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Ah. It is here at last.

Nanowrimo 2007. Hopefully this year I may actually complete the thing.

I have participated in this writer's marathon since 2005 when I found out about it over the summer working in the city at a Borders cafe where my wallet was stolen for the first time. I was devastated. At least, when my wallet was stolen. But it was also there that I discovered Chris Baty's guide, No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days. I devoured it within minutes. Okay, so it took like an hour to skim through, but I did whip out my trusty notebook and record some notes, like exactly what month was National Novel Writing Month and the daily quota of words. 3,500.

My first Nanowrimo novel was called Eye Eat Dreams, about a girl who returns home to find she has no home; it has been destroyed by a vicious monster known only as "Monster" and two odd beings - a man with a double personality and a strange bat-like creature - become her companions in the search for the elusive and deadly Monster. Along the way they meet weird and strange characters, each one with his own reason for discovering Monster. Needless to say I ran out of steam within the fourth chapter, and that is not surprising: I was trying to fill the whole story with shotgun action right from page one. No wonder I was exhausted, and so were my characters. Since then I have reworked the plot and the characters and have made the storyline much deeper than the original and retitled it Vhyleria.

My second Nanowrimo was intended to be a wry take on the fairy godmother tradition, intending to make the fairy godmother do her second and most overlooked duty: to take custody of her godchild. The Fairy Godmother (or just Godmother - I was still uncertain) was to take place on the north side of Chicago, just north of Wrigleyville. In it, Sally becomes an orphan and her eccentric aunt brings her to a world where baby dragons are mistaken for stray dogs, a colony of vampires live quietly at a psychic shop, and a vast cavern lies beneath the breadth of the city consisting of unused underground parking lots...otherwise the home of the fae. It got scrapped when I started writing about a chilling incident when Sally meets her "dead" parents behind the glass of a sliding door - too weird, too creepy. Goodbye.

I hope this year I will be met with more success. This year, 2007, will be host to my new Nanowrimo novel, Mesopotamian Devil (working title). It has been an idea I have been toying with for a while - what would happen if you could never touch the ground? Or allow yourself to, for that matter. It is about Vaughn, a reserved half human with a past, and Sirai, a golden girl who takes on more than she can carry alone.

...I'm still trying to work out the story, so I'm afraid to post it now for fear of ruining my image of it forever. But do not worry - I will post chapters of it as I go, whenever I find time to edit. They will be available on my FictionPress site, so please review to give me your critiques! I would love to hear them, but I also love flattery! *ahem* But yes, I would much rather prefer constructive criticism *cough* because it will make me a better writer.