Nanowrimo Spotlight: Metamorphose Magazine

Okay, we’re into the last week of National Novel Writing Month now, and I still have a few spotlight interviews to share with you. Today’s comes from Star Davies, who’s come on my blog to promote Metamorphose.

When did you start with Nanowrimo?
I joined Nanowrimo back in late 2007 after some fellow writers created a buzz about the race to 50k. I was addicted. from 2007 – 2009 I entered the race and completed at least 50k words. In some cases far more. In 2010 and 2013 circumstances forced me to sit out on the excitement, but I was quickly back into it. While I have enjoyed the writing and the thrill of the race, my fondest memories of Nano are from the community of friends I have made over the years. Most of them have very strong characters and interesting stories I would love to see in print. They have been incredibly important to helping me grow stronger as a writer. I participate regularly on the Role Playing forum to blow off steam and de-stress from rough days. I love this community and am proud to support it.

What are you writing about this year?
For the first time since I seriously started writing, I am working on a screenplay. It’s incredibly stressful because the margins won’t work, the rules on formatting direction and dialogue are so strict, and my computer hates me. It’s a fantasy, because really, what else would I write? Last Man to Die is about an unlikely hero named Tov as he relates the horrors that humans sustained as they were exterminated by an animal-like race called the Kraits. Spoiler alert, he sustained injuries so great that he is the last human to die.

What is your favorite book – you have to pick just one!
Ha! Anyone who is a fan of fantasy knows how impossible that is. Most books come in a series. There are a lot that have influenced me, but I think I would have to go with … Robert Jordan’s A Memory of Light. I have never cried so much throughout a book before in my life, and I doubt I ever will again.

What advice would you give to all your fellow Wrimos?

Donation Day and what Nano means to me.

Well, it’s Donation Day over at National Novel Writing Month; in fact, it’s nearly over, but the donation fun has not been sold out. You still have a chance to win some of the hourly prizes, and the Office of Letters and Light is going to be releasing a special cover song in thanks for donations of over fifty thousand dollars today. And they still need more to cover the cost of putting on such a fabulous world-wide writing event!

I don’t have as much free money to donate around as I have in some previous years, and I’ve already donated two hundred to get into the Night of Writing Dangerously dinner, but I scraped up another twenty-five to join in the Donation Day fun. I didn’t win the hourly prize I had my eye on, but that’s alright.

In conjunction with Donation Day, Nanowrimo is asking people to tweet about ‘what Nano means to me’, and that got me thinking that what it means to me is probably too much to fit into 140 characters.

For one thing, it means all the friends, both at home and around the world, that I’ve met through Nano. I’ve always been shy in public situations, and I actually remember that the first time I went to a local Nano write-in, I sat at the next table and then left before the two MLs (chatting to each other) realized that I was a writer. But bit by bit Nano pulled me into the social side, and this year I’m the Co-ML, welcoming every wrimo to the write-ins and loving it!

On another level, Nanowrimo means something deep about the universal power of story-telling and how it draws us all together.

So best of luck to all you Nano-ers out there as we approach the half-way point in the month, and donate if you can! 🙂

Nanowrimo is one month away.

Well, it’s October, and among other things, that means it’s time to get ready for National Novel Writing Month! The forums have been swept clear in the annual autumn cleaning and the new website rolled out. I’m still not sure what I’m going to write this year, but I found a delivery slip on my doorknob this evening when I got home, so hopefully I’ll be able to pick up ‘Goal, Motivation, Conflict’ and another great book from Gryphon press to help fire up my imagination. I also snapped up Holly Lisle’s ‘Create a Character’ workshop book from Amazon, since the big sale was held over for a day and a bit. 🙂

Still really excited about being an ML for this year, and a little nervous. It’ll be a fun ride, that’s for sure.

So let’s see, what else has been going on? I did quite well with my September goals, all except for posting a full polished story up on fanfiction.net, which just took too much time. And I haven’t settled on my October to-do list just yet, but I put in more time this evening on lesson 18 for ‘How to Revise your Novel.’

I’m excited. Did I say that already? Are you excited?

Another Grant Faulkner interview! This one is more official than mine.

Following in my footsteps to tell the world more about their new leader, Lindsey Grant, program director for National Novel Writing Month, put up an interview on the Office of Letters and Light blog about the OLL new Executive Director, and Chris Baty’s heir in spirit, Grant Faulkner.

So check it out to learn more about Grant’s book-stacking habits, his beloved mannequin head, and the coolness of 100 word story! And if you haven’t yet, you can read my interview with Grant today too.

Nano Spotlight: Adventure Writes

Good morning! Only 15 hours, seventeen minutes left in November here. Today, I’ve got my last Nanowrimo spotlight – Mel and Adventure Writes.

How and why did you end up participating in National Novel Writing Month?
This is my first year, and I had heard a lot about it from other peoples blogs, and how excited everyone was, but I didn’t really want to do it at first. I didn’t think that I would have enough time to write 50k words. Well Ali Cross posted about how she was planning on doing NaNo even though she just had her book come out. I thought to myself, if Ali can do it, so can I. So I signed up before I chickened out.

What are you writing about this year?
I am a rebel NaNo because I’m writing my story that I’ve been working on for a while, The Daughters of Etheria

What’s your favorite part of Nanowrimo and why?
Probably the writing calender that was posted about how many words to write a day. When you’re told to 1667 words a day to meet a goal, it doesn’t seem so overwhelming.

Who’s the best character in your Nano?
I don’t know if I could choose one of my characters as the best, but I do have a favorite. Jack Frost, is my favorite character of all.

Sneaky Ninja Question! What one thing are you most thankful for?
In life, my family, in the writing world, I’m most thankful for all of the bloggers out there who post things about improving their skill, their writing experiences, and motivating others to become better writers.

The next leader of the Office of Letters and Light!

Like many people who went to the Night of Writing Dangerously in San Francisco last night, I thought that the ‘big news’ was going to be the fact that this was Chris Baty’s last year as the Executive Director of the Office of Letters and Light, the non-profit that runs Nanowrimo, Script Frenzy, and the Young Writer’s Program.

I don’t know about anybody else there, but I was very excited about an announcement that Chris made in the middle of his moving thank-you speech – naming Grant Faulkner, board member of the Office of Letters and Light, as his successor, and thus our new Fearless Leader.

I don’t know much about Grant. I managed to get a moment to congratulate him at the dinner, and even got my picture taken with Grant and Chris Baty. But he seems cool, and like a reasonably good choice to follow in Chris’ footsteps, even if he also reminded me a little of Adam Baldwin, who wouldn’t really be the kind of guy I’d ask to lead me into 30 days of creative craziness.

A very west-coast Six Sentence Sunday

Hello from San Francisco! I’m sure I’ll have lots to tell you about the NOWD tomorrow.

I had a bit of a hard time picking six sentences that I liked for tonight. This is after Brett asks Melissa if she can put him in touch with a particular medic back up on the main ship:

“Nurse Practicioner Lyon is busy trying to save all of our lives from the Kane syndrome, Ensign Walker,” Exec reminded him. “You were there when we heard about this interdisciplinary committee that she is serving on. Surely there are other biology and anatomy specialists on the ship that you could consult with.”

How could he explain to a woman like the Exec that he trusted Natalie, and that they understood each other as colleagues? Then something else occured to him. “Wouldn’t every specialist be working on curing the Hyperspace sickness, in their own way?”

Day 14 Nanowrimo update

So, I’ve been working on my new book for just about two weeks now – and I have to say, it’s going pretty great. Having a lot of fun, discovering more about the Star Patrol universe than I thought I would considering all the years that I’ve lived with Brett Walker and Melissa Dempsey in the back of my head – but there are some things that you just don’t discover until you’re walking the walk.

My current word count is 36,534 at the moment. I’m hoping to get a few hundred more done this evening before I go to bed.

Some of the cool stuff about my book so far:

• The mysterious character of Exec, the second-in-command of the ship, opened up and I found out more about her at the most unexpected times – though maybe I should have expected them. For instance, the Captain gives her a little pep talk on an open comm line about how he thinks that she’s the right woman for this mission – and since he’s her superior, he can speak to her in a familiar fashion, as the ensigns and even lieutenants under her can’t.
• Even though I hardly plotted out any of the high fantasy sequence, it came out pretty well in true Nano fashion – not quite ‘whenever anything gets too boring have somebody burst through the window with a sword in his hand’ but close. 🙂
• The stuff after the end of my original outline, though, which is the stuff I’ve been working on since Saturday, though, is possibly the most fun – after we’ve had first contact with the aliens and are trying to figure out the getting-to-know-you stage of human-Breian relations.
• One of the coolest bits of this is that I know all of this weird stuff about Breian history and the Archon’s discipline of knowledge that my human characters don’t, yet – but I’ve also absorbed this intuitive sense of how to play out the secrets that I wouldn’t have had a clue about back in 1998. There’ll be time.
• And I really like the little bits and snatches of Jody Quinton and Gary Peterson’s budding romance… so much so, in fact, that I’m almost wishing that they could be the main characters, instead of Brett and Melissa and all of their angst. Oh well…

How’s your nano going? Have you ever taken an opportunity to go back and work with an idea from many years ago and see how much you’ve learned as a writer since then?

Guest starring Badger as Johnny Fox…

Today’s word count: 22,727! Yay for me.

I’ve been thinking about one of the minor characters in Act Two who’s been very fun to have in my Nano – he’s basically just a figment of the fantasy world that my characters are trapped in. But the coolest bit, is that I mentally cast him as Badger from Firefly – not just Mark Sheppard, but specifically Badger, because Mark’s a really versatile actor, but Johnny is almost exactly what Badger would be if he crossed over to this particular fantasy world – and got a different accent.

Johnny is a trade baron, with convoys and caravans crossing the land, and running the entire show from the tiny village of Connaw, near the northwestern edge of Darkwood forest. There isn’t that much to Connaw, but all of it is under Johnny’s thumb, and he likes that better than being based in a larger town with bona fide nobles and guardsmen and who-knows-what else to deal with.

My main characters come to Connaw in the first place because Fox’s supply wagon is the only way for them to sneak into Breia Manor, deep inside Darkwood, and two of them get cover jobs as caravan security guards. Unfortunately, Johnny becomes suspicious of them for something that was really just an unfortunate co-incidence, and they end up having to deal with him to save their own plan. That’s when we find out that Johnny wants something from Breia Manor too.

Unfortunately, the plot is soon going to be leaving Johnny behind – after one more bargain for information, my main characters will be heading off to the mountains to find three-armed wizards. But it was great to have him around for as long as he was in the story.

Quick Nanowrimo update: Day 8

Feeling back on track again. I realized yesterday that I’d overcounted by about 100 words on Sunday and missed a few weekend milestones that I thought I hit, and then yesterday evening I was tired and didn’t feel like writing much when I got home. This morning I was all excited to write on the bus – and then the bus was 25 minutes late and got really crowded because it was essentially carrying two full loads, so I didn’t have enough elbow room to use the Alphasmart. Ended up just reading the whole way on the palmpilot.

But I crossed the 20k line on the bus ride home, and I’m off to the first unofficial write-in at Chester’s beers of the world. Whoo-hoo!

How’s your November writing journey going so far?