Sticking your neck out

This is it - the provisional title and cover for my first official Nanowrimo challenge. The basic plot was posted  in last Sunday's blog (28 October 2012).

I have just created my novel, uploaded the cover and a short synopsis with less than twenty four hours to go. As it says in the Title, What you ask for - taken from the old advice "Be careful what you ask for" and the rider that you might actually get it. I asked to be part of Nanowrimo this year, and the next thirty days will tell me if it was what I really wanted.

This is it - the waiting is almost over and the kick off, closer with each tick of the clock and sweep of the hands. All the best to everyone who's going for it this year. Good to be on the journey with you.

Working title - What You Ask For

Nanowrimo gets closer and the ideas are clumping together like stray sheep ahead of a storm on the moors, there's a lot of noise and the whole mass looks woolly  but the title - provisional so far - it may end up with something completely different - What You Ask For - comes from the old (Chinese) proverb Be careful what you ask for.
A Chinese friend helped me realise that the fun could be had when you actually do get it. Sometimes getting what you ask for is the last thing you really want!

The story goes something like...

Jessica and Josie had been out in Ten Acre Wood with the lads and came back coated with mud, and the hosing down was caught on a mobile phone and went viral on the net. Josie was PA to Bill Jardine and Jessica was Daddy’s girl and daddy was rich, opinionated and had more than a fair share of enemies, but that was business. She was his weak spot and he knew it, getting her would get to him. The first attempt fails, and the watchers are put on alert.

The girls were told to take a break, but it’s not easy to get lost, unless someone really want’s you out of the way and a second attempt succeeds. Lifted off an isolated beach and spirited away, the recovery instructions come in via YouTube, and the visual clues in the videos are analysed at the Grange and the results fed to the trackers.

Steel and Langhers are on the trail; aiming to get one step ahead. The instructions are for delivery men, but Langhers and Steel are collectors, and they’re out to get Jessica, find her and bring her back, and Jardine’s parting words as they leave The Grange, “if you need it call for back up!”

The trail takes them across the wild country astride the England/Scotland Border; into the forests of Keilder and the cold deathlike chill of a forest dawn. Where a hard cough on the still air could be a fox, or a silenced weapon finding its mark. Back up would be useful, but the clock ticks on, and the deadline may be closer than the reinforcements. 

Starts Thursday 1st November...in National Novel Writing Month.

Tweaking and Ticking

Three days to Nano - (Give or take local time variables - they're California I'm Rotherham) then the tapping starts, and hopefully the typos and mutterings will be low numbered and low key - thank goodness for the spillchucker - and auto correct - though I occasionally have disagreements with suggested spelling when I drop the odd colloquial or vernacular into the mix. All part of the fun, see how many non-standard words you can add to the custom dic. Try it with somewhere Scottish and slightly off the beaten track!
The clock continues to tick and the ideas continues to slide out of the side door In one ear out of the other sort of thing) moments before I can jot them down, only solution, new batteries in the Olympus Pearlcorder - and a fresh micro-tape cassettes. Don't you just love retro stuff sometimes.
Thanks to the glorious searching-ness of t'internet I found a tape eraser - deliciously low tech. Two magnets in a box with a slot for the tape to pass through. It's the sort of thing you just want to play with while the brain cogitates and the coffee stimulates with your feet up on the corner of the desk and the netbook/laptop/keyboard (highlight as applicable) perched on your knee. The tweaking is going down at Cheekyseagull and the news from smashwords that the apple iTunes store has just reached another eighteen countries, now available on 50 countries - most of the new ones are in the Southern cone of America.

More Nano thoughts

Heading for the start on Thursday. The Target is set and the incentive, a treat for the 1st of December. Something tastier than eating my words for having stumbled at the last fence. When the word count hits forty seven thousand the drinks will be chilling.
Nice one.

Nano and the ticking clock

Signed up on the dotted line a couple of weeks ago and told various people that I'm up for the Nanowrimo challenge - 50,000 words, 30 days - and the clock now stands at 5 days and counting, relentlessly, the way only a clock can do.
Do I feel confident, I know the challenge is achievable, strip it down and you're looking at a couple or three hours of keyboard pounding a day, every day, or the equivalent to average it out. So, yes, I feel OK, I have a picture in my head of an opening, and something of the story drawing to a close, and somewhere in the long dark evenings of November between the ghosties and ghoulies of Halloween and the frosty sparkle of Christmas lights in December the forty odd thousand words in between will tumble on to the page. That's the idea anyway, and the proof of any pre-Christmas or Christmas pudding is in the eating, and now the word is out in blogland. Still have a couple of days to link the whole shebang together and do the word count widgety thingy,