Brief Author Bio:

Lousy Writer 13, also known as Rob, is a software developer despite his hatred of computers and technology in general. As the lead technologist at Marty’s Fish and Shoe Mart, where we provide freshly caught shad to our freshly shod clients, Rob, a vegetarian, has written many complicated and unintelligible web pages and computer programs, all in the name of science and Vegetarian World Domination.

One morning, after a particularly bad day and night at the office, Rob awoke and started talking to himself, despite the advice of his loving wife, children and dog. “Self,” he said, “You do so well at writing bad software… you would be a natural at writing a bad novel!”

So Rob set out on a quest to find a plausible reason to drink even more coffee as well as an excuse to spend even less time sleeping. On October 2, 2006, that quest was completed and Rob entered the realm of NaNoWriMo, feeling like a big dream, a dream which included neither fish nor feet, was just about to be fulfilled.

His first NaNoNovel, “Children of the Stars” (Science Fiction) came out of November 2006 with 50,010 words and absolutely no plot. Several years of editing later, this inaugural literary masterpiece contains over 80,000 words and still no plot.

With this stellar success at writing bad novels under his belt, Rob decided that it would be worthwhile to do it again and so he began his second NaNoWriMo novel, “Darkness Falls” (Fantasy), in November 2007, with little more than a title, some calm, soothing cover art and a blank Microsoft Word document. Feeling that it was going way too smoothly, Rob volunteered to help out with the tech support on the NaNoWriMo site. With the calmness that the introduction of this additional chaos brought, Rob wrote with an abandon that had previously been unseen from a fish and shoe technologist and came out of November 2007 with nearly 57,000 words and something approaching a plot. With very limited editing thus far, “Darkness Falls” has now approached 60,000 words and still, surprisingly, has a plot.

NaNoWriMo 2008 brought the title of "Moderator" to Rob's profile and he increased his bad influence on the Tech forums. It also brought the world a sequel to 2007's "Darkness Falls", titled "Dark Storm Rising". It was a mad dash to the finish, including massive efforts to compete with other authors who struggled last year. He crossed the finish line with 54,013 words that he has not yet looked at since November 30, 2008.

As of this writing, Rob has no idea what he will write for NaNoWriMo 2009, though he is sure that it will likely contain a vegetarian hero, the number 13, lots of coffee, the letters Q, X, W and maybe a U or two, and either a spaceship, a talking fish hanging on a wall or a potato with mystical powers. Or maybe a monkey -- coffee-drinking, vegetarian monkeys always make for a good story, don't they?

In the two months leading up to this grand, eleventh anniversary event, Rob has been authoring a short story for the innaugural Chinese Whisperings anthology, "The Red Book". The short story, titled "Out of the Darkness," is due to be published as part of this anthology in the November/December 2009 timeframe. You can check that out here: http://www.chinesewhisperings.com. As Rob completes the final edits on this story, his thoughts continue to churn toward the next page turner to be spawned from the depths of his mind.

Will the upcoming literary gem be the one that will put Rob over the top so that he can finally stop coming home smelling like dead fish and dirty feet? Only time will tell.