NaNo Novel Concept

Less than a week and counting!

I am looking forward to this year’s NaNoWriMo.  It’ll be the first one since I started college two years ago.  With nothing filling my spare time outside of work, I’ll be committing to torturing my characters as they try to find their way through mountain passes and dragon lairs.  Loads of fun for me!  *evil laughter*

At the moment, I don’t have names for my adventuring party.  There’s no real title either, so I am going with what this one will be: a dungeon crawl.  Following AD&D rules to an extent but definitely rolling the dice to see what happens next and how badly they screw up.  *evil grin*  This will, fortunately, be taking place in the world of Have, my own world where most of my fantasy writing takes place.  So, yes, this will have anthropomorphic creatures rather than humans and demi-humans.  Anyone who knows me will understand the reasoning behind it.

The only names I have are for the monarchy; King Yoseph and Queen Katrina.  The names for the adventuring party are eluding me, for now.  But, they will come about sooner or later.  I hope sooner so I can do more with their set up before NaNo starts.  At least I know what species each will be, so that part is out of the way.

I do have an idea of what is going to happen and in what order.  There will be two primary points which will get them to the artifact they need.  I also do not know what that artifact will be.  But, that can give a bit of mystery to the story while the characters discuss what it is they are seeking.

The best thing is the first seven chapters have already given me the set up for the adventure.  Chapter one will be problem which will require the artifact.  Chapters two through seven will each character coming into the story.  From then on, it’ll be a mystery even to me as to what goes on before the reach way point number one.

Good luck to anyone who is taking on this crazy challenge!  Better stock up on your writing munchies.  Oh, would someone please send me about 50 bags of Jelly Bellies?  Those are my favorite writing snack.

Alert the Media!

*flails wildly then faceplants on the floor*

One down, one to go! Time to celebrate the first win!

Those who have been keeping and rooting for me, you can finally cheer.  I passed the state exam for Life/Accident and Health products portion of the state licensing exam.  It almost wasn’t going to happen due to technical issues with the computer I was on.

Wasn’t anything I did.  Nope, not this time.  ;)  The computer was acting up before I got there.  They had to reboot it four times before I could take the test.  The crazy thing would freeze at the end of the sample test (I swear it’s to make sure people understand what country they’re in with all the America centric questions) and not let me continue.  The final reboot let me complete the practice and got me all the way through to the end and tallied my score.

Maybe I did threaten to bring a tech-god to fix the problem or IT was going to be there after I was done to upgrade and fix the problem, I don’t know, but it did work.

It’s done.  Finally done!  I won’t have to worry about it again unless the license lapses for any reason.  From here on out, it will be continuing education to keep me up to date on changes made in the insurance code and ethics courses to prove I won’t commit fraud or something to that matter.  That will only be 24 hours per year, so no worries.

Due to studying this week, and other things going on, I didn’t do any writing.  Not all was distractions with Facebook, I promise, though some were along that line.  There was review and extra studying on the sections I needed more focus, such as Medicare and Long-term Care policies.

This means I have nothing new to give on Black Friday 2 nor anything to report on my Camp Nano novel.  Both of those needed to be set aside for the purpose of passing the most pain in the neck test I have ever taken.  At least it did pay off and I can put some effort into both of the projects when I’m not working or training.

Which means I have this weekend free after the shopping is done and Monday between doctor appointments for Colin and Dave.

OW! Hot stuff!

That reminds me, keep Dave in your thoughts, he is starting down the road toward gastric surgery to help him get rid of his excess weight and the lymphedema lump on his inner thigh.  Monday, he consults with his doctor about which procedure he’ll recommend then starting the string of tests which have to be done before the operation date.  One way, or another, we will get this done; even if it means I have to pay for incredible insurance which will cover the surgery, tests, and post-op visits.

Thankfully, we already know, he won’t be down for more than a day or two and be on a protein shake diet for a few months.  But, it will end his diabetes almost immediately and start straightening out other weight related issues.  This also means that I’ll be forced to diet, too.  But this is a good thing.  I need to lose about half my body weight to be within the target range for my height and build.

Okay, I rambled too much.

I hope everyone had a safe and fun-filled 4th of July.

Do you have anything to celebrate this week?

Belated NaNoWriMo wrap-up and #writemotivation #fiction #fantasy #amwriting

November ended over a week ago and boy did it end with a bang!  The furious writing and hectic hours made for a very tired author.  I’m still trying to recover from the long hours.  That’s the good part of it all.

The bad side?  There’s no bad side in any sense of the phrase.  I have two decent stories (if you call porn decent) and started on another before hitting the 50K mark on the 29th. Yes, I made it with a little over a day to spare.  Thankfully, that allowed me to enjoy the final write-in and TGIO party a lot more.  I will say this, I was the first to leave the TGIO party.  I would have stayed until the end, but being a mom and a crotchety old woman, I had to get home and get some sleep.  Still, it was fun and I came home with a small prize which I will be using often.

It was fun, even if I couldn’t attend the write-ins like I wanted.  What I got out of this year’s Nano was a potential compilation of stories centering around my character, Leofa, and her business, The Rabbit Hutch.  I want to finish Trysts of the Hearts first then maybe focus on Leofa’s stories.  While Trysts will be published on Smashwords, Leofa’s stories will only be seen, and distributed, over at FurAffinity.net due to content.

Usually, I post a set of goals for the month at about this time.  Thanks to the rush of NaNo and Christmas coming, I’m going to take a break from writing and just sit back and enjoy the season and maybe write when the mood strikes.  No rush to meet goals or worries over anything else.  Come January, I’ll be working hard on finishing the edits and rewrites on SoNL then perhaps get some help to get it ready for the spring Pitchfest.  I intend on having SoNL ready in March for agents and/or publishing houses.

Black Friday 2 will be the next novel to be prepared for publishing.  I’m debating sending it to an agent/publisher or just keep the series with Xlibris.

No matter what, I’ll be back to blogging Sundays, Mondays or Wednesdays soon enough.  Aren’t you glad I didn’t fall off the face of the internet?  I know I am!

NaNo and #writemotivation

Considering the hour, I am going to keep this short and sweet.

I know I haven’t posted my usual Sunday excerpt or my #writemotivation posts.  Trust me when I say, I have been very busy with extra hours from work and as a result, I have been exhausted.  Not a good mix for writing.  I fell WAY behind until this last weekend, then it was a flurry of writing.

Sunday saw my word count breaking 20K before I went to bed at midnight.  Monday saw me hitting 25K with no problems.  Tuesday I had some problems trying to tie up the story in a way that I liked, but it pushed to just over the 30K mark.

The original story, Dark of Duck, just couldn’t mesh in my head to make it funny.  I can put in a bit of humor here or there to break the tension or shed a little light on someone’s personality, but comedy just isn’t me.  Unless you want here about my stories of Stupid Customer antics.  (I have plenty of those)  I won’t give up on it, but it isn’t the focus.  So, I wrote another story which flowed easily out of the dark recesses of my dirty mind.

Leofa’s Christmas is cute in its own right, but definitely adult only reading.  That’s what pushed me up to the 30K mark.  To get the rest of the way to 50K, Leofa is demanding I do a short story called A Day at the Hutch.  Still adult reading and very fetish-y, but it’s a story that  wants to be written and anything can happen in it.

Since this is also my #writemotivation post for the month (I haven’t posted until now.  Sorry!), here it is:

Reach 50K words before the 30th.  

The word count is 30,221/50,000  Not too shabby for being woefully behind a week ago.  My three-day weekend last week did a lot of good for me as far as rest and getting caught up. I’m still a tad behind, but nothing I can’t handle.

Good luck everyone on your Nano projects!!

Pre-Nano Update and Other Schtuffs

Those who may have noticed, I didn’t post an excerpt on Sunday.  I had every intention of doing that, I was distracted with some shopping and cooking.

The cooking made the missed night well worth it.  First off, I made my homemade spaghetti sauce and that took a while to get perfect.  Plus why I needed to do some shopping.  Secondly, I braised 10 pounds of chicken leg quarters for broth.  That required my attention after dinner was over.

I now have eight pints of some delicious chicken brother to set back for cold weather.  I just may borrow mom’s huge stock pot, buy some quart sized mason jars and set us up with some homemade tomato sauce.  It would be a good idea so all we’d need to add is meat and pasta.  That’ll be another day.

For now, we are staring down the dark and dank throat of NaNoWriMo.  I’m both nervous and excited.  I want to start writing this strange, and I hope, funny novel.  Dark of Duck (I may just drop the ‘of’ and just call it Dark Duck) is supposed to be funny and I’ll be listening to a lot of Mel Brook’s movies and other comedies, including some of my favorite sitcoms.

It’ll be more for the turn of phrases and puns to help hold up the descriptions of the antics of the goofy minions that bungle the orders given by their demon possessed leader.  The MC, the demon-possessed duck, will have other problems, such as a snarky wife who really runs the show, and a flamboyant hero who’ll come traipsing through to thwart his attempts at domination.

I have done some thinking on this, however.  If Dark Duck is to have this much trouble, then he’s got to have either a very young demon or a low-level demon who is more of a mischief-maker down in Hades.  So, we can imagine the conversations these two must have.

Now, should Dark of Duck peter out, I do have back up to complete the 50k word count.  I still have more stories to write to add to last years NaNo novel.  It needs at least four or five more to make it a decent length then a bit of Segway between each story to tie them together while letting them be stand alone stories.

The Sunday excerpts will resume this weekend.  They’ll be mostly from my NaNo novel.  If I remember, I’ll make daily posts about my progress.

Good luck on Nano!  Have fun and don’t sweat the details.  That’s for after NaNo.

Monday Report #writemotivation

Here it is, another Monday (Boo!) and time to tell everyone how good, or bad, I have been with my writing goals for the month.  All I can say is… I’ll tell you later.

It has been a rollercoaster of a week for me.  Busy at work which makes tired to think about writing at home.  I found a few more old Nano stories and started reading them just to see where I was in them.  On top of all of that, I was tending to the new kitten (Yay!) we got to make sure my tomcat doesn’t hurt her while they wrestle and get to know one another.

Between those two, I believe we made a record in the amount of time it took two cats to settle in and be sociable with one another.  Before the second day was done, Caffeine was more interested in trying to let her know he was the top cat; which she immediately corrected him much to his dismay.  He shrugged that off and soon found curled up in the kitty cube sleeping with her on the third day.  Ever since, both have been nestling on the bed with me at night to sleep; usually with Hylie (the kitten) snuggled up tight against my knees while Caffeine curls up in his divot by my feet.

Saturday, there was a #writemotivation meet up which was fun.  It was also inspirational as well.  On the way up to Wichita, we were talking about the book Fifty Shades of Gray and why it was receiving as much ridicule as the Twilight books.  There was plenty of good reasons given and some examples the others have found.  None of those I will go into here.

The inspiration I got for this year’s NaNo novel came from those reasons.  It will be a funny take on the scary movie/thrill genre which will give me some experience in that genre.  Imagine if you will a short, anthropomorphic, demonic duck.  His minions are the tall, brawny ostriches who literally have their heads in the sand.  These minions will be in varying degrees of stupid which will be where a lot of the comic relief in the action will come from and the ‘leader’ will have most of the one-liners.  Such this one: ‘Leave me alone, I’m brooding.’  either the demonic duck or his ‘wife’ will say that while sitting on a nest or chair while reading plans for the next conquest.

The bad guys can’t go around unchecked, of course, so on the spur of the moment, we came up with a flamingo.  A flamboyant flamingo who uses a rapier and dances and is already named, Flamenco… as in the dance, which he also does.

There’s two months to go to come up with the situations and comments for this book.  I want people to laugh all the way through this book and feel sorry for the poor bad duck.  That’s plenty of time… or not.

On to the goals!!

1. Work on chapters 1 through 3 of Society of Night and Lies. Make them shine with more show and a bit less tell.

I’ll give you three guesses.  The first two don’t count.  Abso-f***ing nothing!  Nada!  Zilch!  Not a thing done!  I have looked through and found places to start but I haven’t touched it at all since setting it up on Google Docs so my friend can help out.

2. If there’s time, write two more chapters to Black Friday 2.

Since nothing was done to one, nothing has been done with two.

3. Read. Doesn’t matter which author or genre, just read.

Don’t be surprised if this is the only goal I meet this month.  I’m still slogging through the Apprentice Adept series.  I‘m finally on the last book in the series, Phaze Doubt.  It’s slow going because I have never read this one before.  Next, I’ll be reading Scene and Structure and Michelle Pierce’s beta The Sorcerer’s Blade.  Both deserve my full and undivided attention.

That’s it from me.  How’s everyone else doing?

Sunday Excerpt #amwriting #fiction #fantasy

This excerpt comes from a crossover that I should be shot for making, but, it has garnered plenty of welcome attention on the one forum it was posted.  This one was written during NaNo when another story I was working on finished a few thousand words too soon.  This story did well in getting me to the end and well over the 50K mark. It is almost complete as far as the first draft writing.   Already I have made some changes but only in a single character’s name.  Other’s will appear later when I decide to work on it more.

This excerpt has what I think is my best attempt at showing.  The main character, CloudBloom, is disoriented and trying to get to a place of safety before sie is knocked out the first time.  I wanted to get across what sie was feeling in that moment and those few thoughts before assistance arrived.

A flurry of activity buzzed around the sensitive ears of CloudBloom while she lay fighting for consciousness. Something had happened. Something terrible but she could not recall what it was. An alarm was sounding off, the monotone voice crackling and barely discernible though the source could not be more than a few feet away. She heard voices. Voices filled with worry and excitement of some kind.

Though right in front of her, sie saw people moving about, shadows with color radiating around them. Sie was hot and there wasn’t a cool breeze or water anywhere to cool her off. Arms and legs felt too weak move and yet, sie felt hirself moving. Scraping metal then excruciating pain shot through hir midsection before all went blank. Only heat, intense heat, could be felt through the blackness that engulfed hir body.

For what seemed an eternity, the heat stayed with hir. Deep into hir darkest dreams, the heat followed hir. There was nowhere sie could go to escape it. Then, suddenly, she felt the cool touch of a spring breeze brush across her face. Pain still followed hir, but it seemed more of a numb reminder that something was not right. Little by little, sie felt the cool air touch the rest of her body. Relief was washing over hir and calming the already tensed and alert muscles.

Briefly, hir eyes cleared, the darkness parted to give hir a view of an angelic face of white fur, intense blue eyes, and wavy hair that swirled about something in the middle of the forehead before sie finally passed out. Only a few voices could get through the ringing in her ears. Who they belonged to, sie did not know, but sie felt safe and secure as sie faded out and that singular voice speaking to hir.

“Hang in there, miss. You’ll be in good hands. Just hang on. Help is here.” Then, a little more faintly, “I have one over here! She’s barely alive. Over here, quickly!”

“They’re coming, miss. Miss?”

It could have been minutes, hours, or days since sie closed hir eyes before CloudBloom awoke in a room lit by the afternoon sun. All was quiet. Only a songbird was twittering outside the window. Not a single sound of machinery could be heard; the beep of a monitor, or even the soft buzz of electricity waiting to be put to use in something. It was almost deafening with how quiet it was to hir.

Slowly, sie opened hir eyes and saw the sunlight reflecting off the cream colored wall across from hir bed. Then pictures came into focus, followed by the movement of drapes shifting with the breeze coming in from a window a short distance from hir bed. Things were still out of focus, but the longer sie remained awake, the better everything looked.

Sie was alive, and for some reason, this felt like a very good thing. Memories flitted across hir mind. There were others with hir before hir world took a decided turn for the worse. Others like hirself and worlds recently visited. There was a mission they were doing. But, sie couldn’t remember if sie was with the military or an outing with a nature group. Things didn’t seem to want to come together with the jumble in hir head.

What mattered is that sie was awake, no longer in that nightmare where it seemed like sie was being burned alive. Being so awake, sie took a long, shuddering, deep breath and let it out with a sigh. The soft sound brought attention to hir that sie wasn’t expecting.

“Well, good morning! Or should I say good afternoon, miss.” The lightly accented voice came with a face covered with pale pink fur and a bright cheerful smile. “You had everyone worried for a while there. We thought we had lost you a few times.”