Camp Nano Spotlight: Fantasy Writer Guy

Hello, friends, followers, and all you A-Z riff-raff. Today I’m delighted to welcome back Fantasy Writer Guy, a great friend to this blog; because I didn’t find anybody else to file under F for the A-Z challenge. What do you have to say for yourself, Rich?

How did you find out about Camp Nanowrimo?
It was a question on the Jeopardy game show – or should I say answer? “She created camp NaNoWriMo,” said Alex. I was a contestant. I was losing and desperate so I took a wild guess. I said “Who is the Last Unicorn” which was really stupid of me because the last unicorn was standing right there. She was actually one of my opponents. Her name was Amalthea, I recall. So I lost the match but I got to meet Alex Trebec and I heard about camp Nano which is great, so really I was a winner in a sense, right?

No, wait. I remember now. I heard about Camp Nano through the Three Day Novel Contest community. That’s right. Forget the Jeopardy thing. Sorry.

Have you participated in Camp Nano before? If so, would you call it a success?
I did July and August last year. July was my second 50K month ever. Yay! Success! August I bombed because I went on holidays and played Catan all day for a week with the world’s smartest fourteen-year-old.

Do you know what you’re going to write this year?
I’m probably going to be a total rebel and count both my A-Z blogging articles plus start a new novella called Pico And Tinko Take Minerva. Minerva is a planet. Pico is short for Picopolopoulis; a teenager from the Jupitarian group of moon nations. Tinko is short for something else. Maybe… Flogandalfrodobaggintinkobald…? Or something like that. Something that rolls off the tongue easy. Pico and Tinko think they can conquer an entire planet, just the two of them, because they’re from such a far more developed society with far more advanced technology. But things don’t go as planned. And as this novella surely won’t go as planned, I will probably bail around 20K and fall back on a couple short stories I started earlier and which are growing into novellas themselves. There are other possibilities; five or six projects-in-progress on the radar. I’ll be counting every darn word I write.

What’s your favorite part of your Camp project?
I guess hot dogs. Can I say that? Okay, hot dogs.

Sneaky Ninja question! What is your favorite book – you have to pick just one!
My favourite book is Siddartha by Herman Hesse. It was a profoundly intimate reading experience because the hero goes through events and perspectives which I know well from my own life but which have been incommunicable with people I know. I was in tears through most of the book for that reason. I have no idea how other people would react to it though, so I don’t often recommend it.

Random Ramble 200:
How I become a writer: I was a big-time Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master as a young lad, with a great knack for creating adventure scenarios. I began assembling my opus; an epic adventure. But before it could be fully assembled on paper, we D&D-ers had grown into young men with interests in jobs and girls (or boys) etcetera. Fifteen years then passed but my epic story remained in my head wanting life.

Then a magic thing happened: I was suddenly dumped from a thirteen-year relationship and two days later, likewise thirteen years into my career, I got laid off! It was the best double-whammy ever. There I was: No house, no job, a plump bank account (from severance and home equity) and a relatively healthy mind. For the first time I tasted freedom. So while contemplating what I really wanted to do with my life, and discovering what a rut I had actually been in all those years, I realized it was time to give my adventure life, in the form of a novel. It was called Elvenkind. I didn’t know what I was doing but two hundred words into the journey the characters had come to life and I had learned a thing or two about novel-writing.

Onward!