Any absolutely fantastic political-thrillers out there this year? Planning on setting your novel in DC? Or have something completely off the wall? Share it here!
I'll get us kicked off...
My Nano starts with simple dialog, two people who obviously have seen each other in a while running into each other in a coffee shop. They share small talk and catch up a bit. Then the memories start flooding us...!
Cam graduated from Georgetown at 20 years old with a Masters, she was a bit of a child prodigy in the areas of social sciences. She has a BA in political science and her MA was a focus on organization building and civil unrest. She took this awesome pedigree and hit the road with a scholarship for more research burning a hole in her pocket. She ends up using the money to become a crusader of sorts; working with anarchist activists throughout the country to organize protests, boycotts, and online drives. At 21, she meets Nic Atkins, a playwright who's also in the movement who's excited, interested, and a true believer in the work of the movement. Nic's an anarchist, an atheist, a musician, artist, he talks a lot with his hands, and he's old soul. There's very little he touches that doesn't turn to gold, and Cam is taken in by him immediately. He's two years older and they travel the country for their beliefs - places I'll hit will definitely include Montgomery, Chicago, San Fran, DC, and NYC at least - sleeping on friends' couches (or sometimes strangers' too), living out of their backpacks, getting thrown in jail for civil unrest a couple of times. They're typical floating vagabond protesters, essentially.
We skip ahead to a 27 year old Cam (in pearls and a cardigan), who runs into a 29 year old Nic (still sporting shoulder-length black hair and really cute leather bracelets) at a Soho coffee shop in NYC. We find out what's gone on in the skipped time through their conversation and flashbacks, which make up the rest of the book going back and forth between the two. We see one flashback where they met. Another when Cam left him. Another to see Cam marrying the wealthy and political Isaac Samuel in an incredibly beautiful ceremony. Isaac and Cam have a conversation about having children. Cam spending her days bored as a wealthy wife and her evenings on his arm at political events that she would have been outside protesting just five years earlier. Nic receiving an award for one of his plays, meeting with people about publishing essays of his on the movement...
I'm trying to come up with more flashbacks - up and down times in their relationship, the time they've spent apart, why it didn't work out, their lives nowadays - any suggestions? Please? With cherries on top?
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On twitter: http://twitter.com/littledupont
On LJ: http://fictionaldupont.livejournal.com/
0 / 50,000
Oct 3, 2008 - 13 01
Don't know yet! But then again, no plot, no problem! ;-)
----------Of course I have a blog!
0 / 50,000
Oct 4, 2008 - 10 59
Here's my premise: sex, lies and murder at the Miskatonic University teaching hospital.
Every year, thirty-five high school graduates receive an unusual invitation: to attend Broadmoor College, a scholarship-only institution dedicated to treating manifestations of mental illness that transcend conventional science. This ancient university recruits only the exceptionally, unconventionally talented - schemers, strategists and sociopaths - and puts them on the cutting edge of human knowledge. There are no classes, there are no rules, just the Broadmoor Experimental Sanitarium and the greatest arcane library in the world.
Art Raddner finds himself surrounded by other eighteen-year-old geniuses with nothing to do but whatever they want. They'll spend the year at each others' throats and in each others' beds, all while exploring a hidden world of wonder and madness they'd never known existed. And before Freshman year is over, five of them will be dead.
I've always had a little trouble with characterization in my writing; I'll think of a cool plot, and the characters are just there to push it along. I'm fighting back against that in this piece; I've got some very solid characters who are going to be fighting for attention even as they're advancing my plot. A few sample profiles:
EVAN HASTUR – At first glance, a charismatic trust-fund sociopath; underneath, an experimental scientist of human behavior, ever questing to see who can be made to do what. By turns astonishingly kind and astonishingly cruel, he’s always looking for the lever that he can use to move the world. Son of the oldest kind of money, heir of operatives who have kept their hands proudly dirty in the service first of king, then of country, and always in the proudly sullied name of Hastur. “There is always a way.”
BRIGADIER ‘BRIGGY’ JONES – At first glance, the golden child in the letter jacket; underneath, a relentless make-righter, with a crusader’s disdain for that which isn’t right-in-the-right way. Jog before breakfast, balanced diet, work hard, pray hard, live clean, no exceptions. A modern-day Puritan, with an Old Testament tolerance for foolishness and no illusions about the weakness and sinfulness of everyone weaker than himself. Which would be everyone. “There are two kinds of people in this world. For now.”
CONSUELA ORTIZ – At first glance, a textbook goth, big silver ankh and pentacle jewelry, dark cosmetics and clothes; underneath, an archivist of human superstition, perpetually questing to learn more about the history of myth and mythology. A polytheist who sees all gods as part of a greater truth and seeks to find other, new, yet-undiscovered gods. Bisexual and polyamorous. Looks at gods and lovers like professional athletes: they all think they’re the one-and-only greatest, but she’s just a fan of the game. “I’m no bigot. When I’m on my knees, the more the merrier.”
52,613 / 50,000
Oct 5, 2008 - 14 56
A poor school bus driver named Perry Normel drops a fortune cookie at an oriental restaurant. That leads to a faux pax with a Lady in Red who has an old oriental man place a curse on Perry. In figuring out how to vanquish himself, Perry meets various members of the Syd family (Lui, his wife Aunt Ay, their niece Plei who is called Denise, and Rayn the Lady in Red).
Perry manages, as well, to go back to WW II Japan. There he meets and marries a young widow who lives in a village on the Kwai River upstream from a POW camp. As part of the marriage agreement, Perry adopts her son who suffers from Down's. When Perry leaves to never return (after a railroad bridge near the POW camp blows up), she changes the boy's name to Kwai (after the river) and he turns out to be Perry's Grand Father.
All of this is done in having fun with Pro-Active Dreaming (known, as well, as Lucid Dreaming, but I can't use that term because I have a character named Liu Syd) in a fantastic way. It lets me, as well, have fun with characters such as Perry Normel, his mother Ab Normel, his father Foley Normel, and his grandparents Kwai and Emma Normel.
I have more Normel names and will see if I can work them in.
BeaJay
----------BeaJay -- The WordSmith Wannabee
2006 - "The Vision of Second Samuel" - Avalibale at Amazon.com
2007 - "Second Samuel's Vision Revealed" - Available at Amazon.com
2008 - "Perry Normel fun with Liu Syd Dreaming"
50,051 / 50,000
Oct 7, 2008 - 12 44
9-year-old Ana Lucia Castillo Falcon runs away from home, following the recently departed band of Rom. Daughter of a prominent military official, Ana Lucia's departure is looked down upon as a disgrace upon her family. She will spend the next decade assimilating into the gyspy culture, traveling through three countries, falling in love, starting a family and finally returning home to Valencia. But things are not as she left them. Her parents, in an attempt too regain some of their tarnished honor, teach their son, Juan Marco, that his sister is dead to them. It is with this belief in mind that he and Ana Lucia will finally see one another again. Even after a decade of separation, they are drawn to each other. Their reunion wll be anything but happy.
Setting: 1729-1739 Spain, France and Italy.
----------0 / 50,000
Oct 7, 2008 - 13 04
I fully intend to cheat this year and probably not "Finish." I have too many unfinished projects to bust out a blank page and crank out a first draft.
But here are the three projects that will see an increased wordcount over the span of nano:
1. The Strange - Adventures in superheroes in a southern university town.
2. Idle Hands - The Devil has an employment agency because he has to find work for all of the idle hands to do.
3. Capitan Insane - What if your job literally drove you crazy? What if you got the power to get back at those people? What if everyone loved you for it? What if you were so messed up in your head that you didn't think any of it was real?
Have a good day all.
50,416 / 50,000
Oct 14, 2008 - 16 30
When they were eleven years old, Will and Gaby were chased across the state by a pack of invisible hounds. With Will's family, they fled from house to house, motel room to motel room, always pursued and unable to call for help. Will and Gaby, guessing that the pursuit had something to do with the unusual powers they shared, separated in the hope that this would deter the hunters. They lived with their respective families on opposite sides of the country, not daring to contact with each other for fear of once again bringing the hunt upon them.
Now, four years later, Will's parents have died and his brothers and sisters have all grown up. With no one left to protect, he leaves home to find Gaby again, so that together they can find out what really happened four years ago, who they are, and why someone would go so far to separate them.
This will be the first book-length installment of a serial I intend to publish online starting in January. I've already promised my friends that they'll be able to read it, so that should give me excellent motivation to finish!
----------For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
-T. S. Eliot
http://virginiaruth.com/
51,604 / 50,000
Oct 14, 2008 - 20 37
I think I have it...
On The Whispering Wind
Mystery, literary fiction
Twenty-three year old starving musician Lee Vee Kashmir Zoso Harris tracks down her father's prized Gibson Les Paul signed by Led Zeppelin post-her mother's death in order to sell it and use the money for her own well being. As Lee uncovers the guitar's last whereabouts, she learns a lot about the father she never knew due to his death when Lee was one-years-old. But Lee runs into dead ends and conflicting answers, causing her to doubt what she perceives is truth and fiction.
----------13,173 / 50,000
Oct 15, 2008 - 07 36
Oooooo...
Miskatonic U. Very cool...
0 / 50,000
Oct 17, 2008 - 16 08
Everybodies plot sounds really great! I have had a last minute change in what I'm going to write about.
Liam's Parallel Universe (Working Title)
Nikki is a twenty something with a checkered past and an unsure future until she falls in love with and fights to adopt the little boy that will unlock what her life is supposed to be. In the process she uncovers her own family secrets and embarks on a spirtual journey that would have been unthinkable before Liam entered her life and turned it upside - down.
----------I'll Probably Die Writing
33,058 / 50,000
Oct 20, 2008 - 06 58
Basically, the story revolves around Bianca, who is a total daddy's girl princess. She grew up with her adopted father and was always the center of his world. She's a bit of a snob and is starting to realise that this has won her few true friends. The novel follows her coming into her own and learning to love through a process of meeting new people. They come to her each from a connection she already has in a systematic way (through six degrees of separation). By the end of the book, Bianca has not only learned how to be a good friend and an unselfish lover, but finds her birth mother and is able to actually have a relationship with her - something she never expected or even desired, but it is this relationship that ends up completing Bianca's life and allowing her to finally become the woman she was always meant to be.
It's along the lines of chick lit/literary fiction, but I'm hoping to throw in some good humour and maybe even a little satire if I can manage it. ;)
----------LJ: http://livejournal.com/cloverdew
Twitter: http://twitter.com/cloverdew
10,023 / 50,000
Oct 21, 2008 - 13 20
I just decided today that it is going to be the memoir of a bizarre offensively anti-social conspiracy theorist rock critic who stumbles on the Junior Varsity version of the Illuminati in 1976. They run the check-cashing industry, for instance, and control the telegraph system. He tries to expose them, but the mainstream media is totally uninterested. It'll contain lots of parodies of period conspiracy theory fodder, a Squeaky Fromme-like romantic interest who's obsessed with dosing Jimmy Carter with hallucinogenic frog-sweat, for instance. That's pretty much all I've got, I'm hoping to just jump into this guy's irascible voice (blatantly ripping off Harvey Pekar and Lester Bangs) and let it figure out where it's going to go.
14,331 / 50,000
Oct 22, 2008 - 16 35
Guess I'm the black sheep, then. I'm writing fantasy/steampunk.
Basic premise: fantasy creatures are real, and started showing up in the world. Problem is, they didn't like us, and they were deadlier than humans. Now, humans live in cities in a quasi-post-apocalyptic setup.
50,017 / 50,000
Oct 22, 2008 - 17 37
Quite honestly, I don't HAVE a plot right now, which is kind of a problem. I tend to go stream of consciousness when I write for NaNo, but I'd like to have some sort of direction. There are two subjects I know really well: Nerdy things (because I'm an engineer) and food things (because I'm a crazy foody). Any suggestions would be appreciated!
30,268 / 50,000
Oct 22, 2008 - 19 38
Mine is based on my Macropedia Terrradoma (http://espacesociety.org). The MC managed to ruin his career, but on a visit to an alien star system discovers some advanced tech. He becomes an "inventor." Sci-fi, natch.
As for plot, I've a four-page synopsis and now I'm expanding to about a sentence per scene.
----------2008 - What Shadows We Pursue - ?????
50,251 / 50,000
Oct 23, 2008 - 16 02
That's a fantastic concept!
-----------DiscipulaDC
"I am the girl anachronism" - The Dresden Dolls
50,251 / 50,000
Oct 23, 2008 - 16 42
I was reading a (nonfiction) book at about the (modern) antiquities trade and there was a mention of an archaeology expert conspiring with the stolen arts dealers. There was a throwaway line about now that he was working with them, they wouldn't have to kidnap that expert from Oxford after all.
Given that I'm very into Victoriana, and somewhat familiar with Egyptology and liguistics, I've decided to set my story in (probably the late) 1800s, and will deal with the intertwining themes of Imperialism, history, national & ethnic identity, social heircharchy, "civilization" and propriety, gender roles, etc . . . but kind of taken on a "Da Vinci Code" aspect traking down the tomb and body of Alexander, the scrolls hidden by Septimus Severus, Pharonic tombs, and maybe even a trace of Atlantis.
My MC, Sara Marlowe, is the orphaned daughter of a gentleman Egyptologist at the British Museum. Her guardian is her older brother, Thomas, a physician to nobles in London. At an antiquities auction they meet "art dealer" (and international smuggler) Julian Doyle, an East-ender and first-generation London born Irishman that has built up a persona of English gentry, to whom he sells the art. He discovers that she is one of the few people that can read hieroglyphics (as well as some other useful languages like Demotic), and he tells his flunkies to bring her along as translator. They kidnap her rather than ask her along. While Thomas is tracking her down, Sara is off around the Mediterranean with Doyle and they develop a romance over a mutual love of history and their being more intellectual than male, English gentry would expect. I'm not sure at what point Thomas will find them, but he will greatly disapprove. I may have them get caught up in the "scramble for Africa" or at least the British occupation of Egypt.
-----------DiscipulaDC
"I am the girl anachronism" - The Dresden Dolls
8,545 / 50,000
Oct 30, 2008 - 11 13
My story is a humorous (I hope!) light paranormal romance. The heroine, an executive for a non-profit organization who'd rather be an artist, accidentally discovers she has a talent for witchcraft when she sets a voodoo doll of her evil boss on fire, and the boss is burned in a cooking accident. Even though she knows her stuffy upperclass family will disapprove, she goes to a well known local witch to learn how to develope her gift. Trouble is, the hero, a part-time bartender/part-time personal trainer who she's madly in lust with because of his great pecs, hates anything to do with magic. This is because he grew up in the chaotic household of his aunt--the aforementioned well known local witch. The hero and heroine hook up on a physical level right away but can't make a deeper connection until she learns to accept herself as she is, and he learns to accept others as they are. Which with any luck will happen 30 days and 50,000 words later.
----------Gail Hart
26,002 / 50,000
Oct 30, 2008 - 11 18
Don't have a Plot o3o Just a main idea.
Aveline O'Briens' parents go missing and she's put into the custody of her three Uncles Ryan, Neil, and Thomas. Ryan is a raging alcoholic, Neil is a solitary quite man with no social life, and Thomas is a hard working supporter. The story basically follows her as she helps the uncles over come their pasts and get ready for the future. Very sad story with a happy ending X3 Fist time I've done something out of the Fantasy/sci-fi genre.
33,058 / 50,000
Oct 30, 2008 - 11 28
I want to read it already!!! :)
----------LJ: http://livejournal.com/cloverdew
Twitter: http://twitter.com/cloverdew
33,058 / 50,000
Oct 30, 2008 - 11 34
Sounds really interesting. Good luck doing something new. Let us know how it goes!
----------LJ: http://livejournal.com/cloverdew
Twitter: http://twitter.com/cloverdew