The Zero Hour Approaches

Time is ticking away.  Just over 12 hours remain before Camp NaNoWriMo kicks off.  Am I ready?

Meh.  As ready as I was last time.  I had some insights this morning about Whitlock's family life this morning that I'm going to work into the story and a news story about a guy high on bath salts that ate another man's face off might make it into the novel at some point. 

I'm not too worried about it, though.  Since I'm embarking on what I'm referring to in the blog as The Magical Mystery Tour tomorrow, I'll have 7-8 hours in the car during which to think before I finally start writing.

I've got high hopes for Between Hell and a Hard Place.  I'm planning on focusing on Whitlock more than the actual plot, much like most Raymond Chandler books are more about Philip Marlowe being awesome than they are about him solving mysteries.  We'll see how it all shapes up.

T Minus Three Days

Camp NaNoWriMo kicks off in three days.  Am I ready?

About as ready as I was in November, which is to say I'm underprepared but hopeful.  I've got a page worth of hell I can throw at my main character.  Other than that, I'm going to play it by ear.  Poor Detective Whitlock.  I figure he'll Philip Marlowe his way from one calamity to the next in search of the truth.  Fortunately, I already know the ending.  The getting there is the difficult part.  I'm planning on the Elvis Cole style shitstorm of violence ending.

I kind of dropped the ball on the Camp NaNoWriMo cabin situation this time.  Cabins have already been assigned and I was hoping to request some Goodreads chums as cabin mates.  Oh, well.  There's always August.  God, the idea of banging out novels in June, August, and November is already making me weary.

Struck by Ideas

It's funny how sometimes a fully formed plot will spring to life in your head.  Such a thing happened to me yesterday on the way to work. 

Actually, the genesis was probably the day before.  I went to a picnic and had a few beers with one of my few writer friends in meatspace.  He mentioned wanting to put together a pulp fantasy anthology and asked if I'd be willing to contribute.  I said it sounded like fun but don't really write fantasy anymore.  He suggested I dust off Jhalen and Tolek, the lead characters from my NaNoWriMo 2009 novel, Sailors on the Sea of Dead Gods.  I said I'd think about it.

Ideas started congealing on the way to work yesterday morning.  Fast forward to bedtime last night and I'm 2200 words in with probably another 2000 to go.  It's not my favorite thing I've ever written but it's a lot of fun.  I'm actually thinking about submitting it to a magazine instead of saving it for an anthology that might not happen.

In other writing news, I still feel underprepared for Camp NaNoWriMo in June.  I keep writing down ideas for Between Hell and a Hard Place as they come to me.  I have the beginning and the end pretty clear in my mind.  It's the middle that's worrisome, like having two slices of bread and not being sure what to put between them.

Thurday Updates

Just a few quick items:

1. I am recruiting more people from my circle of Goodreads friends to attempt Camp NaNoWriMo, mostly because I like competition.
2. I'm in talks with the local bookstore owner to do some geocaching involving giftcards from his store
3. There is a solar eclipse Sunday around sunset.  I plan on photographing the hell out of it.
4. I made my first sale on Society6 yesterday.  Only 100,000 more and I could quit my job.  Go tell all your millionaire friends about Dantastic Photos
5. The snake I took a picture of yesterday is a speckled kingsnake.
6. Peanuts are called monkey nuts in some places
7. This is one of my favorite Monty Python sketches:

17 Days until Camp

Camp NaNoWriMo is fast approaching.  I'm feeling underprepared, as I normally  do around this time.  I plan on leaving the plot almost as sketchy as it is now, but I'll come up with a list of things to work in when I get stuck.  I plan on starting the story in St. Louis and taking Whitlock to Yuma, Arizona, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and possibly even the fabled Canadas in his quest for the truth.

I'm pretty sure Whitlock is his name.  I already have a pretty good handle on his personality.  I'm undecided on his first name as of yet.  About all I have etched in stone are the beginning, the ending, and some of the bad things that Whitlock will have happen to him during the investigation.

Other news:

• I've recently been bitten by the Geocaching bug.  I went looking for my first caches on Sunday and had about a 50% success rate.  I also uncovered a black widow spider and a turtle so I'm calling it a win.  I'm planning on stashing some caches of my own in coming days once I get acceptable containers.  Am I a snob for not wanting to use tupperware?
• It's also 17 days until a road trip I'm very excited about.  My road trip will have an impact on my writing early on but some things are more important than writing a crazy amount of words in near-record time.
• I'm still planning on writing a crazy amount of words in near-record time.  I'm shooting for my first 100k work this time though it may take more than 30 days.
• Still no sales on Society6.  I'm going to keep uploading cool pictures when I have time in the hopes of getting a pity buy one of these days.

21 Days until Camp!

Camp NaNoWriMo, the first 2012 interation anyway, kicks off June 1st.  Right now, the tentative plan is to start a completely new story on June 1st and bust it out as fast as I can.  I'm gunning for sellable 100k length this time so it's going to be intense.

The tentative plan is to write the first person noir thriller I've been kicking around for the past few months.  I have several reasons for doing this:

1. Get your eyerolls ready. I feel like I need to step out of my comfort zone to grow as a writer.  I've never written more than a chapter of anything in first person.  This will be a challenge for me.  Like writing 50k in a month isn't a challenge...
2. While I like what I've written of The Kickoff so far, it doesn't feel like the story I should be telling right now.  Also, I think I should sell Bullet's Don't Blink, or at least get closer to doing so, before I spend a month of my life pounding away at the sequel.
3. Since I just read The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler, I really want to write a first person noir just so I can pepper it with snappy dialogue and inventive similes.

The story is tentatively titled Between Hell and a Hard Place.  I'm envisioning it as The Big Sleep for the internet age.  I'm going to use technology to move the plot along quite a bit and Whitlock will be fairly tech-savy.  He's not going to be a male version of Lizbeth Salander, though.  I'm saving that character for something else...

It's the Bishop!

Sometimes, you have to amuse yourself

So two days ago, I was getting ready to take a shower when I noticed a tan car pulling into my driveway. I thought it might be my grandpa so I put some pants on and went outside. It was not my grandpa. It was a car full of Jehovah's Witnesses. After a quick "You caught me, I guess I have to listen," they went into their schpiel. I proceeded to turn things around on them and ask things like "Don't you guys believe only 144,000 people get into heaven, and if so, aren't you afraid I'm going to take your spot?" and "Didn't the Book of Revelation say the apocalypse was so far away you'd never be able to predict it?" The guys looked at each other nervously and eventually gave up. I told them they did a good job under pressure but I wasn't planning on converting.