anything about any real archaeological digs.  Two, I decided I wanted to set it in South America.  I didn't want to do anything with Egypt or biblical lands.  That's been done a lot and kind of infringes on Indiana Jones/Mummy/Tin Tin territory.

Then I decided I wanted it to be post WWI but pre-WWII, mostly because the twenties were a raucous time all themselves and also to avoid the 'Nazis as bad guys' plot - see Indiana Jones note above.

Since I have no idea about anything happening in the South American ancient burial sites scene during the twenties, I did some google searches to see what I could come up with.

Mostly: nothing.  Seems nobody cares about early 20th century South America.  There was tons of stuff about the conquistadors.  And 'South American Explorers' always came up with Lewis and Clark or the American Southwest.

Then I found this guy, Thomas Athol Joyce.  He wrote a bunch of books about South and Central America, all published before 1923.  So, anybody who would be digging about in the dirt in the twenties would probably have read some of these. (now they are downlaodable as ebooks.  Joy!)

So now it looks like I will have to read them to know what my character peeps would now. Right after I finish reading about what a dork Napoleon was.