It’s that time of year again. Spooky season is well underway. Imaginations are running wild across the realms of real and electronistic interwebbery. I have a new green cardigan groaning under the weight of the giant pewter buttons I picked for it. Old friends are popping up and asking the yearly question.
“Who’s writing for NaNo?”
I was kinda resisting the urge this year, with a finished book in the query trenches, pondering mailing lists, my “author platform”, ARCs, “reader magnets”, and whatnot. I’ve been on the fence about continuing to query Bluest Moon or just resign myself to all the marketing work to self-pub it. Plus work has me travelling to no less than 3 conferences this Oct-Nov, and [Gestures Broadly] there’s a lot going on.
So why not shove all that aside and write a new book?!
I’ve got 2-3 fully ready to write novel developments in the fire. I need to finish my 2023 last-official-NaNo novel, and there’s always short form ideas floating about the abyss. They’re not doing me any good in the Schrödinger’s Harry-Brain-Box, so why not? (aside from the aforementioned)
I’ve had a lifetime membership to that service, going back to 2017 or so. To be honest, I barely used it. Back in its early days it was an interesting copyedit-class alpha reader at best. It’d run reports telling you if you overused adverbs or used too passive a voice or shifted your POV. There were a few reports giving you a score to see how your word use and patterns stacked up against your favorite authors. (This was the pre-ChatGPT world when machine learning companies paid authors for their rights) Now, in the post-LLM world, it has gotten interesting. It’ll have a model alpha or beta read your book and give feedback. They’ve released a new slate of tools to help you organize and develop your ideas, and they’ve added community features.
It’s that last part that kicked off their writing challenges. With the downfall of the NaNo organization, a whole host of options have popped up. WriMos of all shapes and sizes are filling some of the void for November and other months.
This one adds some fun twists to the old method. The 90 in the name expands the journey to more than the classic mad drafting frenzy of November. October is full of Planner, Plantser, and Pantser themed prep events. Back in the olden days we used to call it Preptober. The Autocrit crew made it an essential part of the run up to the writing marathon. November stays mostly the same, with groups and write ins. Then they add December to finish, edit and polish.
I’ll hold my judgement for the December part for now. I know in my process that a month away from a first draft is really needed before my eyes are fresh enough to finish and edit. The 90 doesn’t need to be continuous. Every writer is different.
So what are these novel ideas?
Well glad you asked. Book 1 is a historical fantasy. It takes the too weird to be true history of Centralia, PA, and turns it to a supernatural mystery, weaving a LGBTQ+ coming of age story with a murder mystery of Demons and Fairies (pun intended). This book is already developed and half-written. I kicked it off in 2023 with a story seed I had about a Fae, summoned to colonial PA by an early immigrant and left to do mischief by the Molly Maguires and their kin. After researching the history of the region and pantsing the first few chapters, it was clear I had a paranormal mystery brewing. It’s an exciting and fun story. Looking forward to sharing more of it.
Book 2 is an anthology of sorts, a threaded serial of stories centered around a house that exists in multiple dimensions. Think of it as a multiverse real estate scheme. “Let’s address the housing crisis by selling the same house dozens of times in different dimensions!” Antics ensue. The cats all see each other. The missing socks are found. Mass hysteria!
Book 3 is the least developed of the bunch. It was a novel seed I picked up and thought I’d write in Nov 2021. Inspired by a novelette I’d read about a shapeshifter who shed some of their memories with each new life, I had an ambitious idea to write a dual perspective book from 2 lives of the same person, working my way through their timelines from the middle outward, reflecting on the patterns and repeated mistakes and lessons we carry forward from generation to generation. Very literary, much thinking, wow.
I also have the 3rd book of the Core trinity to finish. Core Logic, whose comical cover design is the icon/logo for this site, was my first book baby, written back in 2011-12 around the birth of my real world daughter, and reflecting on parent life through the lens of 3-meter tall psychic alien mantis creatures. (It works, honest…)
That book was my “DIY MFA”, where I poured most of my lessons on how to write. It’s been rewritten and edited 20 ways. Workshopped and critiqued. Split into 2 books and rewritten again. I almost queried book 1 back at the beginning of 2020, but then 2020… I wrote the first half of a 3rd book in 2019, while getting ready to query the first, and then shelved the whole project. They say to throw away your first book. I might someday, but those characters are so close to my heart. They may come out of the trunk someday too.
Them’s the books. I just need to write em. See you all on the journey.
