Longa Via
an excerpt

It was just as well, he thought. He would be able to take care of his brother well enough when the time came. For now, he needed to concentrate on the task and hand, and that task came to him directly in the form of the _New Moon_. The sun was setting at her back, making it slightly more difficult to see her, making her shadow larger and longer. To the imagination's mind, she loomed before them like a giant dragon, the crystal wetness of the water making her scales glisten, and the distorted colors that always come just before sunset showing her to be a purple-dark - the midnight of midnights coming to devour the stars that shone like diamonds and gave off hope that could be found in no other way.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the task at hand. Thero watched as the ammunition hurled by his _Brave Wind's_ starboard catapult broke the _Moon's_ boom and fore - mast apart at the base, causing it to fall, breaking several animate objects that were strewn about the ship's deck and finally into the railing. Well, not quite, but almost. Caught up on several different ropes the weight of the mast rested on them for a few stretching and unusually silent moments (considering that this had been the opening act of the great theater of battle that was about to unfold before them but was currently lying quite neatly and primly folded at their feet - which did in fact take the metaphorical form of the depths of the ocean as that was what they were floating in the middle of and all that) before the mast (just in case during the course of that record parentheses ramble you happened to lose track of what it was that was happening) became one with gravity (the mast did) and fell into the railing and consequently into the saltwater sea amidst much snapping and flying of ropes (as if any sea could be any sea but a saltwater sea. I suppose it really could, but then it would be called a freshwater sea, not a saltwater sea; and if that were the case, then would it really even qualify as a sea at all?).

Okay, back to reality. Even though this is not reality. It is fiction. Fiction is made up. That means that it is not true. The Amish say that writing fiction is the same as lying. They don't read anything but the Bible. Not that they miss out. Sike. They so for totally miss out. The author of this book, ahem, _novel_ is not being very writerly at the moment, as describing to you the false (but not sinful) beliefs and doctrines of the Amish (or Pennsylvania Dutch) has absolutely NOTHING to do with her novel. She must be word padding. She is. She should be ashamed. She is. But she just keeps writing. You see, it is twenty five minutes until one o clock in the morning a m eastern time, which is where the author lives. (It would not do much good or make much sense if she told you what time it was on the East Coast if she did not live there. Chris Baty, founder of this grand adventure, does not live there. He lives in California. California is not on the East Coast. It is on the west one. Coast, that is.) It is nearly one o clock, and when the clock strikes one (which it never will because the author does not have a clock that strikes, only one that blinks little letters up onto the ceiling. I mean numbers. A clock that blinked letters would not do her much good.) there will officially only be five days and twenty three hours left until midnight on Friday, November thirty first. (I mean thirtieth. November does not have a thirty first. In fact, November has nothing. It is a month of the lunar year. It cannot own anything.) So the author was starting to panic because she was behind. When this whole mess that she has begun gets worked out, she will not be behind any longer. If this thing ever does get worked out. She (the author) may simply leave it hanging on a cliff about to fall because it really does not have anything at all to do with her story, ahem, novel, and when she finally finishes celebrating and ten wakes up from her long December month of hibernation and recovery and begins to type this story onto her computer, it will take a great while to reach this page. But when she does get to this page the whole thing is going to be edited out anyway. Actually, that process is going to begin happening several pages before this one. If ifs and buts were fruit and nuts, we would all have a merry Christmas. Christmas is in one month. But

There goes a thought train. See it floating by? You see now that I was right. The author has left her sidetracked mind thought hanging off of a cliff. It is the same cliff where her inner editor met his match twenty five days ago. Has it been that long? Yes. The reason that the author has done this is because she knows that all of this is a waste of time and may never get typed up because it is worth it. On second thought, it probably will, if only to be e-mailed out to people as the only part of her story that is word padding at its worst. A truly sad and pathetically poetic and poetically pathetic confession. The reason for this is really several distinctly separate reasons. The author has decided to reveal all of them to you at length.

The first is that none of the inhabitants of Nano-land-for-lack-of-a-better-
name are Amish. And they are all quite allowed to read fiction, although not many of them quite know how to read.

The second is that a novel is a writerly, scholarly, and academic pursuit, and it is made most indecently less so by the author throwing a thousand words of complementary gibberish filled ramblings into the midst of it at thirty eight thousand fifty seven words.

The third is that it is exactly one o clock and the author wants to go to sleep 1) because it is good and 2) because she has not seen her friends for a week and does not want to be a complete and total zombie at breakfast tomorrow which will be served in approximately eight hours and forty five minutes. But if the muse insists...

The fourth is that nowhere in all of Nano-land-for-lack-of-a-better-name is there any place called Pennsylvania for the Dutch to live, nor any Netherlands for the Dutch to have come from to live in Pennsylvania. On the same subject, there is no known person in the entire country who goes by the name of Chris Baty, nor any California for him to live in. There is also neither a West Coast nor and East Coast - only a southerly coast.

The fifth is the country's complete lack of clocks - striking, blinking, or otherwise - displaying numbers or letters, time zones, or anything else to do with such things.

The sixth is that Nano-land-for-lack-of-a-better-name knows absolutely nothing of either November thirty first or thirtieth, or of December.

The seventh: there are no such things as computers, cliffs, or Christmas anywhere in Nano-land-for-lack-of-a-better-name. Okay, fine, maybe there are some cliffs. But only a few. And no inner editor has ever been brutally cast off of any of them.

The eighth: people don't write novels this way.*

The ninth and final reason that the author is doing this (do you remember what that even was, exactly?) is that the author is doing this is that the author flatly refuses to be a character in her own story.

So there.

Now she is going to count her words and sleep so that tomorrow she can wake up fully functional and resume her story and the dance with her plot where she unwittingly left it off so many many many pages and several hundred words ago before now.

DISCLAIMER: none of the above statements and or remarks are meant to be taken as being made against or insulting toward the Bible.

*"The eighth: people don't write novels this way." This one is in the process of being so.

Next morning: Now that the author has gotten some few, blessed hours of sleep, she thinks that she might possibly be able to return back to her story, ahem, novel.

Or not.