NoNoWriMo - Day 5

Not Novel Writing Month?  Get it?

So far, this is the most relaxed November I'd had since those days in 2007, the days before I knew what it was like to be a crabby hermit for an entire month.

However...

... It figures that just hours after I decided not to chain my neck to the NaNoWriMo anchor that inspiration started pouring in, both for a steampunk-ish mystery and for a straight up mystery starring the same detective I used back in June.

So, writing goals for this month are:

1. Editing Between Hell and a Hard Place
2. Doing some worldbuilding for The Doorman, my steampunkish mystery
3. Ironing out some plot holes for Darkest Before the Dawn, my second Jack Whitlock story

Two

Two days and some change left until NaNoWriMo kicks off.

Remember last Wednesday when I mentioned not knowing a whole lot about the plot?  I know only slightly more now.  I was off the last five days but spent most of that time hanging with my lovely girlfriend.  Time well spent but not all that useful for novelling purposes.  I did figure out how I'm going to work the time travel a bit more, if that counts for anything.

One concept I know I'm going to use is that frequent time travelers adopt aliases so that their enemies can't easily travel back in time and stop them from being born.  In a way, it's similar to how wizards don't reveal their true names in fantasy stories.  I wish I could claim full credit for the concept but I nicked it from the DC comics character Rip Hunter, Timemaster.

I'm a little uneasy about the particulars of the plot but I'm pretty sure I'll find the way once I start writing.

Seven More Days

Seven more days until NaNoWriMo.  How prepared am I?  Not as prepared as I would like to be.  It seems I've focused more on my main character's back story than the actual plot.  I've got the plot broadly figure out but the devil is in the details, as they say. 

Since the main characters travel to five or six points in time, I'm thinking about structuring the plot like it's five or six Doctor Who episodes, complete with titles and different menaces in each.

It's always amazing how things evolve in the planning process.  Tommy Anomaly was conceived as a Doctor Who knockoff and has grown into a combination of Doctor Who, Captain Jack Harkness, and Han Solo.  I'm a lot more excited about the character than when I started planning and think I have a pretty good handle on him.

In non-writing news, the tidal wave of free books I was hoping for after the Forbes article about Goodreads has yet to reach the land.

16 Days Left

Wow.  Before you know it, we'll be down to single digits.  After that, we'll be counting words.  After that comes Thanksgiving, Christmas, death, etc.

Concepts are coming together in what I'm still calling Chronomaly.  I've got a much better handle on my lead character's look and personality, due in part to me watching quite a few episodes of Doctor Who and Torchwood over the weekend.  The plot and supporting cast still needs work but that's what the next two weeks are for.  I've spent a fair bit of time thinking about the steampunky 1920's timeline where Tommy originates from so I figure I'll have to have my characters visit it for some reason.

One notion I'm going to play with in the story is that events in one timeline have echoes in the others.  For instance, the invasion from H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds really happened in Tommy's timeline and contributed to his world's advancement, something the Wells in our reality subconsciously sensed and wrote about.

Another concept I'm going to explore is the Doctor Who/Peter Pan connection I mentioned a few weeks ago.  I think Tommy's ruined more than a few people's lives by taking them adventuring in the timestream, not to mention some things he did he's not too proud of when he first got access to time travel technology.

The tweaked teaser

So now I'm currently calling my NaNoWriMo book Chronomaly.  Here's the revised teaser:

Chronal explorer Tommy Anomaly travels to the 21st century to investigate a temporal disturbance, only to have a man steal his time gauntlet and go back in time to prevent his own marriage.  With help from the man's perturbed wife, Tommy gets a replacement gauntlet and goes into the timestream to find him.  But their temporal journeys have made sinister beings aware of Earth.  Can Tommy get his time gauntlet back, defeat invaders from other realities, and save a marriage?

Twenty-Two Days Left

Twenty-Two Days Left.  Here's my NaNoWriMo To-Do List:

• Pick jobs for my married couple and a plausible reason for them to fight on their anniversary.  I decided I wanted them to be one of those nauseating couples with names that go together so they are Wesley and Jessica, aka Wes and Jess.  I'm excited about making bad things to happen to them.
• Come up with names for other time travelers for Tommy Anomaly to throw around.  "That Ross Uroborus is such a pompous ass!"
• Figure out what the hell is actually going to happen.  I know Tommy and Jess will initially be tracking Wes down using some photographs from key events in their lives that they've spotted him in the background in and that the Gruul will be a thorn in their side the entire way. 
• I want to throw a third group of characters in the mix but I'm not sure yet.  I already know Tommy is part of the Uroborus League, a group of "non-interfering" time travelers.  Maybe I'll come up with some kind of steampunky robots that police the time stream.
• If I enjoy the experience of writing Stolen Time (still not crazy about the title), future adventures will involve dinosaurs being set loose in a sleepy midwestern town and time traveling robots from an alternate past. 

Other (Doctor Who) stuff :

• The first series of Doctor Who was the deal of the day on the WB website yesterday.  I'm never going to be finished watching Doctor Who.
• Read Shada over the last couple days.  It's a novel based on some unfilmed Doctor Who scripts by Douglas Adams.  It was awesome so I'll be watching the Tom Baker Doctor Who's after I watch all the modern ones and Torchwood
• I really like Torchwood.  I'm alternating Torchwood seasons with David Tennant Doctor Who seasons. 

27 more days

Here's the teaser for what is still being called Stolen Time:
Chrononaut Tommy Anomaly travels to the 21st century to investigate a temporal disturbance, only to have a man steal his time gauntlet and go back in time to prevent his own marriage.  With help from the man's perturbed wife, Tommy gets a replacement gauntlet and goes into the timestream to find him.  But their temporal journeys have made something sinister aware of Earth.  Can Tommy get his time gauntlet back, defeat some owl creatures from several universes over, and save a marriage?

28 more days

Twenty-Eight more days until the insanity starts and I become a hermit.  More of a hermit, I mean.

Things are slowly coming together for me.  I'm watching a ton of Doctor Who and Torchwood to get into the mood and keep me there.  I'm also reading all humorous SF and fantasy books this month.  By the time November 1 hits, I should be much more prepared than I am now.

As I've mentioned before, it's a time travel story.  I'm going for a Doctor Who written by P.G. Wodehouse feel.  Right now, I'm calling it Stolen Time but I'm not thrilled with the title.  I need to come up with better names and occupations for the married couple and flesh out the aliens' motives.  I'll also be coming up with a lot of throwaway references to my main character's past adventures.  I've got a lot of sf and fantasy fragments I plan on mining for material.

NaNoWriMo 2012 - 37 More Days

37 more days until NaNoWriMo.  Am I prepared?  Not really.  I'm leaning toward the humorous time travel story, probably because I've been obsessed with Doctor Who lately.  I just need to come up with some bad guys to complicate matters a bit.  I'm still pondering the world-jumping fantasy mercenary thing though.

Quick updates:

1. Add Ready Player One to the list of books that I've had dreams about.  I had a dream I was in the hunt for the keys a few nights ago.
2. I briefly had custody of a stray kitten I named Tito.  Tito wandered away one morning last week and hasn't been seen since.  I suspect one of the many neighbors I told about him took him in.
3. I had my house power washed and my driveway sealed.  It looks good now.  I'm still getting jerked around by contractors about replacing my gutters though.
4. I've been watching Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.  It's a glorious train wreck.

NaNoWriMo 2012 - Less than 7 weeks

It's that magical time of year, when the November Warriors begin planning their attack.

Am I ready?  Not at all.  Do I have an idea?  I have many ideas.  I have a setting I've been toying with for a couple years but still don't have a story I'm crazy about telling in it.  I also have a time travel story I'd like to do.  I guess my project for the next six weeks will be to develop both ideas a bit and then pick one.  I've been on a sf/fantasy kick lately so that's probably what I'll attempt, although it will probably still unfold more like a crime book.

August Camp - Day 7

It occurs to me that I should have learned my lesson after last year's crash and burn during Camp NaNoWriMo August.  I was almost as underprepared as this year and still drained from the previous sessino of camp.

I'm not really feeling The Banker's Bride right now.  I'm still planning on doing 50k worth of something this month but I'm not really sure what at this point.  Maybe various short projects.

August Camp - Day 6

Anyone ever watch the show Breaking Bad?  Turns out it's not a good show for me to suddenly get interested in right before starting to write a book.  I'm three days behind schedule now.

I can't blame it all on Breaking Bad, though.  I had a lot of things going on last weekend,  like shopping for a new garage door, going to a church picnic, and going to a family reunion.  But mostly it was the Breaking Bad watching that did it.

The writing itself is going well, at least.  And I'm well ahead of where I was in June at this time.

One More Night

Only one more night of thinking before I begin writing The Banker's Bride.  I've taken some notes on the cast but I'll be winging large portions of the story.  I've given myself a large enough cast to work with that I have plenty of double crosses and complications I can throw in to make it to 50k and beyond.

Other news:

1. My tree is finally getting disposed of tonight.  Finally!
2. I'm taking Friday off to take care of some things around the house.
3. I've been on Society6 almost three months at this point.  I've sold precisely two things.  It's weird watching which photos get a lot of likes and which don't. 

A Quick Update

1. Still doing The Banker's Bride for Camp NaNoWriMo.  My prep work is not complete, however, but I have two more days for that.  Two, right?  I'm sure I'll come up with even more double crosses between now and the finish line.  I've got high hopes for this one.
2. There's a big goddamn piece of a tree leaning on my house after a freak storm on Friday.  The tree guy is on his way to take a look at it.
3. Moving sucks.  Helping a friend move automatically entitles you to three wishes.
4. Moving sucks.  I know I just mentioned this but it sucks so much I thought I'd mention it again.
5. Since they stopped calculating the top 50 reviewers on Goodreads, I'm less motivated to read.  I still have like 50-ish books to read and am only motivated to read about five of them.

How does this sound?

I thought of this on the way to work this morning.  Shut up, I know.  It's getting late in the game to still not know what I'm writing for sure.


The Banker's Bride:
A banker up to his eyes in debt wants to make a big score before he marries his young bride to be.  When a safe deposit box full of diamonds falls into his lap, he recruits a group of small town thugs to rob his own bank and get the diamonds.  Only the bride has plans of her own...

6 more days

Last night, while driving home from work, I thought about the backstory of the world where The Limbless Wizard's Geas will be set and stumbled upon a story I'd much rather tell.

In a land oppressed by cruel giants, a secret society of magicians manufactured a prophecy and spent the next thousand years breeding people with traces of the blood of titans in their veins in an effort to produce a legendary hero.  Too bad the resulting man wasn't what they were expecting...

The core concept is that if someone like Hercules was born to ordinary people, he'd probably wind up being kind of a jerk.  How motivated would you be to tend the sheep or work in the fields if you could lift a boulder with one hand?

I figure I'll tell the story in five 15-20k junks.  My hero will be whipped into shape during the first part, retrieve artifacts he'll need to lead the fight against the giants in the next three, and then all hell will break loose in the final part. 

This will all dovetail nicely into several other book ideas I have. 

So, that's what I'm going with for now.  I could easily change my mind a couple more times in the next six days.

So Much for That Weekend

One of goals for the weekend was to nail down an idea for the August session of Camp NaNoWriMo.  Here's what I did instead:

1. Went to a dinner party on Friday.  Thought maybe I'd take a stab at writing a super hero novel.  Got home in the wee hours of Saturday morning.
2. Went to a going away party for a cousin on Saturday.  Too busy gorging myself to think about writing, though the super hero novel idea was still stuck in my head.  Got home shortly before midnight.
3. Tired from all the socialization and staying out much later than usual, I slept late, read and reviewed six graphic novels, took a nap, and went to bed at my normal time.  Not completely sold on the super hero novel idea.

To recap, I now have eight days left until kickoff and have next to nothing to work with.  Maybe after I get home I'll dig into the post-it drawer of mystery and dig around tonight for inspiration.

In reading news, the series of Gotham Central graphic novels are the alligator's Adam's apple as far as I'm concerned.  What's not to love about a bunch of Gotham City detectives that both resent and respect Batman while solving crimes?

Meh

Ever been really hungry but nothing in the pantry sounds good?

Eleven days until the August session of Camp NaNoWriMo kicks off and I'm very much in the nothing appetizing in the pantry situation.  All the ideas in the pantry are mine but none of them seem like anything I want to work on.

All is not lost, however.  I am attending a party tonight at a writer friend's house and plan on bouncing ideas off of him, as is normally my pre-NaNoWriMo custom.

In other news, I'm officially tired of the heat wave we've been having.  Winter never sounded better.

Possible August Project Regarding Time Travel

I've had a time travel story floating around in my head for over a decade.  It stems from a workplace conversation that went something like this:
Young beardless Dan - God, I hate that woman.  Everything she does gets on my nerves.
Co-worker - What would you do if you got drunk and woke up in bed with her the next morning?
Young beardless Dan - Invent a fucking time machine.

The basic plot is a guy goes back in time to stop himself from meeting his wife.  She finds out about it and travels back in time to stop him.

It never gets much beyond the planning stages because time travel really messes with my head and takes a lot more advance planning than I normally like to do.  I want to incorporate the following

1. Some sort of time police
2. multiple versions of the main characters in the same place at the same time
3. A rogue time traveler
4. alternate timelines
5. Some sort of grotesque monster that gets unleashed when the time line becomes too fragmented

#2 and #4 seem the most problematic.

Right now, I'm still sticking with The Limbless Wizard's Geas for August.  Probably.

800th Blog Post Spectacular

First draft of Between Hell and a Hard Place is finished at 75k.  I'm not thrilled with the ending but it's as done as it's getting until the editing starts.

I'm feeling a bit drained at the moment.  I think I'm going to spend the rest of the day reading and lounging around.

Okay, so it's not that spectacular of a post.  Still, 800 posts.  Wow.