Dreams of Darkness: Nano Approaches!

So there's only one more day before Nanowrimo begins, and I am excited. Have I mentioned that? Perhaps a few times. So as the sounds of rabid pre-teens dressed as ghosts, vampires and Miley Cyrus fade away down my deceptively dark driveway I thought I would upload the blurb for my novel, and the cover. Perhaps my Miss Havisham-like confinement to the house on a Sunday night and my intense dislike of small children might perhaps make me question my attitudes towards life, tonight I couldn't care less. And why? Because I'm about to write what I hope will be my most well-thought out and fun story yet... in just thirty days.


Yes, I think I can honestly say I have never planned so hard or researched so much for anything I've ever written before. And now that I'm actually here, I'm gripped with a nervous fear; what if I open up Word tomorrow and have absolutely no idea what to write? Worse still, what if I write ten words of such complete and utter garbage that I'm forced to abandon the entire project and take up something less challenging than writing a novel, like piranha-baiting or designing ballerina outfits for small, vicious, and underfed Chihuahuas....

Review: Immortal: Love Stories With Bite

Immortal: Love Stories With Bite was a book I picked up in the hopes of finding some inspirational material for my Nanowrimo novel. I was looking for a variety of vampire love stories which could perhaps expose some of the reasons why teenagers love reading vampire fiction so much. What I didn't expect to find, upon opening the book, was an introduction by the editor P.C. Cast, which actually answered so many of my own questions. Aside from the perhaps forgivable plug for her own series of vampire stories, Cast suggested the reason so many teenagers identify with vampire stories is the seductive idea of immortality. I must admit this hadn't really crossed my mind, so I was pleasantly surprised.

But the book itself; it's an anthology of vampire stories by contemporary writers. To sum it up is difficult considering there were stories I liked much better than others. So I'll just look at each of them in turn.

Oh, Yes, It's That Nano Time of Year...

This year, I told myself in mid-October, I will plan my Nanowrimo novel down to the last minute detail.

And I must admit that, for the most part, I was fairly honest with myself. Not having done Nanowrimo last year I was determined that nothing short of nuclear holocaust would stop me from writing a 50 000 word novel in November. And even then I probably would have tried to scribble a few words on the back of abandoned factory walls, dipping my finger in green radioactive goo and keeping track of my wordcount by making notches in a permanently smoking Seaworld fishtank.

But as the long days of October crept by, I found myself itching to actually start planning now. I've heard lots of people say it's never too early to begin planning for Nanowrimo, but then again I felt strangely as if there was simply too much of October left to begin contemplating what I would do in far-distant November...