Nanowrimo

I made it!!! I have 50,0021 words. The good news for you? You don't have read about it anymore! The novel isn't done but I did get the 50,000 words. I think there are still 10-15 chapters left to write to finish the story, and since my smallest chapter is 2000 words that would mean at the very least 20,000 more words to finish it.

I checked the Roar of the Crowd deadline it has been pushed back so I might end up writing for it after all. I have a bunch of anthologies I am going to try to write for, and I want to finish this novel. So I have a lot of writing ahead of me.

Nanowrimo

I made it past 45,000 words. Whoo hooo. I may end up taking Roar of the Crowd off of my current projects, the deadline is the end of November and I don't know that I'll have time. It's too bad I had an idea about Naumachia, the roman naval battles that took place in the coliseum.

I added a bunch of anthologies that had interesting topics to the current projects section, there are more there than I am going to be able to write, but I thought I would list them out.

Happy Thanksgiving

My Top Ten Favorite Villians

I decided I needed a break from Nano, so instead of writing a short story during my writing time I did something completely unproductive. So without further ado-

The Villain. The driving force of any good story.

Random House Unabridged Dictionary defines villain as "a cruelly malicious person who is involved in or devoted to wickedness or crime; scoundrel; or a character in a play, novel, or the like, who constitutes an important evil agency in the plot."

Below I have collected my top ten villains from film and literature.

10. Cruella de Vil (101 Dalmatians) – Perhaps one of the most evil characters ever created, she wanted to kill puppies for their fur. It doesn’t get any more evil. The only reason she did not make it higher on the list is complete and total incompetence.

9. Angelus (Buffy the vampire slayer) – Angelus is cruel for the sake of being cruel, and has a devious mind that always kept him one step ahead of the scoobie gang, until they gave him his soul back, damn scoobie gang.

8. Thread (Anne McCaffery’s Pern Novels) - Thread, an unintelligent organism that falls from space with only one desire, to eat all living things. I’m a sucker for the seemingly unstoppable bad guy, even when the bad guy isn’t sentient. The only thing that kills it is fire, good thing they have all those dragons on Pern or they would totally be screwed.

7. Malice Do’ Urden (RA Salvatore’s Drizzt Novels) – A powerful woman who is constantly in state of war with the other houses of Menzoberranzan, she leads her house in a ruthless struggle to become the most powerful of the noble families. How can you not like a lady who brings her son’s dead father back from the dead as a zombie, for the sole purpose of killing her son. Now that’s what I call evil.

6. Sauron (Lord of the Rings) – The great and powerful evil lord, who for all intents and purposes is a god. He wages a violent and bloody war that nearly destroys all human life in middle earth. You gotta love all powerful evil.

5. Lex Luthor (Superman) – The man with the plan and the money to get it done. The classic oil baron tycoon with a twist, how can you not love him, anyone who can take on Superman again and again and somehow always seems to get away deserves a round of applause. I mean when you get right down to it he’s just guy, and he takes on Superman. If he were up against any other hero they would be toast.

4. Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th) – Jason is the ultimate unstoppable force. You can’t reason with him, you can’t negotiate, you can’t even run. No matter how fast you run or how far, he will catch you. He is one of my all time favorite villains.

3. Iago (Othello) – The ultimate schemer who all other villains are just pale imitations of. Iago plots the downfall of Othello from the shadows, never confronting him face to face, the whole while pretending to be his friend. His reason, not getting a promotion at work.

2. Lord Soth (Dragonlance Series) – The Knight of the Black Rose. One of the fabled Knights of Solamina, whose battle cry Est sularus oth mithas(my honor is my life) brought hope to many and he is a hero of Krynn. Until he falls. As a villian he is cursed with unnatural life for the crimes he committed before his death. Every night he must sit in his ruined castle and hear the story of his dark deeds, of how he was tasked with saving the world but instead he returned home to confront the woman he loved who he, falsely, believed was unfaithful. In a fit of jealous rage he kills her and the cataclysm he could have stopped kills millions. He is a powerful force for evil, who can kill with just a word. He is a villain who shows just how far a hero can fall.

1. Darth Vader (Star Wars) – Once more we see the fallen hero, who has become a powerful force for evil. He is a ruthless killer, who leads the Empires forces with an iron fist. But his story is also one of redemption, even after years of serving evil there is still a spark of goodness in him. He is without a doubt the greatest villian ever.

The Cursed Story

I think I may have a short story that is cursed. I wrote it back in May, and it is the first short story I wrote when I decided to start writing short fiction. It has been out in submissions ever since, and has never had a rejection. However all three of the places I sent it went out of business while it was submited to them. I have just sent it in to Semaphore an online magazine of specualtive fiction. If they go out of business I may have to retire the story for the sake of the the small presses everywhere.

In other news, I broke 40,000 words on nanowrimo. 50,000 by the end of the month doesn't seem so crazy now. I don't think the novel will be done at 50,000 words but I plan on writing like its nanowrimo until its done. I think it is going to come in around 70,000 words, of course it is a zombie novel so if I get really tired of writing some of the characters I can end thier arcs by having them get killed.

Horror Through the Ages

Horror Through the Ages is available on Amazon. My short story Roman Blood is in this first release from Lame Goat Press. Roman soldiers and vampires, enough said.

Buy It Here

My Nano story is coming along, I just broke 30,000 words, I going to try to get another thousand before I go to bed.

Nanowrimo & Stuff

I made it past 25,000 words to day. So I am offically half way done with my nano story. I was hoping to get a little ahead, next week we have Storytime at work on four different days instead of just two. That means that I will be dealing with close to 90 kids instead of the usual 50 for Storytime. I'm not sure I will be in the mood to write when I get home, but we'll just have to see.

I have also joined the Great Zombie Collaboration at Pill Hill Press. There are fourteen of us and all of us are writing two chapters of a novel. I have my first one done and I won't have to write another for quite a while. I had Chapter 2 and 27.

I haven't been doing much other writing, just writing some notes when I get other ideas. With Nano its kind of hard for me to do much other writing. When I am not acutally typeing I am decideing what is going to happen next.

The new book of the Wheel of Time is still calling out my name. I started and realized I had no idea what was going on. I started skimming through the books to see what I remembered and decided I had to reread the last three. Everything before those is crystal clear but I don't remember these ones at all. Its weird.

National Novel Writing Month Upadate

So I made it over 15,000 words, which puts me a about a day behind where I should be, but since I didn't start writing until the 3rd that means I am actually catching up. I need to get done early so I can write a Roar of the Crowd sub, due at the end of the month, so I'm hoping to get a little ahead on the weekend.

It is kind of nice that nanowrimo is in November. Since I got my promotion in August I get paid holidays, that means between Veteran's Day and Thanksgiving I should have three days off that I would not usually get.

I know the blog and my short stories are suffering a little bit from my focus on nanowrimo, and it doesn't help that I have the Gathering Storm, the newest book in the Wheel of Time series sitting on the shelf begging me to read it.

Nanowrimo

So I made it past 5000 words on my National Novel Writing month story. The story has already morphed into something a little different than I planned. It is still a fantasy story with zombies but I was going to try to get something with the feel of Lord of the Rings but not the plot. The story I'm writing doesn't have that mythology/fable feel that lord of the rings has. Maybe I'll write another fantasy novel about zombies and work on world building a little more before I start.

As I'm writing, I also got an idea for a short story and another novel. I am super happy about it because I was having a dry spell for ideas. It was a good thing I had Summer's Blood to finish or I would have not had anything to write.

It seems like I either have so many ideas that I can't write them all or that I don't have any. Weird.

Summer's Blood is done!!!!

The first draft of Summer's Blood is finally done. It came in at just over 78,000 words. Time to set it aside for awhile and work on something else and come back and edit it. I think I'm going to have to add a couple of big chunks of story, I'm guessing that I am going to end up at well over 80,000 words, proably right around 90,000.

Time to start on Nanowrimo, I already had a story idea ready, but I wanted to finish up Summer's Blood first. What's my idea for Nanowrimo? Think Dawn of the Dead meets Lord of the Rings and you'll get a pretty good idea.

A free online story

Hi everyone, I have a story in the Novmeber issue of Static Movment, the story is called A Real Hero, it is a fantasy parody:

Click Here to Read it!