NaNoWriMo 2009: Finish Line

Twenty-eight days and 62,731 words later, I’ve crossed the finish line, my friends. I’ve completed work on the first draft of Opening Night of the Dead, my 2009 National Novel Writing Month project, with three whole days to spare.

I finished the story last night at about 12:30 a.m. I actually hit the required 50k a few days ago, on November 24, but I wasn’t finished with the story yet so I barged forward. I actually had my two most productive days of writing after I hit the 50k mark, with a burst of creative energy on Wednesday the 25th, then a slower day for Thanksgiving. Then yesterday, with the ending in sight… I’ve never been surfing, but I imagine that last burst of a novel is similar to catching that big wave and just riding it as far as it will take you.

I’m especially proud because, although I’ve met the 50K word requirement every year that I’ve taken this challenge, this is the first time since 2005 (when the project was a book you may have heard of called A Long November) that I actually finished the story itself and didn’t just make the word count prior to the end of November. That’s a pretty big deal to me, I have to admit.

“So Blake,” you ask, “What do you do now?” You’d think I would take a break, wouldn’t you? Sure, maybe if you didn’t know me at all. I am putting aside Opening Night for a while, though. Every writer learns some things about his own technique and style after a while, and one of the things I know to be true is that I cannot begin editing a project as soon as I finish the first draft. It’s still too fresh, I’m still too in love with the little lines and the little beats that a more objective eye can tell need to be changed — or even removed — to make for a better story. I need at least a few months before I can even think of beginning the editing process.

So what will I be doing instead? Well, two projects are in my immediate future. First, I’ve got to write my annual Christmas Card short story. I’ve got the plot, even the title, all planned out. It’s just a matter of putting pen to paper on that one. The other thing I need to do is get heavy in the edits for Cross-Purposes, to get that book polished up and ready to record to present in the Evercast in early 2010. Cross-Purposes, I should remind you, is my 2008 NaNoWriMo project. So that should give you an idea of my usual editing cycle.

So one project ends, and it’s back to an older one. But hey, this is what I love to do. So wish me luck, friends. It’s back to the grind.

Another quickie…

After several massive problems — problems that actually required me to do my NaNoWriMo writing longhand for three days this week, I’ve finally gotten a new computer. It was coming anyway, and with Windows 7 now out, it just didn’t make any sense to keep sinking money into that thing in the hopes that it would get better. I definitely am not going back to that particular brand of laptop, and after 24 hours of playing with my new toy, I like it quite a bit.

I’m hammering away now, trying to finish up tonight’s writing, and it’s going well. With this weekend off work for Thanksgiving, I intended to get a Hell of a lot finished. I may not actually finish the story — there’s more left than I expected at this point — but I’m pretty sure I can cross the 50,000-word mark before Thanksgiving. Wish me luck.

NaNoWriMo Update quickie

The NaNoNoveling is coming along beautifully. I just hit 30,311 words total. Remember, the goal is 50k by the end of the month, but I’ve been doing a good bit more than that each day. If I didn’t write another word until Thursday, I’d still be on pace to finish before the end of the month. But don’t worry, I’ve got no intention of allowing that to happen.

Earlier in the week, just about the time I hit 20k, I had one of those beautiful, writerly moments that only happens in a writer’s favorite stories. I’ve got several things set up — characters, motivations, set pieces and so forth. And I knew what the end point of the story was, but I hadn’t quite decided how to get there. While on duty Tuesday morning, I was pondering the story and everything — really, every significant character, plot point, theme — all seemed to just gel in my mind. It was an awesome feeling, and when I got the time later in the day, I did something I very rarely do: I outlined the second half of the book. It’s coming along swimmingly now. I’ve got about 20k left to go to meet the NaNoWriMo requirement, but I suspect that I’ll actually overshoot that a little when it comes to actually finishing the story.

And I couldn’t be happier.

A Long November Part Two: Irritations (Evercast #3)

The Evercast continues this week. In the opening, I’ll tell you a little about my current NaNoWriMo novel, my efforts to improve as a voice actor, and how you can get the eBook edition of A Long November and Other Tales of Christmas absolutely free from Smashwords.com! And if that wasn’t enough, I’ve also got episode two of A Long November, in which Lou the elf tries once again to jingle the bells of Duncan Marks.
Theme music by Jeff Hendricks. Evercast logo by Heather Petit-Keller. Additional music: Merry Freakin’ Christmas by the Mydols & Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) by Opp Sept Demo, provided by the Podshow Podsafe Music Network.

 

Click here to subscribe to the Evercast on iTunes

Send your e-mails to BlakeMPetit@gmail.com.

A Long November, along with eight other Christmas stories, is now available as an eBook from Smashwords.com. If you’ve got a Kindle, iPhone, Sony eReader, or virtually any other eBook-reading device, you can add the book to your device. Visit the book’s page at Smashwords.com!

NaNoWriMo presents… Opening Night of the Dead (Prologue)

I’m doing pretty good so far with NaNoWriMo. One week in and I’m about two days ahead of where I need to be, and I’m having fun with my novel-in-progress. So good, in fact, that I wanted to give you guys just a quick nugget of the book. Here’s the prologue, which I wrote on Halloween night, right after the clock struck twelve and it was officially November 1…

Prologue

If Josh Cambrie knew the crap he was in for after he died, he would have made a more concerted effort to stay among the living. He wandered the Halloween Festival of Fear, alone, his date having abandoned him for a guy in a Conan the Barbarian costume (and not a square of cotton padding to fill out the muscles, either). Josh was dressed as a scarecrow, and like Kelly’s new Conan, he had the physique for his costume. Josh was thin, spindly – even sickly if you looked at him from the wrong angle. To be frank, it was astonishing that a zombie would bother to bite somebody with so little meat on his bones. Then again, it was just his luck to run afoul of the only member of the undead in the world to count Weight Watchers points.

Wandering the park alone, not knowing or particularly caring if Kelly would have a ride home with her Cimmerian king, he decided to force himself to have a good time. This would have been a brilliant idea, had it proven even remotely possible. The roller coaster was a bust (literally, it broke down with three people remaining in line ahead of him), and the last time he’d gone on a Tilt-a-Whirl he’d been left with three days hugging the toilet bowl. The Haunted House, he decided, would be his safest bet. Not likely that he’d run into Kelly in the dark, and maybe a good scare would manage to wipe the depressed look from his face.

Of course, that was the great thing about the scarecrow costume – the mask covered his entire head. His coke-bottle glasses fit under there as neatly as his enormous ears, his matted-down haircut was invisible, his acne across the bridge of his too-small nose was as good as clear. No one could even see the small brown blob underneath his chin, the birthmark that his mother always tried telling him looked like a lion, but that he thought just looked like he’d been eating chocolate and hadn’t wiped his face well enough.

Chocolate if he was lucky.

Christ, it was amazing that Kelly had even agreed to come here with him in the first place, wasn’t it?

He was told that actors in a Haunted House are trained to leap at the most terrified-looking person in a group, but Josh was going in solo. In front of him was a giggling mob of teenage girls, each of whom seemed to make for a welcome target when someone was primed to leap out from a casket or reach a mummified arm out from behind a hidden panel in the wall. Since the actors invariably blew their wads on the girls, they were always resetting themselves when Josh walked past. He tried not to focus on the idea that actors paid to terrify people seemed to have no interest in him at all.

After about 20 minutes in the house, Josh wandered into an area lined with rows of pretty authentic-looking corn stalks, with yellow lights twinkling at him in pairs – eyes watching him from behind the rows. Interesting effect, one that worked pretty well, he thought. It would be better if they tried to shape the lights a bit, they were too round to really work as eyes, but an A for Effort. He even felt appropriately dressed here in the cornfield, even though he didn’t actually feel like he fit in any better than he did anywhere else.

There was a chill across his back when the gurgling sound began, and the zombie that moved out of the cornrows reached out at him, hissing and snapping his teeth. Josh didn’t scream – didn’t even flinch. He just rolled his eyes and said, “Dude, I really think you wandered into the wrong scene.”

He turned to continue after the girls on the path, but the zombie wrapped its clawlike hands around his arm. He turned, starting to get angry at the pushy kid in the zombie getup. “Look, man–”

Whatever threat or ultimatum would have followed was lost when the zombie’s thick, yellow teeth chomped through the burlap shirt that was part of his costume and into the admittedly thin flesh of his arm. He shouted, yanking his arm back out of instinct, but succeeding only in helping the zombie rip out a chunk of his arm. Blood spurted into the air and dripped from the mouth of the hungry ghoul. Josh screamed again, but still had the presence of mind to back away, flailing, and bolt from the scene. He rushed ahead, shoving aside the teenage girls (who threw some decidedly un-ladylike language at him, not that he was in any condition to get into a snit about it) and through one room after another. In an Egyptian crypt, he nearly trampled an old woman in a walker. In Dr. Frankenstein’s lab, he actually shoved the Monster himself over into the lab table, eliciting some joyous laughter from the kids Frankie had been trying to terrify. Finally, he stumbled through the exit door and fell right onto the pavement, rolling to the feet of a little man with a big smile.

Josh looked up at him, seeing someone dressed in all black, which wasn’t exactly unusual at this time of year. The small figure had no hair, but a wide, toothy grin spread across his face like he was looking down at a well-cooked steak. He held something in his left hand – cradled it, if one was going to be honest – but Josh wasn’t even paying attention at that point.

“Dude! There’s someone in there… someone friggin’ biting people! You gotta call someone, you gotta–”

“Joshua Cambrie.”

Josh blinked, surprised to hear his name from the lips of this stranger, startled just enough to arrest his panic. “I… yeah, that’s me, but…”

“Eighty-two years old,” the little man continued. He reached out with his right hand, grabbing the burlap mask that shielded Josh’s unseemly face from the rest of the Halloween crowd. With one fierce yank, he pulled the mask away, exposing Josh to the elements. Josh looked up, seeing a horrible gleam in the man’s eye, and suddenly he was far more terrified than he was when it was just the walking dead after him.

“You die,” the man said. “You die alone, from a pulmonary embolism in your sleep, after a tragically lonely and pathetically uneventful life.”

“What the hell?”

The little man raised his hand, and something flashed. Something long and silver.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m about to spare you all that.”

*   *   *

Ten Evernaut points to the first person who recognizes the mysterious guy that approaches poor Josh. Have a good one.

A Long November Part One: Preparations

In the second episode of the Evercast, I begin a re-presentation of my first ever attempt at audio fiction, the Christmas-themed novel A Long November. Are you sick and tired of Christmas decorations going up before you’ve finished sorting through your kids’ Halloween candy? So is Duncan Marks, but with a wife and son who are certified holiday nuts, he can’t escape the yuletide greetings far too early. What’s worse, as our story begins Duncan encounters a mysterious (yet strangely familiar) spirit who is determined to drive Duncan to Christmas… no matter what. Also in this episode, I discuss how I first discovered National Novel Writing Month, and how that discovery led to the creation of A Long November in the first place.

A LONG NOVEMBER PART ONE: PREPARATIONS (EVERCAST #2)

Click here to subscribe to the Evercast on iTunes

Theme music by Jeff Hendricks. Evercast logo by Heather Petit-Keller. Additional music: Merry Freakin’ Christmas by the Mydols & Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) by Opp Sept Demo, provided by the Podshow Podsafe Music Network.

Send your e-mails to BlakeMPetit@gmail.com.

A Long November, along with eight other Christmas stories, is now available as an eBook from Smashwords.com. If you’ve got a Kindle, iPhone, Sony eReader, or virtually any other eBook-reading device, you can add the book to your device. Visit the book’s page at Smashwords.com!

Assorted commentary on the universe around us

Just got home from my night class a little while ago, and I’ve got to get my butt working on my NaNoWriMo novel if I’m going to hit my word count goal for the day. So rather than a full-blown blog post, I’m just going to hit on a couple of things that are on my mind.

How ’bout Dem Saints?

I’m not a sports fan, in general. I don’t watch a lot of sports, outside of the Olympics, but in the past few years (years, not months, that’s important) I’ve become a particularly enthusiastic fan of our hometown boys, the New Orleans Saints. After Hurricane Katrina slapped around our city a few years ago, the Saints became a sort of rallying point for the city. For good or ill, the team has become a real symbol of our hopes for the city, a living example of what we’re hoping will happen to the whole region. Seeing the Saints enjoying such an amazing season, in some sort of weird transference, is like watching the entire region pulling itself back up again. It means something. I don’t know how else to explain it. It just plain means something to us.

How ’bout Dat DVR?

A few minutes ago, my buddy Mark sent me an instant message asking what I thought of the new ABC series V, the first episode of which had been airing for about 15 minutes when he sent it. My response was, “I forgot it was on entirely.” Fortunatelly, the ol’ DVR was set to record it already, so I managed to click it on. I’m probably watching the same sequence as he was when he contacted me right now, and it’s not bad so far. But man, what did we do before this technology? How would I have kept up with shows like Lost, FlashForward, and of course the most important program of all, The Big Bang Theory? It’s like a miracle.

How ’bout Dat Evercast?

So I’m hoping by now that all of you have had a chance to download and listen to the first episode of my new podcast, the Evercast. I’ve been working really hard on this show, and I want it to be something I can be proud of. I think it will be. But I’d still like your feedback. How did you like the inaugural short story, “It’s Time to Play the Music”? What kind of stuff do you want to hear in the future? Comment here or e-mail me at BlakeMPetit@gmail.com.

How ’bout Getting Back to Work?

Don’t mind if I do. I’ve got a lot of NaNoWriMo writing to do on Opening Night of the Dead.

It’s that time of year again…

I wasn’t going to participate in National Novel Writing Month this year, honestly I wasn’t. I have so much going on, with two podcasts to shepherd, school to consider, and a dozen other things either in the hopper or getting ready to heat up. How on Earth could I even consider trying to squeeze in the composition of a 50,000-word novel in just 30 days?

And if all those reasons weren’t enough, how about the most obvious one: I didn’t have an idea. It’s particularly hard to write if you don’t have anything to write about. More than anything else, this is what was going to keep me sane this November. No idea, no feeling of inadequacy about not writing. Great, right?

Then, about a week ago, something terrible happened. I got an idea.

Like many of my best ideas, it actually came about when two totally unrelated ideas somehow married each other. One of the ideas is about two years old, the other older than that, and in fact they’re both stories I tried to write before. In both cases, the stories went nowhere because I realized all I had was an idea, not a plot. And, in fact, it was a third story that provided the glue to seal the two of them together.

In fact, it was a story you may have heard. It was “It’s Time to Play the Music.” While thinking about the stars of that particular story, I felt a tickling in my mind, a weird sort of literary magnetism, pulling two completely independent ideas that had nothing in common and making them… work.

At least… I think they’re going to work.

Here’s the synopsis of the novel, as it appears on the NaNoWriMo website. And warning — if you haven’t listened to “It’s Time to Play the Music” yet, the synopsis spoils the ending…

Tim Ferris and Casey King, two dead cops, are given a shot to get out of Purgatory and make it to the great beyond. All they have to do is go back to Earth and destroy a zombie so that the soul trapped inside can go on to its destiny. The only trouble will be finding the right zombie to kill, as their target sparks a plague of the undead during a Halloween festival full of all manner of things that go bump in the night.

Not bad, right? At least, I don’t think so.

What’s that? A title? Oh yeah, I’ve got a title. It’s actually rather unusual — most of the time the title is what comes to me last, after I’ve finished writing and re-writing and pulling teeth from my mind’s eye, and what a horribly mixed metaphor. But this time, the title is one of the first things to occur to me.

Opening Night of the Dead.

Catchy, ain’t it?

Wish me luck.

NaNoWriMo 2008: The End?

Well, friends, it’s been a solid month now that I’ve been working on Cross-Purposes, my 2008 National Novel Writing Month project. And did I finish the book?

In a word… no.

BUT — the story in-progress currently stands at a handsome 51,683 words long, which means that I have officially crossed the 50,000-word mark and can consider myself a winner in NaNoWriMo 2008.

So what happens next? Well, first of all, I’m going to finish the first draft of Cross-Purposes. I’m not finished, but I am very close to the end, working on the climactic battle scene, in fact. After that, I’ve got several “epilogue” sequences to write (if you’ll recall, the point of this book was to follow several intertwined plots at once), and then the first draft will be done. After that, I’ll let it sit a while, because I am a firm believer that you should let some time pass (three months MINIMUM) after finishing a first draft before you start revising. That distance gives you a much clearer perspective than you would have if you started right away.

In the interim, what will I work on? Well, Project Rebirth will continue to be my main creative outlet. Except for Erin, it’s probably the single most important thing in my life right now, and it needs the attention. I’ve also started work on my annual Christmas short story, which (this year) will be entitled Return to Sender. I hope you guys enjoy that.

And what about Summer Love? As you guys have no doubt noticed, it’s sort of gone off the rails in the last couple of months. I deeply apologize for that to the three or four of you whom i know were reading it on a regular basis. I’m going to try to use December to build a new stockpile, then I’ll bring it back in January with the intent of resuming a regular schedule. I don’t know if it’s the ideal solution, but I think it’s the best I can do.

At any rate, thanks to everyone who offered words of support during NaNoWriMo, and please come back tomorrow as we begin our Christmas Party in earnest.

A Long November: A Tale of Christmas Come Too Early

Hey, everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, ate entirely too much food, and had a lot of fun. Today, in my mind, is the first full day of the Christmas season, my absolute favorite time of the year. And because of that, I thought I’d kick off my Christmas Party by sharing with you something a lot of you may have missed last year.

All month, I’ve been talking to you guys about my NaNoWriMo project, Cross-Purposes. The book has been going well, and in fact, last night I crossed the 50,000-word mark, making me a NaNoWriMo winner yet again. I’m not quite done writing, but I should finish the story in the next few days. But this is not the first time I wrote a book for National Novel Writing Month. My first NaNoNovel was a Christmas tale I composed back in 2005. Last year, I recorded myself reading the book and produced it as a podcast novel through Podiobooks.com. A podcast novel is pretty much the same as a book on tape or CD, but released one chapter at a time. I’d hoped to release the book right after Thanksgiving, but with one thing or another, it was delayed and the first chapter didn’t actually come out until Christmas Eve. Because of that, the majority of the book didn’t come out until the holidays were over and any potential interest was severely reduced.

But it’s a new year, and I’m sending the book out to the universe again. A Long November is the story of Duncan Marks, a father and husband who is sick and tired of all the Christmas stuff his wife and son deluge him with every year. On the day after Halloween, Duncan meets an elf named Lou who has been assigned to turn his holiday spirit around. Duncan’s stubborn nature makes Lou’s job harder than he expected, and before the Thanksgiving, it becomes clear that there is far more at stake than Duncan’s holiday cheer. I really am proud of this story, and I hope you will enjoy it too. The book is available — for free — in nine downloadable chapters. If you didn’t listen to it last year, here’s your chance. If you did read it, go ahead and listen again. After all, what good is a Christmas classic you can’t enjoy year after year?

Go to Podiobooks.com to subscribe to the podcast or download the episodes!