So, what are YOU writing this year?

Yeah, past time for this thread - I knew something was missing, but couldn't figure out what it was - thanks Welestra!

My main idea for this year, I've called "Won't somebody think of the children." It's kind of a literary and melodramatic take on a sci-fi premise. There's a small generation starship, off on a five-hundred-year plus trip just to get from Earth to a nearby star system and explore it, but at the time of this story, that arrival is still sixty-odd years away, and things are fairly boring. The ship's computer runs most everything, everybody on the ship has jobs but they're mostly ways of keeping busy and helping the community to function smoothly, and everything's a bit decadent and withdrawn. They have a huge library of electronic media that was current when the ship first launched, and it's easy to get lost in all of that. ;)

So - my main characters are a young couple living together, Tom and Melanie, and they find out that Melanie is pregnant, which is a bit of a surprise as they thought that everybody on the ship was on contraceptives. But the big shocker is when the ship's computer announces that statistically, their child will likely be alive and competent when the ship reaches its destination. This makes both of them minor celebrities once the news circulates, since being the ancestors of the generations that make it to the end of the journey is kind of their most obvious reason for being alive. And Melanie starts to ask questions about if they're ready for their baby, ready to teach him or her (probably her) everything that she'll need for her own big adventure.

Ok so many of you who remember cold war super hero failure of 08 I'm delving back into fantasy.

I've had an idea going since about 2007 and a persistent universe I've been building that time. I had originally planned a novel that I will write that takes place before this but I wanted the first book to take place in the time when most of the stories would take place when the other had to do with a large event setting off the rest of the story. I might make a bit of it a prologue, but I'm not sure.

It takes place some long undetermined time in the future. My best guess is about 700 years or so. The one unifying the bound humans across colonized space, the Sol star and the Earth surrounding it has been destroyed about four years previous. The infrastructure of the massive empire still remains; but anarchy is universal. Various coups and tin pot dictators and even the eventual stable colonies, towns, small nations etc. Many fight and trade over resources, weapons, and remaining infrastructure.

There's one ship, filled with just a skeleton crew. It is a war ship without a navy to belong to. The remaining crew are basically those who were serving and had some calling to keep aboard this relatively small vessel taking up odd jobs like caravans, defensive work and other errands that hired guns and a good conscience can provide. It still bears its original name, the TUV Harbinger.

The Harbinger and its crew however find themselves though a seemingly simple job in the middle of a brutal unification war. Questioning what they do, where their loyalties lie and questioning whether or not they are even doing the right thing. That all combined with all the epic space battles and action scenes a good sci fi novel needs.

I'm really excited about this one.

I still have two unfinished novels; heavy, literary and laced with agenda, from the last two NaNo's where I basically wrote for two weeks and then pondered and edited for the balance of the month. I don't need a third.

NEW STRATEGY!

I'm going back to my roots; fantasy. I'm lightening up. Writing for fun. I'm reviving a cast of characters from a little writing exercise I did a few years ago, and sending them on a zany half-baked adventure. They are:

- Snuggaroot: the extra-sour but less-than-dwarf-sized dwarf.
- Ike: the stereotypical brute swordsman. Big muscles. Wee brain.
- Kleptivo: a bumbling wizard with a rather unlawful passion for gathering potential spell materials.
- Lance Lightfinger: the party's official thief. He's of mixed race, with a few skeletons in the closet. And perhaps a dress or two.
- Jean Tourette: a holy man with more vices than Billy Bob Thorton's "Bad Santa."
- And last but never least: Renzi: the ranger. It's up to her to keep this band of bickering misfits together.

The king dispatches our heros on a quest to win the legendary Eye of Atchooah from the forboding Mount Gazoon (the Gazoon heights). That's all I need to know. I can do 50,000 words on sneeze jokes alone.

http://fantasywriterguy.blogspot.com/

Another urban fantasy, but with vampires this time. And it's no Twilight-look-I-sparkle vampires ;)

was thinking of how to do urban fantasy myself sometime with Vamps, but yeah they have become too watered down. I would think I'd use them as hell's version of spies.

I'm writing a humouros teen kind of semi-romance. It's a sequel to a novel that I wrote during the summer. It's a general real teen life from a happy-go-lucky outcasty kind of girl. She loves life, and her boyfriend who lives in Ireland, but the problem is that most of the other boys at school love her too. She was fun to write as I was just breaking out of the fantasy genre with her, so I'm happy to be back with her again. Her family also reminds me of my friend's family who is quite chaotic and very good for writing for stories.

I've not put too much thought into it yet, having only learned what this was something like 15 minutes ago, but I've got some ideas in my head just waiting to be released.

I have next to no idea what genre some will be, others not so much. There's the beginnings of a sci-fi, which might end up drowning amidst my other ideas, a fantasy story that might end up making it out of the vague idea stage, and a horror novel that's been hanging out in the back of my head for several months. The horror could end up all sorts of other things though. It just looks like a horror so far.

Let's see how this goes. Right now I'm leaning toward the horror-ish one, if for no reason but to remove it from my mind.

I'm going for something more lighthearted this year. A few years ago I wrote 1,000 words about a young woman who pretended to be something she wasn't in order to impress a guy she had a crush on in high school. She was forced to continue the charade and was last seen boarding a plane... and there it stopped. I'm thinking of expanding the back story, developing the main characters and picking up where I left off. There will be humor, romance, spies and of course, murder.

I won last year with a novel about Wrestling - the main character still lost in the end; but it was good to get a "victory" under my belt.

Since then my life has been rather more dark, and the outline (I can't call it a plot yet) I have reflects that.

I do a little reading/research to get ready to write, and this year I've already read a biography of Mary Shelly, watched Anglea's Ashes and am now getting through some of Jean Vanier's "Greatest hits", so to speak. For next week, I've booked the film "Plaith" from the Burlington Public Library. I'm thinking about writing what I know about these rather tragic figures and see if a plot might pop out of it. So far, though it looks like this year's Nano will be about the darker side of life.

No Goths, however, will be harmed in this book, or in the creation of this book. ;)

Are you a fellow D&D enthusiast, perchance?

I'm doing something similar to this; a character-driven fantasy story, though I'm going the serious route. The setting is one that I've used for a few years in my D&D games. For the sake of people who don't usually care for fantasy, I shall attempt to describe my plot without using stereotypical fantasy terms.

In my story, society is more or less composed of 'high' races and 'low' races. High races are those that have their own nations, and who usually look very similar or who are considered physically beautiful. Low races have no nations and are usually considered backwards and/or ugly. The high races are wealthy, powerful, and 'good', while the low races are poor, lowly, and 'evil'. As in the real world these traits are not absolute or even necessarily accurate, but such are the common perceptions.

The main character is of low race, making him an outcast from society. Furthermore, he's physically different even from his own kind, making him an outcast from pretty much everyone and everywhere. Living this life has made him a less than nice person, but he tries to get by as best he can. He works for the city, constructing housing for the poor after a fire damaged the slum neighbourhoods awhile back. Shortly after the new housing was completed, a second fire demolished it and killed many of low race, including the protagonist's only real friend.

The protagonist (Dirg) reacts poorly to this and loses his job. Unable to find other work, he becomes an adventurer, and through various circumstances ends up working together with members of the high races. In their search for a worthy cause they learn that the fires might not have been due to shoddy construction or the negligence of the inhabitants. Suddenly Dirg's job becomes more than just a meal ticket as he seeks to avenge his friend's death.

Here are the main characters. I'm using fantasy words now so normal people can stop reading here.

Dirg: The main character. Most minotaurs (low race) are 10 feet tall and live in vast stone labyrinths, Dirg is 3 feet tall and lives in a sewer. A natural warrior of deliberately mysterious origins.
Trok: A hobgoblin (low race), Dirg's only friend. Unusually friendly and accepting, and casually heroic. Killed by plot early on.
Lillee: A magic talking sewer rat (low race) that follows Dirg around whether he likes it or not. She's obsessed with the idea of the heroic tale and wants to be in one herself.
Shu: A peke (high race) is a small fluffy dog-like person with a self-righteous streak that is considered to be inherently noble. A paladin is a divine warrior witha self-righteous streak that is considered to be inherently noble. Shu is both of these things.
Maxwell: A human (high race) scholar and not-quite-priest, dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. Somewhat cocky, full of youthful invincibility.

I was indeed a D&D enthusiast for many years through childhood and adolescence and for a couple years in my mid-twenties as well. Eventually my "opus" campagn became so big and layered in plots it became unplayable. Years later it became a novel which I'm hoping is not unwritable. It stalled a few years ago just because my writing interests have migrated so much. I now intend to turn that story into an epic poem instead (and one day finish the novel).

I love the sound of your story. I love stories where the hero is an "outsider". We tend to encounter critical insights into human nature with such ideas (regardless of genre) . I hope we get a chance to talk!

http://fantasywriterguy.blogspot.com/

definitely would be interested in seeing what you think of my pitch Rich, also your idea sounds really cool. Reminds me a bit of 8-bit theatre which was really really funny so I'd like to see how this pans out.

Argh.

I THINK this is my novel: a young fire-starter is being mentored by a broken-down drunken magic teacher. Mayhem ensues. There is an exile.

Argh!

A *title* would be good!

Gale . . . www.ThornesQuest.com . . . or . . . www.stringingwords.com

Hard boiled detective novel.

A mysterious unidentified body, from 50 years ago. All tags cut out of his clothes, left on the beach with no ID, he was in no missing person file, and he laid in an unmarked grave for years ... until SHE came poking around.

What was the connection between her current missing person, he's only been missing a few months. Can she find the link before it's too late?

For those interested in history google Taman (Tamam) Shud. He was my muse.

Support me in the Ride to Conquer Cancer!

My novel is called As The Petals Fall

It's about these two boys who grow up on a Virginia plantation in the 1840s and 50s [one the son of the master, and the other a slave boy]. At first, it was seen as okay for them to be playing together [as all of the children were playing together], but as they grow older, expectations change. But, they still very much like each other, so they go and 'chill' in a cherry tree on the plantation.
Neither of them really see the harm in this. They inevitably fall in love.
But, the white boy gets send to military school at 16 and learns about the harsh realities of his society. Of course he's conflicted about his feelings toward the slave boy, even more so than before.
Just as he graduates, the Civil War brakes out. He wants to fight for the North, his father wants him to fight for the South, the slaves travel through the underground.
Both boys actually DO end up fighting in the war [at this point, I'm not sure what side the white boy fights for].

:>

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I'm from Hamilton, land of hysterical fiction filled with flying monkeys, dancing bananas, and sexy, cozy, violence

Hmm... at this point I really just have a medley of confusion.

It's modern-day, but definitely fantasy... and the main characters are a brother and sister (this is actually a story I started a while ago, but am completely redoing). So basically it's confusing as hell, because I have so much random magic going on because there are different 'groups' of magical abilities. Currently these are gypsies, shape shifters, and those of irish lore (consisting currently of beserkers, which aren't entirely irish I don't think, sidhe seers, druids, and the Fae, since sidhe seers showed up. Not to sure of this last one, though, don't know where they might fit).

So basically it's magic and confusion and I have next to no clue what I'm doing. :D

2008 - Casien (I won! But it needs serious work before others may read.)
2009 - Twenty Thousand Different Beings (Plot is lacking, but it aslways is for me.)

I'm dabbling in time-travel. Mine's a historical fiction, set in present-day Canada, but the main character has an almost obsessive interest in the Empress of Russia, Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of Nicholas II. It takes her to St Petersburg, and some of the info she finds dates back to early-20th-century Russia and the turbulence that took place then.

It's a juxtaposition between present and past, royalty and peasant, and highlights generation gaps.

The working title is Looking For Alix.

Will it have the scene where she ends up with a bullet in her head from Bolshevik rebels.

Hell the Czarina wasn't even that nice of a person from the stuff I read. How are you planning to portray stuff like her supposed affair with Rasputin, being the mother of a very sick son and rumors of using the occult to try and help him, and the decadence the Czar's family lived in that kept the Russians in poverty leading to the push for the Bolsheviks. The The Czarina was a very interesting character so I'm very curious how this will be done.

I'm a History major so I wonder about this stuff.

I probably said something stupid.

I'm writing a kind of realist/real life novel. The title's called "Fifty Million Billion".
Basically its about this billionaire who kidnaps a struggling young woman and forces her to follow her dreams. He's first generation rich, and doesn't really understand what someone can do with a lot of money. She's a dreamer, but going nowhere. Self-discovery, fate. I've always liked to discover the idea if being what you want to be is really what you want to be.

Ha ha ....I'm writing fanfiction this year :'D I might change my mind later and just make it original but right now...my nano is a Metal Gear Solid/Hotel Dusk crossover. The only role HD will be playing is that the hotel will be the setting. The characters will all be MGS but obviously it's AU so yeah. It'll probably turn out that I just start writing it as an original story but we'll see. It's my first try at the novel style employed in HD so hopefully I won't do too awful.

Here's my plot snippet:

Svala Siggurdson is a vampire without a memory, waking up one morning protected by darkness and wearing only a large heavy chain holding the figure of a raven, a long spiral, and a pair of scissors.

Just as she finds someone to help her with her memory and reclaim the power of her amulet, he is brutally killed and Svala finds herself on the run from a renegade group of supernaturals called runers, who intend to run all of the Cuplands with the help of Svala’s necklace. But on the way, she finds help from some rather unusual sources, a group of men calling themselves menseids who practice witchcraft in the most erotic and abstract ways and a woman with twelve ‘differently abled’ children.

Will Svala get her memory back in time to help her new found friends defeat the runers and reclaim the Cuplands (Southern Ontario) for themselves?

Yes, I'm from Hamilton! Ask me about flying monkeys and dancing bananas!

I stated this before in a previous post but I'll expand with more details this time. The last few years and basically all of my fiction has been either suspesne, thrillers or adventure books. All three are books my wife refuses to read because well they're just not her cup of tea. She's into the Nora Roberts kind of fiction... so this year I decided to go the Nicholas Sparks route and write something she will volunteer to read and not feel forced.

So in a nutshell, I'm going Chick Lit this year. Never wrote it ever, but I'm going to take my best stab. Here is the synopsis that is currently posted in my profile (a cover pic is in the profile too!):

Title: Completing the List

Plot: Lizzy Sheppard is a woman with a mission. Months after her husband dies, she discovers a piece of paper in a pair of her husband's jeans while getting ready to donate all his clothes to charity. On this scrap of paper is a list that was written by her husband months before he passed away: thirty things he wanted to do before he died. Only four of the thirty items had been completed, so Lizzy decides to complete the list for her husband... with the help of her friends and family. Not only as a tribute to the man she loved but to help the healing process and accept the fact that he’s gone and is never coming back.

So that's the story in a nutshell. I think it's a decent yet believable story.

Later gators and keep writing... editing is for December!

Josh

Not at all! :)
In fact, what you've read about (and what I've read about) is exactly the inspiration for this story. My MC searches for evidence to either counter or support those stories, because *she* (my MC) has read nothing but negative as well. I haven't yet decided what the MC is going to *do* with the information she finds, but I have a vague idea.

No bullets involved. :)

Urban fantasy. Werewolves. Denver Colorado. Forests! Really going off the fly right now. We'll see where this goes!

I'm not usually a reader of ChickLit, but I think this sounds like an interesting premise. I'd like to hear how it works out for you. Go, Josh!

Gale . . . www.ThornesQuest.com . . . or . . . www.stringingwords.com

Posted my novel excerpt here: http://www.nanowrimo.org///eng/user/214776

Anyone else posted one? Let us know.

http://fantasywriterguy.blogspot.com/