Cry Havoc and Let Slip The Dogs Of War

I love Shakespeare. I mean in every way possible. I don't care that he might have been and was probably a thief. The man knew how to write! So I stole today's blog title from Big Willy.

It's November. It's hard to believe is over a year old already (and I didn't celebrate at all last month). And so much has changed...and stayed the same. Anyway, I've decided to wade into NANOWRIMO...again. I'm mildly suicidal sometimes, but I decided I needed something new to write since I've sort of been in this JAIMAN/SEASONS cycle for the last year or so. I needed to get away from those projects for a little while to look at them with fresh eyes. Sort of.

I'm about 3/4 of the way through a pretty good rewrite of THE SISTERS OF KHODA. I think I've added some required depth and scope to the story that I was asked to do so. The only problem is that I think the end was something of a mess, which means I'm setting very large charges and blowing up huge chunks of it. Almost a whole new rewrite. I'm thinking that last quarter or so is going to be in the 25-35k range, mostly of all new words. I rushed that part of the novel and I need to work on it. I'd like to spread that out over November and December and have it off to Mr. Agent man by January. That's the plan. I'd love to get it done earlier and then work on something else in December (I'm going to talk about December in a minute...it's very exciting).

As for the NANO project....I don't have a title yet, but it's YA contemporary SF. I was strongly considering a very contemporary YA/ Tobias Wolff-esque fictional memoir kind of thing but changed my mind (for now, though writing this out that is suddenly much more appealing to me). Instead I'm thinking something like a Kyle XY/teenaged supersoldier/football kind of book. And the scary part of me is that I'm pantsing it. I have no plan. No outline. I'm just going to write. I've been reading the brilliant Shadow Children series by Margaret Peterson Haddix and thinking it could be very, very similar to those books in length and structure. I'm aiming somewhere in the 60-70k range. Keeping it simple, one POV with some "interludes" of official documents, emails, etc related to the MC being a supersoldier. It's very nebulous, we'll see how it plays out. (I'm on the NANO website as Ebenstone, my old handle.) I'm going to try and cap my daily writing at around 2k a day and try and finish the whole thing in November. We'll see how that goes.

As for December, I'm finally getting my bum hip fixed. Surgery is slated for December 6th and I cannot be more excited. I can't wait for this pain to stop and I'll be able to do things again. The super exciting part of it is that I will be home for the entire month of December. A whole month of reading, writing, playing video games and catching up on TV shows. It's like I'm going to be one of the 47% that just mooches of the rest of you SUCKERS!!!!

I'd like to dive into one other project during this time period: my epic fantasy Santa Claus story. The Elevator pitch for that one? The Santa Clause meets Game of Thrones. I'll tell you more later about that project.