Quis Leget Haec Crapus?

I actually decided to do NaNo this year. Last year I didn't quite make it to the win, but it was the most fun I've had writing, so I figured I'd do it again this year.

Last year I started NaNo with the worst Halloween hangover ever. This year, I started with only three hours of sleep to my name. This will probably become some sort of thing.

Today's word count: 1,837.

On another note, I finally bought a new laptop. My old 9 pound montrosity still runs, but the hardware on it has been dying for a while. So, now I have a new shiny. My super thin and light 15.6" screen, keyboard with a ten key, 500GB Hard Drive, 4GB memory, 8 hour battery, which stays cool to the touch, and free Windows 7 upgrade shiny. I loves it like crazy all ready.

So, I have a really, really shiny, super-duper shiny shiny shiny new idea for a novel. All of the other ideas I've dabbled with while working on Necromancer Syndrome and Bloodhunter Rites, haven't stuck with me for very long, and didn't have that spark. I have to admit that I didn't feel that way in the very beginning for NS, but the more I worked on worldbuilding, the more I loved it.

The new idea has me a bit obsessed. I've been doing research on it, just a little, to see if it's feasible for me to do. It would take a whole helluva lot of research, and knowing how I shirk research, that might not be a good thing. Also knowing how I obsess over some little detail of research for longer than is necessary, that's also strike two. At least it's in an area I find interesting, and love to read about.

It would be a sort of post-apocalyptic fantasy. Since I learned that I liked adding real places into NS, I decided that I could do it again. Where else have I lived? Humboldt county. Add in sailing ships and Napoleonic-era like sea battles, plus warring factions of strange races, plus a dash of magic, and my brain loves it. Loves, love, loves it. A lot. Like if I could marry an idea like this, I'd be the happiest gal EVAR. Then we'd have little idea babies that would grow into awesome grown-up ideas.

I guess it doesn't help that I'm reading one of the books in an awesome series, Commodore Hornblower by C.S. Forester. The character of Horatio Hornblower is one of my favorite characters of all time. I also just watched Master and Commander again!

Okay, so this idea actually seems to be a mutation of that space opera idea I had that just didn't seem to click. Now it does. WHEE!

Of course, I still have TWO OTHER books I'm working on right now. Sheesh, brain. So far, I've completely rewritten NS from scratch, and I'm still not done (though close). BR has stalled for now, because what it needs is a new outline and a big epic battle. BIG! EPIC! BATTLE! (Yes, it deserves all caps and the exclamation points).

Since I haven't done this in a while, here's where I'm at:

The Rewrite of Necromancer Syndrome:



The First Draft of Bloodhunter Rites is also:



It's neck and neck! Which one will win?

I got pretty close...but still not close enough.

44,043 was my final count as of Nov. 30th. I'm a little bummed that I fell so far behind that even when I buckled down toward the end (as much as I could with the holidays and finding an apartment) it didn't help.

I still plan on trying to finish the book in the next month, and then finishing the rewrite of the first book in January.

Meh, there's always next year.

Working where I work, I've learned a few things about business emails and how to write them. Also, I've learned that when we say, "You should see results in a couple of days" really means "right, we haven't even started it yet, and yeah, we've probably misplaced your sample...somewhere."

I tried my damndest to wait for one of the places I'd sent ye olde "To Reign In Purgatory" to email me back. But I sent it to them in March. MARCH. Taking a lesson from work, I emailed them to ask what was up. They needed a little nudge. Oops. Who knows what happened? But they put me to the front of the slush pile and then I received:

"First, let me apologize for your extremely long wait. We fell far behind where we had ever intended to be, and I know that it is difficult to let a piece be away from home that long.

Unfortunately, your story doesn't fit our current needs and we won't be able to use it, but we invite you to submit again in the future.

Sincerely,

Yadda yadda Editor type person" (Okay so I took out the name of the place and the editor's name).

Yikes, a form rejection. I think it's time to retire this story. I know, I know, five rejections isn't much, but I think I've already exhausted the market for humorous fantasy. I also feel that this story was a bit of a stretch anyway, as humor isn't my strong point. I much prefer dark, and strange, and a little disturbing and creepy even (many a critter has marked a page with an 'ewwwww' or 'creepy'. I guess that's just how my imagination works.

I'll have to hunt through my short story pile after NaNo and do the edit-y thing again, and then launch them off into the world.

As for NaNo, I'm still behind. But it's flowing easier. Damien still has to meet his missing mom (who I've decided gets to save his ass while sword fighting). Insert lots of snark. Then he gets to save his comrades from being a cult sacrifice.

Wheee!

Yeah, for the past couple of days, I've fallen about 4K behind in NaNo. I'm hoping to catch up this weekend, but for some reason the words haven't been flowing. I've had to dig the words out of me, despite the fact that it's been easy to fall back into Damien's character. Things will pick up soon I hope.

Next Damien gets to search for his mother who has been missing for the past eight years after catching a glimpse of her.

[x-posted to macaroni_thief]

I've finally fallen into the groove, though I have a feeling the dreaded middle might bog me down a bit. Most of my first drafts seems to feel more like an exented outline anyway.

I'm at 16,896 right now. Hopefully, I'll up that by the end of the night.

Because I wanna, here's a brief snippet of something I wrote last night that I had great fun with. I love it when Damien shoots his mouth off.

( Snippety snippetness )

I've fallen a bit behind, and for some reason its taking me a little while to throw Damien into a new set of problems, though old problems cropped back up. I found out he's still battling with his new found sobriety. I also decided on a whim to throw some characters into the book that were only mentioned in the first one, who I hope will represent Damien's desperate need to be a part of a family.

So, far it's mostly gruesome death and ghosts.

I wound up staying up until about three in the morning to get my Muse jump started (and after fully recouperating from a Halloween hang over). My brain has been in edit mode for so long that it took me some time before I just went with the pure abandonment of getting down words. There were a few challenges to writing a stand alone sequel that I hadn't counted on. So far I'm writing somewhat like the reader already knows a little about the characters, but I'm a little confused as where to put background info on the previous book (since Donald Mass says no background info until page fifty, I'm not doing it yet).

Still, I find that throwing my characters into the fray again is really exciting.

Here's where I am:

I decided that what little prep work I've done for my Space Opera idea wouldn't be enough come time for November. Since the sequel to my 2YN (in its rewrite phase) has been percolating in my brain for many months, and I've already expanded the worldbuilding I did originally, AND I have a brief outline for it already...I've decided that it might be more fun to write this one.

I've been doing outline work for the last couple of days, and this time, I'm outlining first from the antagonists's POV, unlike last time. I'll post a little of what I have a bit later.

In preparation for my NaNo project, I've been doing a bit of research to create two of my important alien species. And what've I been researching? Ring-tailed lemurs and bioluminescent deep-sea squid. Sounds strange, I know.

When I took a primatology class a couple of years ago for my minor, we studied prosimians, and I was so intrigued by facets of their biology and family groups that I stored the information away for the day that I'd use it in a story. Now I'm creating an alien species, which relies heavily on scent and scent marking, and mates only a couple of days out of the year. How would their biology effect their culture? And would they communicate with scents as well as verbally? It's really fun trying to figure this out.

As my main character is an interpretor, I wanted to give her problems with alien types of speech. More alien than just trying to speak verbally with strange sounds, though there certainly will be that too. So, the ruling class of aliens are going to communicate via bioluminescence. Also, the idea that the dominant power in my universe looks like a glowing squid...entertains me.

As for my 2YN, I'm driving into Sac tommorrow to check out and re-check out some of the real life places where my story takes place. That means I'm going to check out a lot of cemetaries. And I'm taking pictures.

Since having my iPod stolen while on vacation in Auckland, New Zealand, I've realized just how much music fuels my occasionally recalcitrant Muse.

My 2YN started life as a terrible short story based on the song, "The Nurse Who Loved Me," by A Perfect Circle. I'd been listening to it obsessively, for no reason I could identify. It wasn't super catchy, and it was about drug problems. It did however have a great atmosphere to the song, a sort of childishly innocent sound to it at odds with the content of the lyrics.

So I wrote a short story about a nurse who accidently kills a patient, covers it up, and then sees his patient's ghost and kills himself. Okay, it was my first real attempt at a short story and I wanted it to be weird, like Edgar Allen Poe weird. When I received feedback from the writing class that critiqued it, I was crushed. It didn't make any sense, the profound imagery I was shooting for was completely lost. Oh, and my college roommate poked holes in all of the medical inaccuracy, because both of her parents work in the medical field. Yeah, can we say lack of research?

I decided to re-write it as a murder mystery. A detective takes a drug in order to see ghosts of the victims of a murderer. Again, I aimed for the weird and (to me) profound imagery. My writing class seemed to see the murderer from a mile away. But what they were intrigued by was the worldbuilding and all the questions I'd left open about the manner of the drug, and the way the ghosts were portrayed.

Taking their advice, but still a little hurt, I shelved the overall idea. Until Zette's 2YN class. I'm now still obsessed with the idea, more than two years later.

And it's multiplying into several stand-alone sequels. In my head at least. Part of me thinks outlining sequels before I'm even done with the first one is silly. Even if they are stand-alone. Still, I've been expanding my worldbuilding...just in case I want somewhere larger to play with...say with a sequel.

NEW GOAL: Finish the rewrite of my 2YN by the end of the year. No, by DEC. 31, 2008. There. It's a goal.

For the Story-A-Day challenge, I was obsessively listening to "Where Is Home?" by Bloc Party. Many of the lyrics disturbed me, since it was about a young black kid who was killed in Britain, and how his relatives were mourning him. How as a minority, the singer didn't fit in mainstream white culture, or in his parent's culture. So, I wrote a short SF story with a similar theme. And I really liked it. I'm still not sure what to do with it.

I also had many different playlists to evoke a certain mood. I now lament the lack of my Depressing Songs list. I had almost six hours worth of sad music stored up. How am I supposed to kill off important characters without it?

Oh, and I know it's early, bu I'm thinking about doing NaNoWriMo this year, as I've been too scared to do it before. Yes, too scared. I've made all sorts of excuses not to do it in the previous years. I'm in the middle of another book! I'm rewriting! I don't have time!

Shesh. So, I've decided I'm doing it this year. I just have to decide which idea I'm going to work on.

1. As an interspecies translator and peacemaker, Nym, a woman hiding from her past as an illegal human experiment, inadvertantly communicates with a stolen piece of living technology--the secret to the ruling alien species monopoly on faster-than-light stardrives.

OR

2. Exiled from the alien controlled communities, the former slave Varik chooses to form an uprising against the human's captors, the canine-like Rhanir. But as the planet's native species start a worldwide system of wholesale slaughter of both humans and Rhanir, Varik must unite opressors and opressed to save them from a foe neither can understand.

I like both ideas, even though the first one has been swirling in my brain for a bit longer, fermenting, and getting all boozy in there. The first is definately Science-Fiction/Space Opera. The second is actually more Science-Fantasy the way the rest of it goes in my head. The two story ideas could actually be part of the same fictional universe if I tried to unite them.

NEW GOAL: Decide on an idea, do some prep work for NaNo (outline, worldbuilding), then start it on Nov. 1st.

Oh, and anyone else who has HBO, are you watching "True Blood"? The vampire series based on Charlaine Harris's books? I have to admit I've been meaning to read the series...but every time I see the main character's name, I cringe and die a little inside. Sookie Stackhouse? Seriously? Why not Cookie Brickhouse? Why not Kiki Shesmightmightyletin'itallhangout?

Aside from that, I'll probably give the show a chance and a half before I decide I don't like it. And maybe I'll pick up the first book in the series...if I can get over the main character's striper name.