NaNoWriMo’s Coming!

Those of you who have been around for a while have seen mention of NaNoWriMo before; it’s something I spend every November doing. Here’s the deal: during the thirty days of November a whole bunch of folks set aside the useful and productive activities they would otherwise be doing and instead they crank out a novel. This is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. I will be participating for my eighth consecutive year, and this year my story will be particularly silly. More on that in a bit.

NaNoWriMo is a pretty popular pursuit these days, with tens of thousands of participants and a host of other lurkers and hangers-on. Best-selling authors write pep talks for the struggling masses, and the message forums are choked with celebration and cries of agony.

Today I logged in at the NaNoWriMo web site for the first time this year, checked for a couple of the names I’ve seen over the years, and generally got my bearings. There was a time in years past that I spent a lot of time on the message boards but not so much anymore. It’s just… too big. Lots of people trying to find new ways to say, “boy aren’t we all so crazy!” The answer is no, you’re not crazy. NaNoWriMo is not crazy, insane, or even particularly difficult. Almost anyone in the US could easily write 50,000 words in a month if they stopped watching TV. No other sacrifice need be made. (Oddly, most of the people I hang out with are exceptions to this rule.)

So it’s not crazy, not insane, not masochistic, nor any other adjective that implies that accomplishing this goal is particularly punishing. In fact, it’s pretty damn fun. No, the people who perform this feat deserve your undying admiration for another reason. Or maybe three.

  1. They are being creative. Rather than switch their brains off when they get home from school or work, they are switching them on. This can be habit-forming.
  2. They are committing to something outside their usual routine. Consistency is the key to success and it takes a special kind of commitment to do something outside your comfort zone. This can be habit-forming.
  3. They are making something. It may suck, but the balance of human endeavor will be tipped just a little more towards “worthwhile”. They are producing rather than consuming. What have you added to humanity’s list of accomplishments lately?

It is even less of an accomplishment when I succeed at NaNoWriMo – I sit down to write every day as it is. Those habits I mention in the list above have served me well for eight years now.

So all of that has nothing to do with what I intended to tell you guys today, but one thing you learn during NaNoWriMo that has served me well ever since is that one should never (well, almost never) stop yourself from writing. You can always delete it later. The title of this blog gives me the right – no, the responsibility – to just ramble on. Anyway, on with the actual point of all this.

On the site I updated my personal information (though I left my age at zero – that appealed to me somehow). There is one section of the profile that is about what you’re writing. Right now I’m leaning toward The Quest for the Important Thing to Defeat the Evil Guy, inspired by a blog episode I posted some time ago. I won’t use any of that in the NaNoWriMo effort – that would be cheating, and I need to start differently anyway (and the blog episode really isn’t very good). However, the idea is there.

Of course I’m not allowed to start on the endeavor until November 1st, but there was a section to enter a brief synopsis of the story. Here’s what I wrote:

Bixby is a simple farm boy, but he’s good with an ax and doesn’t ask too many questions. His brawny physique strikes fear in the hearts of Evil-Doers and Nasty People, and a pitter-pat in the bosoms of Fair Ladies (and unfair ones, as well). He adopts Kitty, a black cat who turns out to be an evil sorceress in disguise. She hates the name, but she does like curling up in Bixby’s lap.

Princess Skoda is a strong-willed young lady who is accustomed to getting what she wants. Though she may seem like scantily-clad fluff, she is in fact a scantily-clad expert on the history and lore of the Important Thing. Her pouting skills will get the group out of many a close scrape – if they don’t kill her first.

Chavdar makes up for his diminutive stature with his big mouth. A veteran of many improbable campaigns, Chavdar knows what he wants out of life, but Skoda won’t let him have it. He won’t even consider asking Lada.

Lada the Huntress is an elf maiden whose skill with a bow is unmatched. She’s not too bad with knife, sword, club, machete, brass knuckles or small bits of string, either. Like all elves she is terribly shy, and would rather kill people than try to talk to them. She’s especially dangerous when it’s that time of the century, if you know what I mean.

Trabant the Immutable is a powerful wizard who can warp the very fabric of space and time, and make the universe do his bidding. This leaves very few brain cells for everyday life, however. It may be that he’s fought one Balrog too many…

No one is quite sure why John the Smith is in the party, but it’s bound to be a big surprise when his true identity is revealed at some critical juncture.

Finally, there is Evil Guy. He’s trying to take over the world. Or destroy it. Or something. If he gets his hands on the Important Thing, there will be no stopping him.

Mysterious Forces and Evil Forebodings abound, Great Danger lurks, and the Evil Guy wants the Important Thing. Will this misfit band of adventurers be able to set aside their old rivalries and perform this Quest?

Probably.

I added to the synopsis after I first pasted it in here. But just look at that! How can one possibly not be excited about writing TQITDEG? So I was pretty darn ready for November to start. But then, then, came the part of the Novel Info section that got me even more excited than ever, a part which I have no skill to execute. This year there’s a place to upload cover art! Holy carp on a cracker that would be cool – I mean, what better than a racy fantasy adventure parody for a great cover? A big strapping guy, some kind of little funny-looking sidekick, a scantily-clad princess, a scantily-clad evil temptress, a scantily-clad elf hottie, a dark wizard, and any variety of odd, deformed creatures. In the background a castle or a spaceship or whatever’s handy.

So here’s my challenge to you, dear readers, and your chance to challenge me. If you draw me a cover that even remotely resembles TQITDEG as synopsized (go to my profile page for the latest), I will include all your cover elements in the story, no matter how outlandish they are.

Bonus points if you can identify the theme for many of the names above without using Google. I think John the Smith’s name might really be Zaz. Kitty’s real name could be Dacia.

At Last

One of the good feelings you get as a writer is when you’ve been beating youself against an idea that you know is good but you just can’t get a working story out of it, and then suddenly you find the magic. You’ve all been there, perhaps not as a writer but the principle applies all over. Yesterday was one of those days. Today was the follow-through.

Hockey Night in the Czech Republic

It’s hockey season again, and the NHL has decided to kick things off with a pair of games right here in Prague. The Czechs are excited about it; the matchup is the team that Jagr used to be on versus the team that Prospal is on, but the ticket prices are outrageous, so I am at the Budvar Bar Near Home (Budvar is the hockey beer). The game is in the first intermission, tied 0-0, and it’s been pretty exciting.

Yet, despite the full stadium, the crowd seems quiet. Sure there’s plenty of shouting going on, but something is missing. Finally I realized what it was: There’s no one playing drums! There aren’t any horns blowing Poot Poot Poot-poot-poot — Poot-poot. There isn’t even an accordion that I’ve noticed. I guess the drum corps comes out for the home team, and neither one of these teams is home. (Note to self: when I own an NHL team and it’s playing here, recruit a drum squad. The rest of the crowd will assume that my team is their team. Instant home ice advantage!)

This is a country that brings their drums to tennis tournaments (that is not an exaggeration – at the Davis Cup match between the US and ČR the drummers were out in force). The real shame is that the US television audience has no idea what they’re missing, and the Czechs are missing a chance to show the rest of the world how things are done here.

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Episode 28: The Invisible Hand

Our story so far: There’s a thing that people want. Or maybe it’s a pile of things. Fact is, no one seems to know what the thing is, but it’s big. Big enough to kill for. Big enough to die for. Meredith Baxter just made that choice right in front of Charlie’s eyes. Whatever the thing is, Charles Lowell does not have it, and he really isn’t that interested in having it. That’s what makes him a valuable ally. Now several factions are banking on Lowell to bring them the goods, and he’s not going to be able to please all of them. There is a painting which contains clues as to the location of the treasure, and now Lowell has has the painting – or a least he has a box that everyone assumes contains the painting. He is trapped at the end of a pier after a gangland shootout, and who should turn up but his faithful and plucky assistant Alice…

To read the entire story from the beginning click here. It starts out quite silly, but then settles down. This is all written in brain-dump style, so you get what you paid for it.

From the far end of the pier, the end connected to land and to safety, a search light erupted. At this distance the beam was muted by the fog into a dull glow, and I knew that it was doing little more than lighting up the fog. We were safe for a few more moments.

“You have a boat?” I asked.

“Of course. Come on.” Alice gestured with her gun but didn’t put it away. She hesitated. “What do you think the distance is to that searchlight?”

“You’re thinking about shooting it?”

“It would buy us time.”

It seemed there was a lot I didn’t know about Alice, but there are limits. She was not going to hit her target with her 9mm pistol when she didn’t even know the range. “Yeah, they’ll hold back and send bullets instead. A lot of bullets.”

She nodded. “This way,” she said. I followed to another cold metal ladder vanishing over the edge of the pier. “You first.”

Once more I negotiated a ladder with the package wedged in my sling. At the bottom was a dinghy, deceptively still in the water until I tried to put my foot into it. It swung around and I almost wound up in the drink. If I fell in, which would Alice rescue first, me or the package? I chuckled at my own naivety.

Right then, I might have been able to destroy the painting. Sea water certainly couldn’t have been good for it. I could have taken a dive, gone deep, and cracked open the box. I didn’t.

I pulled the dinghy closer with my foot and managed to fall into it without capsizing it. “What the hell are you doing down there?” Alice hissed.

“I never got the seamanship merit badge,” I grumbled back.

She responded by snapping off four quick shots with her pistol. A second later the spotlight went out and the cops opened up with their own arsenal. By then Alice was halfway down the ladder, her tight polka-dot skirt hiked up to her thighs. With my good arm I steadied the boat against the ladder as she stepped in. Yeah, she had gams all right. She pulled her dress back down with a little shimmy and fixed me with a glare more dangerous that any gun. “Some gentleman you are,” she said. Her anger evaporated and she turned away, suddenly shy. Then just as fast she was all business. “Looks like I’m rowing,” she said. I will never understand dames.

Bullets cracked and snapped throught the air over our heads, digging into the wood of the pier with dull thuds and smashing into the little shed. In the heavy air the reports from the guns seemed dull, like they were happening in someone else’s life. Alice began to row.

I sat in the back of the boat, facing her. She wore a dark number with white polka-dots that seemed to glow on their own in the low light. The pale skin of her arms disappeared into dark gloves which hardly seemed adequate for protecting her soft hands. Her strokes on the oars were smooth and what she lacked in strength she made up for in skill. Occasionally a light would penetrate the pea soup around us and I could tell that we were making good time; the tide was sweeping us right along.

Her hands were full; I had a gun. We both knew that, so there was no need to pull it out.

“Fancy meeting you here,” I said.

She hesitated for a fraction on the oars, then began pulling again. “Does it have to be now?” she asked.

“You lied to me, Alice.”

“No!” She controlled her voice. “Only about small things.”

“You brought Cello to the pier tonight.”

“Yes.”

“And now Meredith is dead.”

“I didn’t think—”

“Think what?”

“I thought she’d handle it better.”

“Better, huh? Perhaps kill me instead, for selling her out.”

Alice stopped rowing and put her face in her hands. “It was Cello I wanted dead. Sooner or later he was going to kill you. And… I wanted her to take the fall.”

“You got your wish.”

Her sobs were getting louder. “You made me your partner, Charlie. You can’t imagine what that meant to me. You made me your partner.”

“Who do you work for?”

“You.”

“Who else?”

“No one. Not any more.” She took up the oars and began to row again. The splashing as the oars lifted from the water was the only sound for a while. A breeze kissed my cheek; the fog would break up soon. Alice looked tired. She spoke between strokes. “Before… I worked for Vittorio Fanutti. My father.”

That was a dot I wasn’t ready to connect. The eels had barely started on Vic’s carcass when she came to work for me, for peanuts on a good day. And somehow her stepmother had come to me. I’d been on this case much longer than I had realized. Alice had singled me out. I tried to feel fortunate.

“Meredith didn’t know, did she?”

“Of course not. That bitch was ruthless.”

High praise coming from this girl. In the wash of shock one thing became clear. “You good with a rifle?” I asked.

“I prefer low-calibre, high-velocity,” she said.

“I guess I owe you one, then.”

“No,” she said. She smiled and in the dimness I saw the dark gap where her front tooth should have been. “We’re partners.”

Tune in next time for: Clear as Mud!

Curse of the High Bar

Thought I’d do a little stream-of-consciousness detective writing this afternoon. It’s been a while, and I miss Charlie and the rest of the cast of Feeding the Eels. Of course, I have no memory of where things left off, so I went back and read the last three episodes. And there’s a bit of a problem.

See, there are parts of those episodes that are actually pretty darn good. Considering the rules I’ve set for myself as far as just spewing out the story, this next episode is sure to be a letdown. That’s the way it goes, I guess. By the time you read this we will all know how well I did. Hopefully this little sorry-in-advance will allow me to kick back and produce some raw spewage.

Dear Mr. Obama

I can dance you into the ground. Seriously. I think there might have been a time in your life when you could let go and allow the music to move you, but that was before politics. Take heart knowing that you are the only candidate worthy of my challenge.

You. Me. Loud music. I will shame you.

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The Descent

I have read the first 4 chapters and a bit of the fifth in the novel The Descent, by Jeff Long. Some among you might contend that one should read the entire book before writing a review, but to that I say, “fiddlesticks!” If the fist hundred pages give you plenty to talk about, why wait? The following is in the style of a real-time blog I might have been writing as I read the beginning of this book. My memory of my impressions as I read the first few chapters is unusually clear, however I feel I must write this review before going on with the story, lest I forget.

Edited to add: apparently the reading public (all one person who has mentioned it to me) has gotten the idea that I’m really not enjoying this book. There are a couple of times near the beginning that nearly lost me, but then something really cool happens and all is forgiven. I think now that the characters are introduced things will just be getting better.

Pseudo-LiveBlogging Descent’s first 4.2 chapters:

Acknowledgments

Every kid who aspires to be a writer should read this. A lot of people worked very hard on this book, including a nameless copy editor. It is apparent that the author also worked hard, devoting himself to research on many different subjects. This book was not the product of some guy simply sitting in front of a keyboard and making the magic happen.

We’re off to a good start; I have already developed a personal attachment to the author.

Chapter 1

We have a group of tourists trapped in a cave somewhere in the bumpiest part of Tibet. Nice.

WTF??? we just had our first dramatic moment of the book, and it was totally contrived. I’m willing to suspend disbelief for almost any situation, but when people stop acting like people, that’s it, I’m done. They’re in a cave, in the pitch black, and only now someone thinks to turn on a light? Pleeeeeeease. So the big moment is ruined by a ridiculous and ultimately unnecessary need on the part of the author to have a Big Surprise.

It’s three days later now, and I’m picking the book back up. Despite the disappointment on the third page, I suspect I’m going to like this story. Onward, then, with chapter one. The thing revealed by the lights is pretty damn amazing, marred only by someone identifying an object as “solid gold” based on a glimpse of color beneath a coating of grime. Another silly detail that ultimately is not needed for the plot. But the thing itself, there in the cave, it’s pretty intense.

You know what I could use about now? Another page or two of backstory. You can’t overdo the backstory.

All right! Ike and his business partner/sweetie seem to be patching up some backstory relationship problems. It’s too easy. These two are going to be fighting for the whole damn book. Now they have to find another way out of the caves.

Sweet holy crap. I was undecided about this book until now. As chapter one closes, we learn just what Jeff Long is capable of. It’s not the horror of the situation, it’s how Ike judges his own response to the horror. All the above criticism is forgiven.

Chapter 2

Another time, another place.

Nooooooooo! Not the mirror! The nun looks in the mirror and once again feels bad about being attractive. Ali took the mirror down for a while, then she put it back up – which I suspect is more a description of the author’s efforts to find another way to introduce her hotness. He wrote out the mirror then put it back in. Never mind that during the rest of the chapter there are plenty of times (especially during the extensive backstory) to present her hotness dramatically. From the mirror we learn two things: Ali’s a looker and she has long blonde hair. At the time, her attractiveness is irrelevant. The color of her hair could easily be introduced in a dozen other places, and the length is incongruous with the local heat and available hygiene. Easy to mention. But the author wanted us to know right away that Ali was one smokin’ nun.

Like there’s been a nun in modern literature who wasn’t temptation personified. Goes without saying.

Ooo! The intriguing native girl has given Ali a good luck charm. I will be sooo surprised to learn that it’s made from human skin.

The nun was a rising star in the church, but she stepped out of line at the wrong time. When she was relocated to the butthole of Africa, she went. Sometimes critical, but always loyal. She has given her life to the church and she will not be asking to have it returned.

But… things are getting interesting. The locals, and the girl (reputed to be a witch) in particular, seem to know a deep, dark secret. Perhaps they’ve been trying to tell Ali about it all along, but she hasn’t been willing to open her mind enough to hear them. There aren’t any obvious connections with the incidents in the cave that we can decipher, but it’s pretty clear that something big is going on. I want to know more.

Yep… It’s human skin. I lied before; I’m not surprised at all.

Chapter 3

Bosnia. Rain. War crimes investigators. Branch is a career military guy who on that night accidentally lets his principles do the talking. He winds up flying an attack helicopter to investigate a strange occurrence. His commanding officer is not happy. Not at all. The colonel had put his foot down and Branch undermined his authority. A promising career just crashed against one man’s morals. This isn’t going to come out well.

OK, the other guy in the helicopter has never seen his newborn son. Why don’t we just paint a bulls-eye on him?

Holy smoke. Let’s just leave the chapter at that. Holy frickin smoke. Although the rockets don’t really make sense. But I’ll tell you this: I like the helicopter pilot, and I think these events are going to mess him up. I really care what happens to this guy. Like Ike in chapter one, Branch was faced with a choice between survival and compassion. He made a different choice. I think that’s going to matter down the road.

Chapter 4

Our fourth point of view. We have a vatican scientist named Thomas investigating some ancienter-than-ancient ruins that were accidentally exposed. The vatican is quite adamant that the ruins be hidden away again, but Thomas wants a look first. He has an old friend who has seen the site, who has said some interesting things about a carving there, a face depicted in the ruins that seems to be actively preventing the church scientist from seeing it.

It’s funny when there are characters who have no reason to suspect foul play, but we readers all know bad shit is going to happen. Hell, it’s chapter four, and people have died in nasty ways in all the previous chapters. “Huh,” says one of the scientists. “The security guard must be off drinking.” Of course we know the security guard has died terribly, and we want to shout at the characters, “don’t you see?” But of course they don’t see. Why would they?

Thomas is a pretty good guy. You can feel his quiet confidence and the internal consistency of his character. His presence is intimidating to those who feel themselves lacking.

This chapter ends with a horrific revelation. What do you know? I like the church scientist, and with him came a couple of other characters that might prove interesting. We have met the intellect of our inevitable party of discovery (although the nun was also pretty damn smart).

Chapter 5

Oh please oh please oh please don’t introduce another character. I’m looking at the book sitting on the table in front of me and I know another character would be more than I can handle. It’s not like I can’t keep track of five people, it’s that we have four completely different vectors toward the truth in this story, and that’s plenty. Also, some of the folks in the previous chapters were in pretty deep doodoo, and I’m anxious to hear back from them.

It has been pointed out to me that an odd-numbered group good for storytelling – it is always imbalanced, and can be imbalanced between different subsets of the group over different issues at the same time. We’ve got four characters right now, and that’s enough. A couple of these introductions were brutal enough to last me for a while.

I get the feeling that each character is crafted to represent a particular facet of humanity. Ali is compassionate, Thomas is intellectual, and so forth. One of the guys will get the hot nun, but at first it will be the wrong one.

Chapter 5 underway. We’re back with Branch, the helicopter pilot, and yes he’s messed up. Spooky messed up. The burn scars are competing with the scars from cuts and trauma; he’s still carrying a fair amount of metal around with him, as well as some medical equipment he absorbed while healing. His recovery was not normal. Now he’s back in Bosnia.

And that’s as far as I’ve gotten. There have been a couple of close calls where I put the book down and almost didn’t pick it back up again, but I’m hooked now. There will be a convergence, and the group will combine weaknesses as well as strengths.

I did not mention above the style of the writer, and to be honest, I never thought about it much. That’s a good thing. His voice is clear and doesn’t get in the way of the story. If I discover anything else over the next 450 pages I’ll let you know.

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

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