Why do I do NANOWIRMO?

 Hello!

Another November has arrived. This means, another year of NANOWRIMO has begun. This is the 20^th year, I believe.

For those who don’t know, NANOWRIMO (or more officially NaNoWriMo for those who want to take the time to type the acronym out correctly) stands for National Novel Writing Month. This is a month where writers are encouraged to write a novel (or a novella) of 50k or more words in 30 days.  The goal of NANOWRIMO is to encourage aspiring writers to produce a complete work, get in the habit of writing every day, and to give them a community of other like-minded individuals for encouragement and support.

I know there has been some controversy around this event. I’ve heard career writers say they do not participate because they are writing all the time anyway, so why would November be any different? I’ve also heard from new, self-published, or yet-aspiring authors that it has helped them produce content and/or get into a writing habit.  NANOWRIMO as a non-profit organization has set up various resources to help writers of all ages (including creating a teen/young writers track) and provides information and tools to help guide you through the whole novel creation process. And yet, they also partner with a lot of products, sell merchandise, and probably profit a bit from some of that.

While I have participated in 8 NANOWRIMOs, I haven’t really paid attention to the other events they hold. This post, specifically, will be about the rules for winning and why I do it. Let’s start with the rules.

1.       Writing starts at 12:00: a.m. on November 1 and ends 11:59:59 p.m. on November 30, local time.

2.       No one is allowed to start early and the challenge finishes exactly 30 days from that start point.

3.       Novels must reach a minimum of 50,000 words before the end of November in order to win. These words can either be a complete novel of 50,000 words or the first 50,000 words of a novel to be completed later.

4.       Planning and extensive notes are permitted, but no material written before the November 1 start date can go into the body of the novel.

5.       Participants' novels can be on any theme, genre of fiction, and language. Everything from fanfiction, which uses trademarked characters, to novels in poem format, and metafiction is allowed; according to the website's FAQ, "If you believe you're writing a novel, we believe you're writing a novel too."

This seems like a lot of work. Why on earth would anyone want to do it?!

Well…

Someone told me this year that a former participant of NANOWRIMO said that “it doesn’t matter what you write, as long as you win.” While I will be the first to say that the goal should not be to write just a bunch of garbage, hitting that 50k word finish line is exhilarating. During the first year of NANOWRIMO, the organizer actually asked to verify that participants actually met their word goal (7 of the 21 entrants actually finished by the way). Nowadays, the “winning” is more honor-based (yes, there’s a tracker, but you can lie to it).  However, the word count “win” is really just the visual representation of what you, the writer, is trying to accomplish.

Of the rules above, I have broken a number of them; whether it’s not starting a NEW project on day 1, or counting other writing projects done in November as part of my “word count”, or using the month for final editing etc. But for me, of the NANOs that I have participated in, I have won 7 of 8. Did I write my 50k words each time? More or less…but the main point was that I did what I told myself I’d do:

-          Finish the novel, even if that’s after November end

-          Edit the novel even though the “new words” I wrote fell under 50k…).

-          Write 50k+ words and get some of those unpleasant asshole scenes on paper (which is harder than it sounds)

The most important thing about NANOWRIMO for me is that I was able to use the combined energy of the event and the participants to motivate myself to *do the work*.  

Let’s break it down a little…

To successfully complete NANOWRIMO, unless you are a writing machine, you really need to write a little every day. Because the standard 1667 words/day is a lot easier than 10000 words each weekend day plus and extra 10k on the final day of the month. This “writing every day” thing, as I have heard from many professional authors, is the only way to really be successful as a writer. NANWRIMO is pushing that. For me, in doing NANOWRIMO, I’ve been successful at writing *mostly* every day. However, while I have proven to myself that I *can* do it, NANOWRIMO has also showed me that I don’t want to do it all the time.

You see, writing every day is tough already. It becomes infinitely tougher when you have a day job where you are on a computer every day. Or when, in your off time, you’d rather do anything other than sit on a computer more. Or when you crave social interaction after a day of burying yourself in headphones and music, emails and Word files.  Or when, you realize you’re in your mid-30s now and need to go to the gym occasionally or your clothes stop fitting. Or when you have a family or a partner or a pet that also needs attention.  Or when…

TLDR version: It’s hard.

It’s just as hard as getting to the gym every day. Yes you can do it, but you may be doing it at the expense of something else. Sometimes that expense is other hobbies like video games or sewing or fencing, but other times that expense is your partner, health, or sleep. This is a common struggle for a lot of us who have not yet made a career of writing, but who desperately want to. And until my partner can support me while I “work for money” 10-20 hours/week, this is going to be my reality. 

But back to NANOWRIMO. It definitely has helped me with some of these issues. It gives me social interaction, even if it is just writing near other people and saying, “Hey, how’s it going?”. It gives me a reason to get out of my house. It puts the fire and that little edge of competition under me which helps guilt me into keeping it up. It gives me solidarity with other writers, sharing frustrations and triumphs. It gives me inspiration, excitement and pride at being a writer.

It gives me an excuse. For one month, I CAN do it. I can make arrangements to write a crap-ton and (hopefully) finish a project. (Then I can use the next 11 months to refine and promote that project and work on other projects sporadically at my own pace…).

I know some people may turn their nose up at this approach and say that I am not a serious writer, but I will disagree. If I weren’t a serious writer, would I still be writing after 25 years? For a while, I allowed those naysayers to get the best of me. You will see that in my NANOWRIMO participation years: 2002, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2018, & 2019. Those big gaps were when I stopped believing in myself (most notably 2002-2008. I was in college and while I knew of NANOWRIMO groups getting together on campus, I tried to pretend that I didn’t care).  I stopped believing in myself because I did not have the resources and connections to convince me to keep it up. If I was not doing it “the serious way”, what business did I have even trying?

The last 3 NANOWRIMOS I’ve participated in have changed all that. I decided to seek out “write-ins” (where writers get together at a coffee shop or library and write together for a few hours). I joined writer communities, giving the NANO forums, Scribophile, CIPA (Colorado Independent Publishers Association), Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, Toastmasters and other online groups a try. I had mixed success sticking with these communities but what it did show me, was that there were a lot of people out there writing. Some were snobby, and some were encouraging. Some were driven toward publication and some were just doing it “for fun”. Some were like me. 

I didn’t find my current writer “group” specifically from NANO, but NANO has helped bring out all those writers that I already know (many of whom I didn’t know wrote!). The relationships I’ve built have carried on after NANOWRIMO was over. NANOWRIMO gave me access to a community that was already in my world and to a world that I had no idea how to break into otherwise. These groups, these individuals, encourage and push me to do better. They help me up when I am falling. Because of them I am still moving forward. Still making progress.  Because of them, I have been pushed to attend more conventions, writers’ groups, and writing workshops.  

So for me, whether I make the word count or not, it doesn’t matter. My participation in this event is one of the big ways I will work (sometimes slowly) toward my ultimate, grander, goal: to get published.

And to all of you writers, my advice for you is to definitely participate in NANOWRIMO. Even if you don’t think you’ll make the 50k. What is important, is for you to think about what you really want to do, set an achievable goal, and then run with it. Even if that goal is just to reconnect you with this love you’ve had for as long as you’ve owned pencils.

Here is my 2018 NANOWRIMO "winner" certificate. If I can do it, you can too!

♥

Lyndsie

On Beta Readers Who Are Your Friends – My Honest Thoughts

First of let me put in a disclaimer: as a writer and an aspiring author who dreams of getting published, I want you to read my book. And I want her to read my book. And him. And those five people over there.I want my friends, family, coworkers, and strangers to read my book.  I want you to read my book if you love sci-fi. I want you to read my book if you hate sci-fi. I want positive feedback. Negative feedback. Questions. Concerns. I write, not just for myself, but for you all…my audience.

That being said, one of the most disheartening things you can do to an unpublished writer is promise you’ll read their WIP and then never do it. It is crushing.

There. I said it.  

Recently, (and for most of my adult life) I have been struggling to get beta readers to actually read my finalized, author-edited manuscript and provide feedback. In April 2019, I put out a post on Facebook saying “Hey, I am looking for 3-5 beta readers who want to read my YA, near-future dystopian manuscript.” I made a point to note that I had a few specific questions and I only wanted interested people who would be able to deliver feedback by August.   I was blown away by the number of responses I got - all told, it was around 20 email addresses. So I thought, “Hell, why not?” And I sent them all the manuscript along with some questions that I wanted them to look for as they read.

To date (November 1, 2019) I have gotten ONE response, which includes all the “Thank you, I’m looking forward to reading it” emails (which, in all honesty, was 0). That one response was feedback and a request to meet and discuss it (yay!). However, think about this for a second. One response out of over 20. Frankly, that super sucks. (Later on, I did get one apology of life being crazy and the person not being able to get to it.  That’s fine. I understand stuff gets insane in life and some people will have life intervene. And yes, I also understand that I was not offering to pay people. Still though, I would expect more people to communicate…).

Here is why this 1 of 20 response thing sucks:

1.       Between April and August, I was sitting on my hands…waiting. I had stopped submitting Anamnesis to publishers. I had stopped looking for beta readers or editors.  I stopped trying to figure out how I’d pay a beta-reader. I essentially wasted a quarter year of potential progress waiting for people to come through on their word.

2.       Now, I had just given my novel out for free to a bunch of people. Maybe somewhere down the line, they’ll read it. But if I get published, would they buy it? This goes along the lines of asking an artist for free artwork. Or a physical therapist for free adjustments. Yes, some freebies are expected when you want to go into business for yourself, but if you want this to be a career or at least a profitable side-gig, you can’t be giving stuff away for free all the time.

3.       You offer to read it the novel because you want to get into my good graces…or my pants. I absolutely hate it when the following scenario occurs: Person A: “Oh you’re a writer?” Me: “Yeah I’m working on wrapping up a novel.” A: “OH! I’d love to read it sometime.” I mean, Person A doesn’t even know what I write or what my story is about. How can you, in good conscience, volunteer to read something you know nothing about? This type of enthusiasm is the carrot-dangling behavior that really crushes my spirit because the moment we break up or Person A gets busy with something else, all that promise goes out the window. And I am left, yet again, with no feedback, sitting on my hands, wondering what I’m going to do with the manuscript now.

4.       It causes me to think the worst and then descend into a spiral of self-doubt and loathing. Did my betas start my novel and find it just. That. Bad? So bad that they couldn’t get through it, but were too embarrassed to tell me? Was it offensive? Or awkward? How can it be improved? This has caused me to put a novel away for good before. And yet, I still don’t know if that novel was garbage or not…..

I’m sure right now some of you are thinking, “wow, she sounds so ungrateful to her friends. These people are volunteering their time and their energy to help.” Except they aren’t. They wrote words to me stating their intention, but that was it.* They provided me with hope, that was then let down. As writers, it’s already hard enough to get noticed. Your work falls into piles and piles of similar projects – filled with all the hope, fear, triumph and regret of their authors. When you submit something to a publisher or Agent, you’re lucky to get an auto-generated confirmation of receipt and better yet, a rejection. However, I don’t want to feel that same let down with friends.

Maybe I’m doing something wrong in my search for betas. Do need to pay them? Find strangers on websites (though this has never worked for me either)? Create an application process? Make them pay me? :P Join a writers’ group? What do other broke non-career authors do when they need a second set of eyes on their work?  

So…What did I do? I jumped in for one more try of 3 beta readers. One, I promised a bottle of scotch. One, I read his novella so now have guilting powers. And one read my first draft and knows I have no qualms hounding him until he completes it.  So we’ll see…

I will now conclude this post with a PSA: Please, please, please…don’t feel like you *have* to read my stuff if we’re friends. If it’s not your genre, or if you just don’t have time, that’s OK! I will still love you. However, if you do volunteer, make sure you can reasonably predict having the time and energy to follow through. And if you have questions, or problems, or can’t finish it, please…just let me know! Don’t make me turn a post about beta-readers into a post about communication…

(And for those who have helped me out in the past and who are currently putting in effort for me, I am grateful [and hopeful] for the feedback you will deliver).

♥

Lyndsie

Welcome to Anamnesis (a.k.a. the title change) - Anamnesis The Novel

What's in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet.

- Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

As some of you may already know, I have had to make a minor (monumental) change to my completed cyberpunk novel, "Insignia". I had to change the name.

Back in 2012 when I had started writing this novel, I searched the name to make sure there wasn't a similar novel with the same one. At that point in time, there was not. However, the problem with sitting on a novel for six years means that the world of literature changes and someone steals your title....Yes, I'm looking at you, S.J. Kincaid. (Ok, ok, I also bought your book).

https://sjkincaid.com/book/insignia/ 

Insignia by S.J. Kincaid was released as the 1st in a series, in 2013. Nice going Lyndsie, way to get on that. :-\

Needless to say, not to be overshadowed by an already prolific author, I needed to find a new title. It's sad, too, because Insignia is very pertinent to my book, easy to say, and most people can figure it out. I wanted to stick to the one-word title because it captured the feel of my story - the spartan, dark world. Unfortunately, all the other more common key words just didn't have as much oomph as "Insignia". Or they were taken.

 Memory
Timeseer (already a book with that name anyway)
Humanity
Savant (already a book here too)

And then there were multi-word titles that I debated on though they seemed to be a stretch:

The Memory Code
The Mech Wars (I didn't even bother looking this one up because I'm sure there's already something out there)
Being Human
Bright Star

Finally, I turned to synonyms of the two words I like the most: Insignia & Memory. I didn't find anything good for insignia except "colophon"which is a bookmakers symbol. Specifically,

a statement at the end of a book, typically with a printer's emblem, giving information about its authorship and printing.

However, there are a lot of great words for "Memory": Remembrance, Flashback, Reminiscence, Retrospection, Cognizance, Mindfulness, Anamnesis....

That's when I fell upon that last one and said to myself, "That seems like sci-fi." When I looked it up, it hit home even further:

Anamnesis [an-am-nee-sis] (n): the recollection of the Ideas, which the soul had known in a previous existence, especially by means of reasoning.

- Platonism 

Honestly, there's no more perfect title for this novel. 

So now I just need to get it published before someone else steals it.....

Indie vs. Traditional Publishing - The Saga of Lyndsie - Part 24

In 2012, I began to write a book as some of you may know (ok, I am kidding. If you are one of those that still doesn't know that I am/have been writing a book for a while now, then you must have been living under a rock).

Anyway, in 2013, 2015, 2016, & 2017, I have finished this book. Yes, I finished it multiple times because it has undergone some edits every time I want to declare it officially "finished".

However, I have sat and sat and sat on this book. What was I going to do with it? The idea of submitting to traditional publishers literally paralyzed me. Though, I couldn't really place my finger on why.

Most people would just say that I'm lazy and/or not committed enough to my writing to work really hard and do research 45 hours/day and get 1000 rejections before finally getting accepted somewhere. But in actuality, I think my feet-dragging was really related to other things.

- I wasn't sure I was even good enough to be a writer.
- I didn't feel like I was good enough to be a writer.
- Thus, why put a ton of work into trying to get published when I wasn't really worth it?
- Also, I was overwhelmed and didn't know where to start.
- Losing control over much of my writing via contracts was not appealing
- Conflicting information
- This highlighted one of my WORST skills: doing research

 However, I have realized that NOT getting my work out there was kind of killing my self-worth too. That was when a friend of mine opportunistically started this online writer group with bi-weekly meetups. Then from that, I learned of the Angry Robot publishing open door which encouraged me to fine tune my story for publication. THEN I found CIPA (Colorado Independent Publishers Association).

I have been to two CIPA meetings so far and have found them very inspiring. And I learned one very great thing about Indie Publishing - It really relies on networking. One of my BEST skills.  This last meeting was a presentation on Traditional vs. Indie publishing and couldn't have been more enlightening. I have weighed this decision in my head for a long time, and think I've finally come to a decision.

First of all, I am going to weigh out the Pros & cons of both styles of publishing. Now, let me tell you, this is only what I understand (and the result of 4 years of research) but it could be incomplete or plain wrong. However, if it's the latter, I would blame the websites and "respectable people" i have gotten it from.

Traditional Publishing
Pros:
- (perceived as) More respectable
- Less work in promotion/marketing for the author
- (generally) Provides cover art, editing, typsetting etc.
- Access to a wider network
- Advances and contracts to ensure work
Cons:
- Take a larger % of your earnings
- Shady contracts/contracts that can affect you long term
- Less control over cover art and edits
- Some of the pros above are inconsistent between publishers (like some require the author to do a lot more marketing etc).
- Slower to publication/printing
- Competing against many other books

Indie Pub (formerly-known as Self Publishing)
Pros:
- Keep more of your earnings
- More control over story, art, and distribution area
- Your own schedule
- More overall Freedom
- Faster to publication/printing/distribution
Cons:
- More investment financially from author
- More time required to "get big" with marketing/promos
- Quality may be perceived lower
- Competing with a lot of other authors

So the more I have looked these over, the more I have begun to feel that Indie Pub is going to be the future. Books come out quicker and they are more to the taste of the author. And since it seems that everyone is an author these days, making a living off of it may not be as easy as it used to be.

For me, I think it's the better step. I mean, don't get me wrong, I would love to be a professional writer where writing IS my day job. However, at this point, it doesn't feel like possibility from either route. Because, even if I did get picked up by a Trad Pub, it is no guarantee that I will be able to live off that. In fact, it's almost guaranteed to be the opposite at first. I would still have to work my day job while simultaneously churning out works to stay relevant. That seems more stressful than I would like.

Right now, I just want my story to be read. To be loved (and hated), shared and talked about. I want to hold a copy in my hands and say "This...this is mine".  So, I have taken the initial steps to become a published author - I bought business cards, a web domain, and have begun thinking about crowdfunding for cover art and editing fees.

I WILL have a finished, fucking, novel. Even if it takes me 10 years to do so.

P.S. OMG YOU GUYZ, I'm super excited about my business cards.

The Internal Conflict of Every Writer - The Saga of Lyndsie - Part 18

Welp, I did it!

I submitted Insignia to Angry Robot's open door publishing event. This event was for people who don't have an agent or who aren't published already. I can still submit it to other things but if I get accepted somewhere else, or get an agent, then I'd have to withdraw I think.

I really feel like there should be fireworks or a dancing bear at this point, so I am putting one in below.

Now on to the hard stuff. I'm feeling pretty apprehensive that terrified that it's going to get automatically rejected b/c of the teenage character since they said they don't want YA stories. However, I don't really feel like my novel is YA because it doesn't have many of the elements of YA. Like: No love triangles and no sparkly vampires. In all seriousness though...it's grittier and fouler than a lot of YA novels that I've read and there are other main adult characters plus an overarching theme of revolution and terrorism which is probably more adult than teens can handle? On the other hand, the biggest theme is the growth and development of the main character who is a teenager and his teenage friends.

Anyway, this blog post wasn't specifically about whether Insignia is young adult or not...that may be the subject of a further post after I do extensive research.

The main point of this post was: "YAY! I submitted a thing!" and "OH shit! I might get published but PROBABLY will just get a rejection letter, so don't get your hopes up, Lyndsie." Yeah, you're probably right....this will just be the first submission for this novel and I will have to try again and again.

That being said, I have learned a lot in this process and I thought I'd share some of it here. It will likely be interspersed with my insecurities and doubts, put-downs, and agony over how I'm still not good enough at writing to claim to be a writer. Which seems like a good place to start.....

Insignia - The Saga 

I began writing this novel for NANOWRIMO 2012 after reading Neuromancer and becoming frustrated that the world was so cool, but the characters were lacking. Case was a whiny, drugged-out hacker lowlife who was neither likable nor especially unlikable.  Molly Millions was a razorgirl, who should have been an undeniably badass cyborg chick that would slice the shit out of anyone who crossed her, but ended up getting in trouble in essentially her first job in the book and needing to be rescued by that burnout, Case.

I wanted more. I wanted to learn more about these people - the guy who was addicted to drugs who could hook his brain into a computer, the chick who had her eyes replaced with mirrored lenses and razorblades under her fingernails. I also wanted a slightly more relatedable world. Some of the technology was almost too obscure or inexplicable for me to follow (Which I find is the case with many 70s/80s sci-fi).

However, I liked the gritty, dirty world. The criminal- and assassin- main characters. I liked the odd juxtaposition of 80s tech with futuristic tech. The depiction of file folders manifested in a physical form. The idea that your brain could go somewhere that your body couldn't.....so I wrote Insignia, focusing a bit more on character development and at the same time adding social commentary about the evils of consumerism and the hope revolution brings (think Star Wars!).

Then, life happened at the beginning of 2013. My marriage exploded, I moved out, got divorced, lost my job...and while I had *won* NANOWRIMO by writing the requisite 50k words, I hadn't finished the novel. It would take me another year+ to actually complete it. "Winning" NANOWRIMO 2013 again with another 50k. Novel still was not finished. NANOWRIMO 2014 was the year when I actually completed the novel, which sat around 103k at that time.

It took me yet another year, NANOWRIMO 2015, to edit that sucker, adding another 14k of content in the process, re-writing the prologue, brutally hacking it apart, only to rebuild it from its ashes better, stronger. Then...I left it to sit for two years.

I did this for a variety of reasons. The one I would tell people is that I was busy with my job, the SCA, home-ownership...but the one I didn't admit, even to myself, for the longest time was that I was self-conscious. I didn't think my writing was worth anything. I thought that only non-writers liked my stuff because they couldn't see all the holes and flaws in it that I could see. That publishers would see. That would cause me to never get published.

I let my novel linger in "near-finalized limbo" for so long. I could tell myself, "Yeah! I am a writer! I wrote a novel! I edited that novel! I did what many, many writers can't do! Go me!" I could ride that wave of perceived success for.....eternity. Except for the fact that what I wanted, what I really, really wanted, was for people to read it. For people to love it, as I loved it.

That wasn't ever going to happen if I didn't do something with it. In 2015, a good friend put my novel on one of those sites where you can buy an informal-yet-physical copy of something. Seeing it in this fake-published state made me think "You know, maybe I can do this."  Yet I still did nothing. I polished it up more. Thought about self-publishing. But still, did nothing.

Then, in October of this year, my friend Dana Wodke, a massage therapist and life coach, invited me to this writer's group. The goal of the group is to go from zero to book in a year. Very shortly after that I saw a post on Facebook from Carrie Vaughn, a friend and author, calling out this publishing event. Finally, Finally, I said to myself, "I. AM. GOING. TO. DO. THIS!"

So, I invested money in Scribophile, where you can get feedback from other authors. I perfected my first 2 chapters. I wrote and rewrote my 2-page summary. I thought critically about where the holes were and how I would fill them. I probably neglected James by staying up way too late on a school night writing and perfecting. I submitted the novel @ 6:30PM on 12/30/17. I got a confirmation email that it had been received. I had done it.

One thing that Scribophile taught me is that editing is endless. I could get critique on a piece of writing, fix it according to the critique, and then get critique that essentially wanted it to go back to the way it was. "Does this mean that my work will never be good enough?" I ask myself.  Maybe. Though I've been really trying to ignore that voice. I can't please everyone.

I am probably not the next J.K. Rowling.

But, as long as some people like it. As long as I have an audience, whether that audience is hardcore sci-fi lovers or teen YA readers, then I will consider myself successful.

At this point, I am trying very hard to remain positive about this whole thing. It's very unlikely that I will get an acceptance this time. I mean, it's the very first time I've ever submitted anything. EVER. And I am not that lucky. I mean, even J.K. Rowling was rejected something like 100 times before getting picked up. However, I have taken the first step. And, to quote every obnoxious motivational meme:



So that was my first step.

Here's to 999 more!

Note: I have posted some resources for writers on the page of the same name within this blog. Feel free to visit it if you want to see what I have found helpful! Also, if you have any other good resources, let me know and I will add them!

Insignia - Novel Summary - SPOILER ALERT

I am posting this summary here in case anyone wants to give me feedback on the summary.

Please keep in mind that, as this is something that will be going to a publisher, it is the full story of the novel condensed to 2 pages (minus subplots). If you want to read my full novel and don't want to know the ending, then go ahead and skip this one :) However, if you would like to provide feedback on the summary, I would love to know the following:

1. Is it interesting?
2. Does it make you want to pick up the book?
3. Does it have intriguing characters?
4. Is the world vivid enough?
5. Can you tell that it's a near-future, dystopian, sci-fi?
6. Anything else...?

Thanks and happy reading!
_____________________________________________________________________


SUMMARY - Rev. 3 (realized it was bigger than 2 pages. So I had to trim it).

It is the year 2267, less than 100 years since WWIII destroyed democracy and many parts of the continental United States. The TRIUMVIRATE, the reigning corporate oligarchy, controls the population with dangerous cybernetic implants. Those who deny these implants are forced to live in slum cities infested with drug use and crime.

SAMSON, a teenage hacker living on the streets, has dreamed of escaping the corporations and living a life free from the ever-present pressure of consumerism and greed. When he is hired by a mysterious stranger to hack into a secure network and steal video footage, he catches the attention of an assassin. Sam escapes the assassin with the help of MARA, a genetically modified human known as a savant, but not before the assassin seriously injures him.

Mara brings Sam, now an amputee, to her headquarters where he becomes part of The Company, a group of contract killers. Sam shares the data with Mara and they discover that it contains proof of terrorist attacks performed by other savants rebelling against the corporations.

Sam meets the other members of The Company which consists almost entirely of savants: the Captain and his non-savant brother, a teenage pilot, a former assassin, a doctor. He also discovers his savant Skill: to see several seconds into the future.

The Company is hired to assassinate a prominent member of the Triumvirate in mega-city of New York. Before they can complete the job, they are exposed to the Memory Code by the rebels, a genetic implant in all savants that allows them to experience the memories of their ancestors. During the job, Mara learns that their mark was an undercover rebel agent, rather than a corporate goon, but not before she accidentally kills him. Their job bungled, the group fractures, barely escaping from the security forces of the Triumvirate.

Armed with the Memories of their ancestors, Sam, Mara, and TRENT, the pilot, flee the city in search of these revolutionaries who are calling themselves the Starkill Army. The ordeal in New York has taken a toll on Sam and Mara, physically and emotionally. Sam’s amputated leg is rejecting the prosthetic and he fights blood poisoning. Mara wrestles with her conscience over killing a man who didn’t deserve to die. 

Once at the rebel’s compound, the trio meets the general and his contingent of soldiers. They also reconnect with the doctor and the former assassin from their former Company.  Here they learn that the rebels have set up an attack on the Great Sea Wall of California with the intention of kick-starting a revolutionary war.

Mara and Sam join the others in planting bombs in the Sea Wall and televising the event to the world. However, the rebels are betrayed by the former assassin and suffer heavy casualties even though the destruction of the Sea Wall is successful. California floods. Sam assists in the rescue mission while Mara flees the encroaching water, meeting back up with the Captain and Aiden.

Sam is able to save Trent, though the latter is critically wounded. Mara and the Captain never return to the rebel compound but the Captain’s brother relays this information to Sam who assumes, much to his anguish, that Mara is dead. The Starkill Army slowly begins rebuilding their forces with new recruits drawn by media attention of the attack.

While Sam grapples with the loss of his mentor and friend, another member of the Starkill Army, a former savant-turned-mech named HAWK has come upon a miraculous discovery. He found that when all of his cybernetic modifications were forcibly removed during the attack, his savant Skill to read auras returned. He understands this phenomenon as the return of his humanity. This belief is taken up by the Starkill Army as a mantra. It becomes the reason why the savants and those downtrodden by the corporations will continue to fight against the totalitarian rule of the Triumvirate.

Anamnesis - Chapter 1 - Consider It Done

Ok. I have edited, re-edited, re-re-edited, & re-re-re-edited this chapter but I need to stop because this process could be never ending. SO...Here it is. Any final feedback is good, though unless it's show-stopping, might not be heeded :-)

***************************************

- 1 -

Three hundred years ago, human bodies were merely functional. Adequate. They were just as nature designed them. Boring. Then we came in with technology and made them remarkable.

Memoirs of A. St. Claire

The man with the handlebar moustache and plush burgundy waistcoat stood in the doorway of the cyber cafe.

What does he want? Samson thought, cocking an eyebrow in half-hearted interest, his mind more focused on the man’s fast-food bag. He was so hungry.

Life on the dirt-smeared streets of the slum city had been more difficult than the teenager had anticipated. While he was free from his mother’s heavy hand, this freedom was accompanied by the sharp knife of hunger that constantly sliced beneath his ribs. Newly-found independence tasted like the squalor of the abandoned warehouse where he sheltered with other homeless children. In the midst of these disenfranchised youths, no sense of solidarity arose, no kindred spirits. The bitter winter left them shivering, fighting over the meager scraps of food or combustible material.

He never imagined that hunger would stalk him like a predator. The upset of a grumbling stomach was an all-too-familiar feeling.

A year on his own had made him lean, gaunt, and desperate. His meals mostly came from dumpsters: greasy, overcooked protein from the one-star Asian restaurant, soggy sandwiches that were barely edible when fresh, and half-rotten fruit crawling with insects he couldn’t even identify; it was nourishment that stank with the rancid fumes of yesterday’s garbage.

Some days, no matter how hungry he was, he just couldn’t stomach it. Sadly, begging for the mildly stale remnants of a stranger’s half-eaten hoagie or the occasional mystery-meat kabob was barely better than the refuse. At least that stuff didn’t smell rotten…

No. You are smart, he told himself, You are better than garbage.

Sam had always had a talent with data: computer navigation was like a sixth sense to him. Most of his free time had been spent in dingy cyber cafés. A haven where he escaped the world: crouched over an ancient typepad, hunched in a cheap fiberglass chair, with eyes straining at a dimly lit LED.

He was slowly filling a fraudulent banking shell with real money – money that could only be spent outside of the city walls. Traveling in the security networks of big corporations, he stalked through the underground tunnels of their cybernet space. Worming his way into firewalls and secure shields like a cockroach made of bytes, he scrounged for scraps of cred that he put into in the virtual market. Win. Lose. Win. The CORPs never caught him. He couldn’t risk getting caught.

He snagged only bytes at a time. A little here. A little there. Keep a low profile. Don’t get noticed. Can’t get caught. The teenager didn’t fancy spending the rest of his short life on the inside of a CORP prison, serving time for a severely punished transgression.

He had too much to lose. Had to make money, not for food, or clothing, or mech mods. It wasn’t for him but for Charley; to get his sister out of this hate-filled shitthole of a city. To a real city. East, west, north – he didn’t care. All of them had promises, potential. A real life.

The man, who had, in their first encounters only observed him, began to speak. The cybercafé was empty, even the proprietor had gone for a smoke break. “You are not an easy kid to track down,” he said.

“What do you want from me?” The teen asked, tones of curiosity vying with hostility.

The man took a drag of a long, mud-colored cigarette and handed Sam a data chip. “I need you to hack a shopping mall’s security system and snatch the locked files. Payment is ten-thou.”

“Hack a system?” The teen asked incredulously, eyes bulging at the offer, “That’s it? You followed me around for months just to ask me to hack something?”

“I needed to see if you could do it. It’s not as easy as you might think, kid. And trust me, you weren’t my first choice for the job…” The man trailed off. His business-like demeanor returned quickly. He explained, “It’s an AI security system. Makes what you’ve been crawling through look like a toddler’s game. This takes Skill.”

“Oh, I got skills,” the boy responded arrogantly, a strong desire to comply with this man’s request suddenly smoldering in the hollow of his abdomen even though he only had the vaguest idea what an AI system was.

The man barely smirked and cocked his head. Nonetheless, he tapped a metal plate on the chip. There was one line of text:

JR. Avenue 5. Independence Plaza.

“This is where you can find me to deliver the goods. Payment upon delivery,” he said, nodding.

“I haven’t given you an answer yet!” The teenager called after the gentleman who was striding purposefully away.

He paused, looked over his shoulder and said, “You didn’t have to.” His smile was arrogant. Knowing. “Your face said enough.”

* * * * *

The mall’s computer was ancient. The teenager made a face. If the ones in the Internet café were 2220 models, this one must be from the mid-2000s. The server room hummed gently, the warm air heavy with sonic vibrations carrying waves of data. Colored LEDs blinked ominously, like so many eyes, watching him.

*tap* *tap* *tap* *tap* *tap*

Skills indeed, the teenager thought angrily, still fuming at the man’s smug smile from a few days ago, This bastard’s complicated as shit. He scowled at the screen.

Maybe he had gotten in over his head. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his t-shirt was becoming damp under his arms. No, he thought, it didn’t really matter. The money was too good, enough to get him and Charley out of the slums. To get to freedom.

*tap* *tap* *tap* *tap* *tap*

The lines of code taunted him. Flashing their glaring green deep into his strained retinas. His stomach growled. It’s just a shopping mall! He railed to himself silently. What could be on here?

*tap* *tap* *tap* *tap* *tap*

An AI system, the man had said. What was an AI system? It couldn’t be a new software because the boy knew all the security systems. However, he’d never heard the term before. Maybe it was an old word? An antiquated security system? Maybe that’s why it was so hard to crack?

*tap* *tap* *ta—

He was in, he stared wide-eyed. The files suddenly were zipping themselves onto the storage device. Bits flashed by in a whirr: zeroes and ones. Replicating with the precision of high-speed data, submitting to his hand, no longer taunting him, but almost screaming.

Screaming... Red lights flashing. Something had triggered an alarm. How, though? He had been so careful!

Shooting to his feet, he yanked the chip out of the mainframe just as a boring-looking man strode almost casually into the office. The man’s eyes, however, were not boring. They were dark, and angry. And they were looking straight at him.

Fuck! He ran like hell.

* * * * *

The mall was a hub of activity at this time of night. In the center of it all, sat a woman in her early thirties, with the chestnut brown hair and olive skin of a mediteranneo, nursing a dark brown beer. She was wrapped in black leather pants the shade of an octogenarian’s favorite easy chair, worn in just the right places, and a dingy white tank top under an equally loved leather vest.

The electrical humming of cold fluorescent lights could almost make her forget that the sun had long since set and all sensible people were in their homes, their Virtua-visions blaring some obnoxious live broadcast. Garishly colored storefronts looked out into the atrium, silently hawking their wares of manufactured diamonds and cheap plastic toys. On one side, nothing but top-of-the-line sex toys, the cylindrical outlines of countless male members shivering a welcome to all who were brave enough to cross the threshold of their inhibitions. And on the other, a front of a more sinister nature, where tatted rat boys hunched over too-white operating tables offering up the newest in body mod trends.

Here, some juiceheads sat at a table bristling with folds of muscle so large that they barely looked human. And over there, fashion sisters, their frozen smiles and stretch-tight skin the result of too many trips to the laser salon. A schizo trolled the floor in faded hospital gowns, begging for credits or junk or whatever you had on you, deftly weaving between the tables too fluidly. A pair of security guards rolled slowly back and forth on one-wheeled scooters, their lurid uniforms thinly disguising the mods encompassing their limbs that pulsed with the synthetic rhythm of black motor oil.

The woman carried no weapons here, as was the rule of all serious establishments. Not that it would matter, she thought, moving her dark glasses over to the juiceheads. Many were themselves weapons these days. However, it still felt strange, Mara thought, to be away for so long from her anlace – a rapier that was part robot and rarely ever left her side, though she carried it more for comfort than safety. She glanced coolly around the room, trying to project the demeanor of the stoic calm that she could barely hold on to.

The twins had told her that he would be here, on this night, getting into more trouble than he’d ever bargained for. She trusted the twins, they weren’t programmed to lie and even if they’d tried, she had other ways of keeping an honest cyborg honest. They lived in the alleys and had enough street cred to be in the know for just about every interesting pair of feet that crossed their patch of asphalt. But Mara had more street cred, and she’d pulled some strings and flexed a few muscles – the right muscles – to lead her to this frozen heart of commerce in the Sink.

The boy was only fourteen and much too young to be pulling off a heist of this magnitude. Mara could only guess how he’d planned it, how long it had taken him to devise a strategy that would actually lead him to this very spot on this very night. And she wondered even harder how he had expected to escape...unless he wasn’t aware of the danger he was in. That’s where she would come in. Clenching her teeth, she forced herself to trust that the right opportunity would present itself.

A commotion arose on the second floor balcony. Mara looked up through the tacky indoor skylight to see an achromatized pipe banister quiver in response to the sound of slapping feet. Her vantage point was such that, across the cafeteria, she could only see a corner of the long hallway with its custard-yellow walls scratched and faded from years of apathy. An adolescent with shaggy hair the color of sand was barreling toward the banister, heedless of bodily harm, eyes wild and breath pounding in and out like a bass drum. Following behind, almost unhurriedly, was a rotund, balding man in an obnoxious band T-Shirt from a decades-forgotten rock group. He wore an expression of boredom as if to indicate that he had already seen the attraction and had found it lacking.

Mara stood up and downed the last of her lukewarm ale in one frenzied swig, gagging as the grainy dregs slid down her throat. She looked up and froze. The kid had made it to the banister and reached out to it with one desperate hand, vaulting over as if he were at a track and field event. Scuffed boots with frayed laces kicked wildly. He seemed to hang in midair, his left leg tucked under him, his right thrust out, grabbing at an ethereal purchase that only he could see. The man held out his hand where Mara could see a shiny metallic square on the inside of his wrist. He flipped that wrist toward the sandy haired acrobat and one rectangle broke off and flew with unnerving speed.

* * * * *

Samson was frozen, literally frozen. No, he hastily corrected himself, not frozen. He was in the air, floating…or falling incredibly slow. His boot had scraped off a layer of paint from the banister and it puffed out behind him in a small cloud. Below was a glass “skylight” – one of those tacky creations that had been popular during the decade before he was born. Even though it had never been subjected to the elements, years of smoke, dust, and dead insects had crusted its edges, giving Sam a blurred, cinematic view of the first floor cafeteria.

The patrons paid little attention to him, too wrapped up in their coffees, booze, or the undoubtedly witty conversation with their modded-up, super model dates. There was one exception, dressed in all black, she stared openly at him with a startled frown, lifting her dark glasses away from her eyes. A heavy beer stein was clutched in her white-knuckled fist. Sam’s confused expression met hers and held her within the trance.

Sharp stinging on his knee was the only indication that he had crashed through the bug-smeared skylight. He barely felt even that pain as glass fragments gently twirled around his face, falling like weightless snowflakes toward the yellowing linoleum. A hair-like wire glittered at the corner of his vision, lazily undulating like a serpent. What was that thing?

The dark woman had moved. Arm arched behind her back, she launched the mug in his direction. It gracefully slid past his ear as the aroma of spoiled barley assaulted his nose. Closer to the ground now, he felt his left leg tucked sharply into his chest, and his right leg…he wasn’t sure.

Something was on the floor below him, it looked like a limb. A leg. His leg? He shook his head. He was in shock, he told himself, gazing at the eerily-familiar boot toe, resting in a pool of blood. His blood?

Everything is too clear, he rationalized, I’m fine. Red droplets surrounded him, mimicking large jewels or small marbles. He could see the surface of each one dimple and shift as the circular shapes became amorphous. There was too much red around him, he thought, as the metallic tang shot through his taste buds. His chest fluttered as he forced himself to breathe.

His left leg was tucked underneath him, but his right…the floor reached him.

* * * * *

The boy’s face changed from an impetuous grimace of rebellion to a frantic O of surprise as his right leg plummeted to the floor. The rest of him followed in a pallid heap of shock and fear. The silver rectangle recoiled into itself and a faint iridescent thread shimmered in the artificial light. Razorwire. Mara had chucked her mug at the assassin with a force disproportionate to her size. It crossed the linoleum desert of the food court, and shot straight through the broken window into the man’s face, shattering into a hundred unforgiving shards of glass. The assassin clutched at his eyes, but slowed only a little.

Digging into her pocket, Mara pulled out another item. It was the size of a strawberry and gunmetal grey. Rolling it between her fingers, she held her hand out flat and the little ball floated imperceptibly over her palm. Pulling her arm back, she whipped it at the assassin with blinding speed. It flew true, past the falling boy, through the hole in the shattered skylight, and directly into the assassin’s chest.

An explosion followed: noxious green-yellow gas blossoming from the rift between the two halves. The gas enveloped the assassin in a clinging, stinking cloud more tangible than ethereal. He roared out in rage, his flailing, ducking figure obscured by the squall. That should keep him busy for a while…She thought.

She rushed over to Samson, who was curled up on the floor in a convulsing heap, blood pooling around him. Ripping off a piece of her shirt, she tied a tourniquet around Samson’s leg, the crimson spreading over it so quickly you’d think it animate. Then she flung the now-unconscious adolescent over her shoulder, and barreled out of the modish jungle. Juiceheads, fashion sisters, rats, schizos and security guards looked on with only mild curiosity as if a young vagabond being maimed by a highly trained, but innocuous-looking, assassin happened every day.

Mara pounded through the streets, carrying the teenager as if he were a sack of rice, before flinging him into the back of a low-flying, rusted transport.

“Where to?” A slight voice echoed quietly from the front.

“Back,” Mara replied tersely, climbing into the passenger seat.

The young pilot’s eyes grew wide as he saw Mara’s blood-spattered appearance.

“That bad, huh?” He grimaced and began to turn around.

“Don’t…” Mara put a hand on his shoulder, “Don’t turn around. Just fly.”

As the transport rose into the air, the pilot’s voice was heavy, “Back it is.”

Mara really hated violence.

Samson Dreams of Monsters

The man-thing didn’t so much crawl out of the subway tunnel, but rather shuffled, hunched over so his chest practically dragged on the ground. He was eating something, black and furry, clutched in his deformed hand – a hand that almost seemed to be put on backwards.  When he heard the pair approach him, he stopped eating and raised up slightly on his knees, eyes wide. His ragged kilt/loincloth barely covered his mangled legs. Was one heel attached to his hamstring? Sam heard a gun click. The man had tossed the meal away and was now posturing at them - a blood-smeared face set defiant. His other arm was a crude, sawed-off shotgun. And it was pointed right at them.

“Ya smell like food,” he said, “Where is it? Give it to me.”

“Or what?” She said, “You’ll shoot me?”

“Damn righ’ ah will,” his gun quavered, “Ya got somethin’ on ya. Meat or fish.” He took a long drag of air through his dirty nostrils. “Or woman,” he said with a lusty gleam in his eye. “Ya’ll give it to me.”

Mara chuckled slightly, “No. I won’t.”

Sam had drawn his own gun, the revolver he could cock with one hand.  He aimed the barrel at the burnout with his left hand, while balancing on his crutch with the right.

Mara didn’t turn to him, but ground through her teeth, “Sam. No.”

“I got this,” Sam responded in a husky whisper from behind her, gun arm over her shoulder, lips pressed close to her ear.

“No. Sam. No.”

“Stop!” The burnout yelled shrilly, “Stop the talking talking. Stop! Too loud!” He screamed. A loud BOOM echoed through the station. The recoil flung the man-thing backwards onto his twisted hand. He cried out.

Time slowed. Mara shoved her hip into Sam as the 10 gauge slug barreled straight into her chest.  Sam’s weight shifted to the right, where his leg was not. His left knee buckled and the crutch tilted with him toward the floor.

He pulled the trigger.

The bullet went low, hitting the burnout in his working leg, which he had stretched out in front of himself to counterbalance his fall.  Sam crashed to the hard tile of the station floor, the gun skittering out of reach. The burnout yowled. Sam grunted.

Mara, on the other hand, had not fully lost her balance and was staggering back into a true standing position. She lunged at the monstrosity, grabbing his shotgun arm.

BOOM.

The gun went off again, this time the slug skimmed Mara’s face, leaving an angry red trail drawn on her cheek.  She wrenched. The thing’s noises turning into an uncontrolled howl of agony as Sam could see his arm twisting back unnaturally. A grinding reverberated through the air, like claws on concrete. Sharp pops resonated through the pit of Sam’s stomach. With one final crunch Mara had ripped off the burnout’s shotgun arm. Sam blinked as the world reset itself.

The howling began to die to a whimpering mewl, as the thing looked at his bare stump.  Blood, the consistency of grape jelly, flowed out of the wound almost languidly. The man, the animal, dug the stump deep into his side as he undulated backwards in fear. Pivoting on his fused knee, he loped and scrambled down the subway tunnel pulling himself along with his free leg and gnarled arm. 

When he was finally out of sight, Mara turned to him and offered a shaking hand. She drew several quivering breaths as Sam stood. A fiery gash on her cheek oozed blood slowly, and Sam stared at it in confusion. This doesn’t seem right, he thought.

Mara gasped and looked down.

Sam’s eyes followed hers and he stared longer, unease and understanding growing in the pit of his stomach. He touched her chest, directly over her heart. His fingers came away crimson (Definitely not right) and his eyes met hers. Mara paled, realization crossing her features.

She drifted backwards, almost too slowly…also too quickly.

“NO!” Sam cried, reaching out for her hand. The red liquid painted streaks on her forarm, palm, and fingertips as she fell.

His fist closed around a coarse blanket. He was sitting bolt upright, blinking in confusion at the blackness in front of his eyes. His mouth worked uselessly, trying to grab a breath that wasn’t there. His heart thumped.

 A groan sounded next to him. “It was just a nightmare, Sam,” Trent’s voice, heavy with sleep, echoed in the darkened room. A hand patted his knee. “Go back to sleep.”

On Lucy Maud Montgomery's Tortured Life, The Tragedy of Tauriel and Endings

L. M. Montgomery's birthday is today (I'm sure Google told many of you this also). For those of you who don't know, she wrote the Anne of Green Gables series.

I am surprised(ish) at how tortured she was and how she *may* have committed suicide. She seems to have had a fascinating life though was born in the wrong era.  Apparently she is quoted to have said that she got married because that's what women did in Canada during that time (Early 1900s).Though her husband was a "winner" who suffered from religious melancholia or essentially depression.

Interestingly and not intentionally, I wrote a main character in a now-defunct zombie novel whose name was Lucy Morgan Monroe. I wonder if somewhere in my subconscious I was channeling my inner childhood lit experience? Who knows...if I could go back in time, dress all fancy (especially if I can wear a fancy hat) and have tea with Ms. Montgomery, I would totally do that. If only time machines were real...

L.M. Montgomery was a strong and influential woman of her time, in a time when women were not really able to be strong and influential. They had a path and that path was through marriage and children to inevitable death from a broken heart - broken at their wasted opportunities. Broken as their spirit was, crushed by a society ruled by men and a very few influential, yet narrow-minded women.

Speaking of ruled by men...I saw this meme today on Facebook that initially made me chuckle but ultimately made me sad.

First of all, I totally support the addition of not-in-the-book female characters to the awesome LOTR world. However, if you're gonna do it, FOR GOD'S SAKE PLEASE DON'T MAKE THEM SUCK! You had one job, PJ, ONE JOB! And you blew it.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, my rant is twofold.

1. She SUCKS at fighting. I mean, she keeps slipping up or falling and one tiny orc overpowers her to the point that she fucks over Killi because she can't keep her shit together.  Up until this point, she's been relatively badass, fairly succeeding in everything she tries to do. But in this last battle scene, she jumps on an orc's back and gets flung of like a squirrel on a T-Rex.

Meanwhile, you've got Legolas over here, hopping off monsters and rubble like some type of coked-up mountain goat, using his dagger as a sort of grappling-hook-cum-emergency brake to slow his fall... OFF OF A TROLL. I mean, even the dorky elven foot soldiers fighting with the dwarves do magical elf-dwarf vaults to embed their impossibly short swords into wargs' eyes. ALL OF THEM DO THIS. Why can't Tauriel stay attached to ONE angry orc?

2. Love. Fine - everyone loves a love story. Especially if it's a love story between the second hottest dwarf (c'mon, you know Filli was the sexier of the two with his bad-ass blond flavor savor) and a hot elf chick (not as hot as Arwen, but you won't find me complaining).  Love makes things interesting. Gives us that "aw" moment we don't get in real life, and  lets us have ALL THE FEELS when one of them tragically dies. Fine. I'll bite. This is Hollywood afterall.

But for chrissakes...did she have to be such a whiny baby about it? And worse yet, come crying to a MAN to explain her feelings involving men (dead dwarf-men in this case. *sniff* poor Killi)? And, true to form, it takes the man-elf to say "love is soooo worth it" for her to be like "ya ok sure. gotcha. I'm good now." *double sigh* Fuck you Tauriel and your "love".

This was probably the only (and most) disappointing moment in all the Hobbit movies for me. I can forgive non-book embellishments, silly dwarves, 9 hours of movie, and even the cheesy romeo-juliet/dwarf-elf love story, but could you have at least made Tauriel fight well? Oh, and not be a total baby who runs crying to a man when she needs to solve  her problems?

Stay with me here, people...She's an effing elf! They are magical! And if orc-shield-surfin', three-arrows-at-a-time Legolas is any indication of the species, they kick severe amounts vof evil ass.

Unfortunately, #everydaysexism still applies to girl elves in the made-up, fantasy world of Middle Earth. Peter Jackson, how could you have failed me so? I thought our love was true. Why does it hurt so much.

And lastly, in other new. My novel, Insignia, is finished. Did you hear that? Let me say it louder...

***My novel, Insignia, is finished!!!***

And I don't just mean finished in the "got to the end of the words" way. I mean, like I have edited it ad nauseum, spell checked it, consistently spelled all my made-up names and removed comment bubbles.That kind of finished. And ok, you got me, the formatting needs to be proofed by someone who knows what they're doing. AAAAAND it should probably have a 3rd party grammar check.  And xInfinity, It needs cover art. But content-wise it is done. No major revisions unless one of my grammar nazis decides that something is total crap. But holy shit you guys...FINISHED!

I'm putting this "NANOWRIMO Winner" badge up as I used the rampant writing-energy of this month to ride through the remaining edits. And as I probably put in 50k + worth of editing hours, and accomplished my goal, i feel like a winner. 

Humans, Octogenarians, Hate Mail and Sexbots...BoJack Can Come Too

Are you wondering about this post title? I will explain it below. 

This post is probably going to be a collections of some random thoughts as my novel reaches the end of its 3-year gestation period and will soon be born!  

1. I've been wanting to talk about Doctor Who's love of humans and Earth at some point in this book. It struck me as very appropriate since this book is all about humanness and what makes one so and how machines alter that "humanity". Also, I need to explain why my characters love and value this quality so much. Doctor who has some good lines. Like below!

Anne found this awesome Doctor Who quote for me and i decided to give it a prominent place in my novel.  You'll see where. ;-) 

 2. IT IS COMING! (I keep wanting to say "winter is coming" but that is inappropriate here even IF it is stuck in my head. Thanks, George). There is still a little ways to go with my novel.  I added all the chapters headers and have gone through 2/3 of my friends' edits. The 3rd friend had a lot of really involved comments, which is great though some of them really will involve some reworking.  (If your friends can't shit on your dreams, who can?) Which means, I have to determine which items are worth investing in that change and which ones are too much of a deviation from the story.  

One of his suggestions was to change the 1st chapter from one person's perspective to another's.  Unfortunately, that would ruin the flow and put the reader in a precarious position. Which isn't something that I really want to do.  So instead, I added a page-ish from that character's POV to get inside his head, just slightly, before you really get to know him.  I think it worked well.  You can see it below.  It is out of context here, but just go with me, OK? 

_______________________________________________

Samson was frozen, literally frozen. No, he hastily corrected himself, not frozen. He was in the air, floating…or falling incredibly slow. His boot had scraped off a layer of paint from the banister and it puffed out behind him in a small cloud. Below was a glass “skylight” – one of those tacky creations that had been popular during the decade before he was born and even though it had never been subjected to the elements, years of smoke, dust, and dead insects had crusted its edges, through which Sam could see a slightly blurred, cinematic view of the first floor cafeteria.

The patrons paid little attention to him, save for one, being wrapped up in their coffees, booze or the undoubtedly witty conversation with their modded-up, Johnny Depp-like date. Johnny Depp on a bad day, anyway.

The other one: dressed in all black, she stared openly with a startled frown, lifting her dark glasses away from her eyes, cappuccino cup in hand. Sam’s confused expression met hers and held her within the trance that he was currently experiencing.

Sharp stinging on his knee was the only indication that he had crashed through the bug-smeared skylight.  He barely felt even that pain as glass fragments gently twirled around his face, falling like weightless snowflakes toward the yellowing linoleum.  A hair-like wire glittered at the corner of his vision, lazily undulating like an animal.  What was that thing?

The dark woman had moved. Arm arched behind her back, she had launched the ceramic cup in his direction.  It gracefully slid past his ear as the aroma of overly-roasted espresso tickled his nose. Closer to the ground now, he felt his left leg tucked sharply into his chest, and his right leg…he wasn’t sure.

Something was on the floor below him, it looked like a limb. A leg. His leg? He shook his head. He was in shock, he told himself, gazing at the eerily-familiar boot toe, resting in a pool of blood. His blood?

Everything is too clear, he rationalized, I’m fine. Red droplets surrounded him, mimicking large jewels or small marbles.  He could see the surface of each one dimple and shift as the circular shapes became amorphous.  There was too much red around him, he thought, as the metallic tang shot through his taste buds. His chest fluttered as he forced himself to breathe.

His left leg was tucked underneath him, but his right…the floor reached him.

_______________________________________________

Another was to add a "Briefing" scene before the final climax.  Think of the rebel briefing before the Battle of Endor in Episode VI.  I think this could work...it may also be able to give you a bit more of a look into Sam's head as well as reintroducing Drake and hinting at the havoc he's going to wreak later.

3. The importance of the first page...it needs to have a hook. If I try to get published, I will need the first page, the first 20 pages or the first 3 chapters to be awesome. Eye-catching, tit-grabbing, dick-hardening awesome. Hmm..maybe I should use that? 

Anyway, I have a sentence on the first page that I have gotten mixed-reviews on. I love this sentence. It flowed from my fingertips as naturally as anything, and took absolutely zero thought. Unfortunately, it may be too unreachable for most people for one reason or another.  It's been a bitch finding a replacement.  I worry that I'm going to go with it's mediocre, C-student cousin. Nothing to get stoked about, but safe enough to get you through. But would it be enough? 

The sentence is as follows:

"She was wrapped in black leather pants the shade of an octogenarian’s favorite easy chair." 

Most people don't know how to parse it, and others think that 80-year-olds just remind them of the smell of pee. Which is NOT what I'm going for here.  I'm more aiming toward worn, comfortable, creased, faded, loved, once-fashion-conscious but not anymore. Clearly I am misunderstood. But unlike Captain Shakespeare (stardust) below, the misunderstanding probably will not make me look more badass...

You see, I'm very much
a man of my own creation.
  
Even chose the name specially.
Took me ages.
  
See, I'm thinking
Legendary British wordsmith.
 
My enemies and crew are thinking,
"Shake! Spear!"

While I don't have a fearsome rep to uphold, I do want to be that writer that thrills you and holds you captive or 350 pages. Losing you on a sentence on the first page, is a bad start...

4. Lastly some distraction because the cold meds are finally starting to kick in. I think I've found a hidden gem of the internet: Sexy Robots. I am fairly certain that I could write an entire blog post JUST about these, but here are a few samples. I am particularly fond of the last one.

Of course, robot is made sexier with Vodka...

Or pool...

Who needs clothes when you have tubes and ten inch heels?

On the other hand...what is she trying to cover up with that barely-there bikini anyway?

"Oops, I totally just fell into a pool with its cover on. And sexbots can't swim. Whoever will help me?"

6. BoJack horseman is telling you to write:

7. Also, just going to put this out to the universe: I hope one day I am popular enough to start getting hate mail. Because that will mean that people 1. took the time to read my work and 2. took the time to write me an angry letter. That's more investment than a lot of people will put into something. I'm good on the death threats though...those I can live without. :)