Part of the new rewrite on the second novel was an added subplot requiring the antagonists to acquire an important MacGuffin – an object of great desire. But I wanted to make it hard, so I split my MacGuffin into parts and spread it all over the world. Appropriate for this genre of writing – the last novel went to the Caribbean, US and Japan. So for this novel, I added India into the mix.

But unlike the last novels, I’ve never personally BEEN to India. This is where online “computer” scouting and talking to natives would help. I needed to scout out a place that immediately communicated “high tech.” I figured if I researched computer firms out of that country, maybe I’d find something near Delhi or Mumbai.

But I never heard of a city named Mysore before, nor imagined in my wildest dreams how well it would solve all my problems.

Mysore was the capital city of the Kingdom of Mysore (which makes perfect sense), located on the southern portion of the subcontinent – equivalent to what we in the United States would call Texas.

Come to think of it, considering what we found there, that makes perfect sense.

It was under British rule until 1947, when the kingdom and its environs were absorbed into the greater nation of India.  Now, it is a city of almost 900,000, with tourism as its main industry, with the beautiful palace and the royal gardens.

But it’s also the home of the second largest computer company in India – INFOSYS. Their home campus is there…

… and when I saw the pictures of the campus, my heart literally skipped a beat.

The INFOSYS Campus is on the north side of the city, and contains cricket fields, a swimming pool, basketball courts, an athletic track, an amphitheatre, restaurants, a food court in a geodesic dome, and a campus with a mix of buildings of both modern and classical styles. Grand, large buildings.

And living quarters. Lots of living quarters.

Living quarters that are so luxurious that visitors rave about them online as being “…as good as any five star facility.” And many of the permanent staff at INFOSYS stay in these quarters, apparently.

But here’s the thing.  How many company’s use their buildings to spell out the company name? Not paint the name on a building, but actually align the buildings themselves to spell out the name.

I was looking for an organization to pattern after that had just a little bit of an air of menace.  I didn’t have to look real hard. This place literally looks like it’s been lifted out of a  James Bond film, a place where a bad guy is sitting in a high backed chair petting a cat…

If I didn’t know better, I’d think this place really was run by a lab mouse trying to take over the world.