Category Archives: NaNoWriMo

Welcome to December!

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Hello folks! I just have a few updates this week. We have officially hit December and the holiday season, and there are only 5 Fridays left in the year (including today). I know! I’m shocked and horrified by this as well. I hope everyone is having fun preparing for their various holiday-season traditions (there are so many holidays in so many religions and cultures around the world this time of year, it’s pretty amazing!) And I hope that the concurrent issues of shopping, travel, dealing with family, etc don’t stress anyone out too badly (they always stress me out plenty).

As we are nearing the end of the year, and all that entails, I wanted to give you heads up that weekly posts will probably be a bit spotty this month. I have one book review in draft right now, that I will probably post next week. And I am planning to do a “My Favorite Reads of the Year” list in time for the New Year. That might be it from me for the month. I suspect most people aren’t going to mind too much; they have other things to worry about besides reading my blog posts, lol. But I apologize for the slow-down anyway.

In other news, I am considering starting to take on freelance editing work – this kind of editing (developmental and copy/line-editing) is usually for folks who are preparing to indie or self-publish, but can be useful even for those planning to submit manuscripts to agents/editors in traditional publishing. I have done some editing work in the past, but it has always been for friends, or friends of friends, for small amounts of money or pro bono. I have recently picked up a couple new potential clients (we’re still hammering out confirmations) based on word-of-mouth, and it has made me think I might like to try making it more official. I might post the information as a page here, or possibly make a full website landing page for everything. But in any case, if this is something anyone out there has been looking into for a project, feel free to contact me!

I am also thinking about some things I would like to do for the blog starting in the new year.

The blog I ran in the height of the blog-popularity from 2011-2015 or so was not huge — I didn’t have thousands of readers or anything — but it did fairly well. It had around 500 subscribers, lots of comments, averaged a couple thousand hits a week, etc. This new one doesn’t get a fraction of that engagement. I know the blogging heyday is past. I can’t expect anything like that again, but it’s still disheartening. I keep wondering if writing this blog is like screaming into a void that no one else hears or cares about, and I would be better off just redirecting this writing time/energy back toward my own personal writing. On the other hand, I do enjoy writing these little book reviews, and my main goal originally was to help support and spread the word about books/authors that I really love. I’m just not sure I’m even doing that if NO ONE reads these (except for DirtyBuddha, the only reader who consistently looks at/likes every post! Shout out to you! Thanks!)

On top of all that, I’ve had ideas for things I wanted to write/talk about that I haven’t yet because, as few readers I have now, I fear that people will care even less about these other things. Most of them are still book-related (though not all), but they aren’t book reviews and if that’s what most of my readers (few as they are) are here for it would feel like a waste of time to even sit down to type these other ideas out. The problem stems, I think, from the fact that I have advanced degrees in literature but I stopped teaching and I feel like I have all this information and all these niche interests floating around my head with no useful outlet.

I talked to my best friend about that a bit, and she gave me some good advice that kind of boiled down to: don’t worry about what others think. On one level, that’s kind of the point of a blog, to share content that you think/hope others will engage with, so you kind of have to care. On another level, though, she’s right. If the blog is for me, for talking about things I’m interested in (even if it’s aimed at an empty void), then does it really matter? And, she said, maybe you’ll write a post that will show up on someone’s google search someday, for someone with the same niche interests who never thought anyone else had ever written about the topic before, and even if that’s the only reader you ever get for that post, won’t it be nice to be there for the one person who really wanted to read it?

It’s a nice thought. Though it still begs the question of how much time and energy I should pour into this blog, and how much of that time is a waste that should be aimed at things that will have more long-term benefits (like finishing one of my damn novels).

In any case, it’s something I’ve been thinking about. Some of the things I’ve been thinking about writing about include an old course syllabus idea I had for (anti)war novels, and one for planetary romances, and one for time travel narratives. While these would all at least still be book lists/discussions, it feels like people only care about new/recent releases these days, so I don’t know that anyone would care about reading lists of mostly-classics. I also have thoughts on indulging some more of anime nerdiness – for instance, I’ve considered writing about Robotech (an American dub/adaptation of a Japanese anime that aired in 1985, and one of my personal obsessions). I’ve also thought about writing about art more. And I’ve had a grand idea for a big essay about an obscure 1940s novel called The Journal of Albion Moonlight bouncing around my head for years. So yeah, the ideas are ALL OVER THE PLACE.

I suppose what I’m saying is that these are things that might happen in 2023, but I’m not certain yet, because despite my best friend’s assurances that it’s my blog and I can do what I want with it, I’m still a bit tired of screaming into an empty void. If anyone has an opinion in one direction or the other, please feel free to comment.

My final announcement is a big one for me personally. For the first time in TWELVE YEARS, I have successfully “won”/completed the NaNoWriMo challenge! I cannot tell you how excited I am to finally accomplish this again after so many attempts! I actually hit the official word count goal, 50k words, on Monday, November 28th. And then I spent the last two days of the month seeing if I could stretch that word count a bit before Nano was officially over. I finally ended up with: 55,828 words, nearly 6k over the word goal!

So yeah, I’m pretty stoked about that!

Anyway, that’s a lot of information and ideas to throw at you all so I’ll stop talking now. If anyone has any opinions/feelings on any of this, please feel free to comment! In the meantime, have a good weekend and happy “start of December and the mad-rush to the new year” season, everyone!

A NaNoWriMo Sneak-Peek

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Hello folks! I have been busy at work on my NaNoWriMo project and am therefore a bit behind on my reading and book-reviewing schedule for the month. I have one book review I need to write up still, and a couple books in the queue, but I am trying very heard to keep focused on my NaNo project while I can.

So, because I still wanted to post SOMETHING today, and in the spirit of sharing with the writing/book community, I thought I might share with you all the opening for my current project.

I gave a brief description of the project in this post: “It’s That Time of Year Again.” The project is going fairly well so far (*knock on wood*). I’m at about 28,000 words currently, which is just a TINY bit behind the recommended daily word count. But I have hopes for getting caught up this weekend (*fingers crossed*).

I also made a Spotify playlist for the project, which you can find here:
Wesmaris Story (Nano 2022) Playlist

If you’re only interested in my book review posts, I totally understand, and I apologize for the lack thereof this week. But hopefully some of you will enjoy this little sneak-peek.

Art by Jenna Barton (@)dappermouth_art (used for vibe inspiration)

Prologue —

When Ellianora was five her mother told her folktales about the Osei, from her homeland of Noridreia — magical shapeshifters who lived in the forests and made deals with humans that were as much curse as gift. When Ellianora was ten her Noridreian-immigrant nanny told her the Osei were not mere folktale but REAL, hiding in the secret places of the world following years of human violence. There had been no recorded contact with the Osei in nearly a century, but every once in a long while one might still appear when summoned by a human desperate enough to call them. Or so her nanny said. Ellianora was not sure she really believed it.

When Ellianora was twenty she snuck out into the forest that skirted the eastern edges of Idelwyth to summon the Osei. She was finally desperate enough.

She wore her simplest, sturdiest dress in a deep navy that blended into the shadows. She carried a bag of the items needed to perform the summoning, as taught to her by her nanny, and a single lantern to light her way through the dark moonless night. The new moon was the best time to summon the Osei. They were more willing to appear with no moon as witness to their movements and the deals. Once she had gone far enough into the forest, Ellianora found a small clearing, surrounded on all sides by tall imposing great-grandfather trees, and knelt.

From her bag she revealed a small silver bowl she had borrowed from her mother’s best silver service, a glass bottle she had filled with cool, clean water, a sachet of tea leaves and rose petals, and the sharpest paring knife she could find in the kitchen. As her nanny had once instructed, she took a moment to clear her mind and focus on her intention, her desire.

Call the Osei. Make a deal. Beg for help.

Then, mind clear and intention firmly set, she placed the silver bowl before her and poured the water into it. Next came the tea leaves and rose petals. She waited a moment for the leaves and petals to swirl in the water, some staying afloat on the surface, some sinking to the bottom of the bowl. Finally, she lifted the knife in her right hand, pressed it firmly into the palm of her left hand, and pulled as quickly as she could, before she could overthink it and back out. The knife sliced through the meat of her palm. She squeezed her hand, gritting her teeth against the pain, and let the blood drip into the bowl.

Water, tea and flower, blood. Gifts for the Osei, to entice them out into the open.

“Osei, I summon you,” she spoke in a low clear voice. “I beg an audience with Kunochi, Lord of the Forest. Lord Kunochi, I entreat you to grant me your aid.”

Kunochi, according to her nanny, was one of the most powerful and most magnanimous of the Osei. If any Osei would grant her their aid, it would be he. It would have been best to speak the summoning in Noridreian, but her mother had given up her language in the name of assimilation and forbidden anyone from teaching it to her children. Wesmarin Imperial would have to do.

Ellianora waited. The forest was silent around her except for the occasional breeze and the music of the crickets. She counted to one hundred in her head, and then repeated the summoning, just to be safe. And waited. And waited.

Nothing happened. Of course, nothing. It was a silly fancy to try this at all. A fool’s errand. A desperate last-minute ploy for reprieve that did nothing but give her a momentary illusion of control.

And then, something did happen. The branches and leaves that surrounded Ellianora shook and shuddered. The entire forest seemed to take a deep breath and hold it. From the deepest shadows around her, a pale long-fingered hand appeared.

“Hello little human,” came the rumbling of a deep voice like distant rolling thunder.

Ellianora choked on a gasp and slapped both hands over her mouth. Blood from her left palm smeared across her lips and chin.

“I am not Kunochi,” said the thunder-voice, “but perhaps I will suffice…”

It’s that Time of Year Again, Folks: NaNoWriMo!

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We are reaching the end of October. It is therefore that time of year again! It’s NaNoWriMo season, my friends!

I think at this point most bookish types are at least vaguely familiar with Nano, but for the uninitiated NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. Nano takes place in November (Novel, November, get it?). It started in 1999 and is run by a nonprofit group at the website www.nanowrimo.org

It’s a challenge, essentially, to write 50,000 words (of the first draft of a novel) over the course of just 30 days in November — 50,000 was chosen as the official word count goal because it is the rough average length of a published novel. (Sort of, the technical definition of a novel is a piece of fiction writing that is 40,000 words or longer. The average length has gone up in recent years and is probably more like 70-80k words at this point, but 50k is a good goal post for the challenge.) You sign up to join the challenge on the website, and keep track of your word count, follow other writers as “buddies,” and generally try to have fun. If you succeed in writing 50k words by Nov 30th, you officially “win” and get a printable certificate, some cool discounts from various participating business partnerships, and bragging rights. 

I’ve been participating (or trying to, anyway) most years since 2010. The ONLY time I’ve “won” was in my first year in 2010, when I actually wrote 70k words towards the first draft of my novel Midnight’s Knife (currently at 160,000 words total, in the 2nd draft). That year, I was unemployed and taking a year break between the end of my MA degree and the beginning of my PhD, which was the ONLY reason I actually managed to succeed. Every other year, as I try to write while also working/studying, I have failed miserably. I have never made it past 25k words since then, and some years don’t even break 15k.

But I try most years (I’ve skipped a few), and will again this year. I am currently unemployed again, which might give me a better chance at winning. BUT I am actively looking for/interviewing for jobs, and will hopefully have a new position soon, which will no doubt kill my chances at hitting 50k. But that’s all right. I need the work. And any writing progress is good progress.

This year, I will be starting a new project I’ve had rattling around in the back of my brain for a few months now. I’ve been telling my brain to wait, to put that back where it came from, and so on, for ages. And I decided that now was the time to let my brain pick up the idea and run with it for a while. I’ve been embracing the “Pantser” method of late, so beyond the basic premise and main characters, I have very little idea of where I’m going with this, but its going to have ALL THE VIBES.

It’s a secondary world setting, loosely inspired by Victorian England, featuring period-appropriate imperialism, and an immigrant family from a conquered/“annexed” country vaguely inspired by Japan. I’m stealing from everywhere for this story (including the Victorian England setting, and the Japanese immigrant experience). This stealing also includes: 1) a main character inspired by Ann Elliott from Jane Austen’s Persuasion, 2) the MC’s immigrant mother based on my Japanese-immigrant grandmother, 3) a main Love Interest loosely based on a combination of Anne Lister (Gentleman Jack) and Julie D’Aubigny, and 4) an undead warlock I stole pretty much wholesale from a rural Ohioan legend a Ohioan friend told me about.

I don’t have a title yet so I’m just calling it the “Wesmaris Project” for the moment (Wesmaris being the name of the imperialist country that is the main setting).

Tags include:
Victorian aesthetic, imperialist bullshit, immigrant family trauma, wlw, mutual pining, femme/butch, introvert/extrovert, magical beings, shady deals with fay in creepy forests, found family, undead warlock, thread magic, stitch-witchery, downtrodden women getting power and getting revenge, soundtrack by Florence + the Machine and Amazing Devil

And here’s the mood board I spent far too much time on:

Mood board made using Canva and images from Pinterest

NaNoWriMo Update

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Well, folks, we’re two weeks into NaNoWriMo now. We have officially hit the halfway point. Which means I SHOULD be at approximately 25k words in my novel by now. Alas, that is not the case. I am currently at approximately 17k words right now, which means I am around 8k words behind. The last week especially has been very slow going. I’ve only been managing around 400-700 words per night lately. Partly because I am EXHAUSTED from work, but mostly because I am very stuck. As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m totally pantsing it this year. Usually I am a big planner, with lots of outlines and character profiles and chapter breakdowns, etc. I have none of that this year, and its really getting difficult now. I have no clue where I’m going. I’ve been forcing myself to write SOMETHING, ANYTHING, the last few nights, but it has resulted in mostly talking around in circles and not advancing the plot in any useful way.

I’m hoping I can work out at least a few rough sketchy outline-y bits and pieces this week. Even if it just gets me a few steps ahead of where I’m at, that would be a huge help. Because I am very very lost right now.

I have settled a few sort of general VIBES I’m going for in this story though. I’m definitely leaning into the shonen anime feel of it. But I’m also REALLY digging into a “found family” sort of thing, and probably a little queer romance subplots as well. I think.

In the meantime, if you’re curious, I put together a story mood board for The Onyx Seal on Pinterest, which can be found here: https://pin.it/1rcu9TT (The assortment of images there probably doesn’t make any kind of thematic sense to anyone but me, but I’m ok with that.)

In other news: I’ve also been reading a fair bit, and hope to have a couple book reviews up shortly. Hopefully within the next few days *fingers crossed* provided that I can a) find some energy after work, and b) fit regular blog writing into the Nano-packed schedule.

That’s all for now! If any of you are doing Nano and want to share your projects, please feel free! I’d love to hear what you’re working on!

How Are We All Holding Up?

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Hello folks! I hope you are all doing well. How is the quarantine treating you? I’m on day 44 of “self-isolation” – well, sort of anyway. I did have to go into work a few days this week and will again next week, but other than that I haven’t gone anywhere else and most things are still shut down (so no bookstores or movie theatres or window-shopping in Midtown…)

Are you all handling things ok? Are you finding things to keep you occupied? Did you have some kind of income to keep you afloat, or did you lose your job because of the pandemic? It’s all very scary right now and we are all under a lot of stress. Some people are using this time to “better themselves” and others are taking care of their families and still others are just fighting to keep it together. Whatever you are doing, it is ALL GOOD. You are doing the best you can and that’s all anyone should expect of themselves or others in a time like this.

Don’t be too hard on yourself. This is something I have to remind myself as well as anyone else. I have had some really rough days, and some days that have been perfectly fine. That’s totally natural but sometimes we cannot help but feel like we’re not doing enough – even though we know logically that that’s totally silly.

I thought I would share a few things that I’ve been keeping busy with, and if you’d like to share what you’ve been up to, that would be great!

I am still participating in Camp Nanowrimo for the month of April, and doing surprisingly well. I mean, I’m not going to be writing 50k words like some people – I gave myself a SMALLER goal, just 20k words this time. But I have managed to keep up a daily writing streak ALL MONTH, which is the best I’ve done in YEARS, and I have written a little over 16k words so far, which is more than I have written (again) in YEARS. I am very happy about that. While I am in no way minimizing or trivializing the difficulties, tragedies, and death toll of this pandemic, I am trying to be grateful for the small things, and one of those things has been the luxury of free time I haven’t had in quite awhile.

I have also been reading a lot still. Not quite as much as I did the first couple weeks, but still. I finished Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex (book #7 of the series) last night (technically at 2:30am this morning). Unfortunately, because I am borrowing those audiobooks from the library, I now have to wait for the final book of the series to become available and the wait is KILLING ME. In the meantime, I have started the audiobook of The Wee Free Men (one of the Discworld books) by Terry Pratchett. This book will satisfy one of the categories in my “Storm the Castle” 2020 Reading Challenge (which much of my reading these days has not done). I am also slowly working through the nonfiction book The Queens of Animation by Nathalia Holt.

Speaking of my reading challenge, I have now completed 9 out of the 21 books on my challenge. When I finish the two books I’m currently reading, that will put me at 11 and I’ll be halfway through! In addition, when I finish the 8th Artemis Fowl book I will have officially finished the first series in the 2020 Finishing the Series Reading Challenge. And then I’ll move on to the next series (perhaps The Dresden Files, though that I might be TOO ambitious…)

I have also bought a computer game for the first time in, oh… 12 or 13 years… I bought the video game Gris when Steam was having a sale last week. I’ve never been a big gamer, but I did play a couple computer games back in the day and I thought it would be fun to pick it up again. I’m only 3 “chapters” into Gris so far, but I absolutely love it. It’s quiet and calming and the art (which was the main selling point for me, I admit) is absolutely GORGEOUS. I highly recommend it.

In addition, I am doing more cross-stitch work. I’m almost done with this robot design I got from the Etsy shop DianaWattersHandmade. She has great designs for reasonable prices, she ships quickly, and she’s really friendly as well!

Anyway, those are some of the things (besides work and house-cleaning) I’ve been doing to keep busy and calm. How about you guys? Found anything fun? Read anything good lately? Please do share! I’d love to hear about it!

Camp NaNo April 2020

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This is my public announcement that I am participating in the April Camp NaNoWriMo event this year.

Can I assume that everyone knows what NaNoWriMo is? Is that a safe assumption? Probably, but just in case: NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It is a nonprofit event and website that started… oh gosh… a long time ago, to encourage amateur writers (and everyone really) to put aside excuses, fear, hesitations, etc. and just sit down to write the first draft of a novel over the course of a single month. The official NaNoWriMo event takes place in November, and the goal is to write 50,000 words between Nov 1st and 31st (50,000 words being chosen ages ago, slightly at random, as the average length of a novel).

However, because some people simply cannot participate in November for any number of reasons – as a former professor, I can state that it is particularly difficult for teachers to participate in November – and because other people simply wanted more opportunities to write under the gamified conditions and community-building structure of the NaNoWriMo website, the organizers created two “Camp Nano” events: one in April and one in July.

Camp Nano is a little lower stakes than the official November event. The goal is not to write a novel, or 50,000. Instead you are given the opportunity to create your own writing goal: choose your own word-count goal, make an editing goal, work on short stories or whatever else you want. And you create writing groups (they used to be called “cabins” but that appears to be gone from their new revamped website now) to work with friends or any people you meet on the website.

I have participated in the official November event 4 times and have only “won” (ie, finished at least 50,000 words) ONCE. I have also participated in Camp Nano a couple times. But its been awhile.

I hadn’t initially planned on participating this year, but a friend of mine invited me to work in a cabin with her, and I figured “why not?” So I made a very last minute decision and just updated my profile on the Nano website yesterday – just in time to start officially writing tomorrow.

I have made a smaller goal for myself – just 20,000 words instead of 50,000 – and I will be working on a fanfiction piece instead of an original work. It has been a very very VERY long time since I have been able to write anything productively or coherently, and I am hoping that allowing myself to work on fanfiction, with a predetermined world and characters, will help shake my brain loose again so I might eventually move back into original work.

*fingers crossed*

I’d love to hear from others who are participating in Camp Nano this month! Or who have participated in any of the Nano events in the past! Why did you work on? How did you fare? Have you ever “won” in November? Do you win every year (my best friend often does and I am jealous of her…)? Sound off in the comments!