The Travelling Shovel of Death

With out knowing it my 2MC carries it around in the back of the 1949 Land Rover that's being driven around.

Wow. who'da thunk?

"Not a Rose but a Thistle" -- 2005 (Win)
"Welcome To Lamentation!" -- 2006 (Win)
"A Saint Nobody's Heard Of " -- 2007 (Win)
"Nympho-izing Love Goo!" (working title) -- 2008 (Win)
"Like Getting Honey From a Stone" -- 2009

I just managed to get it in. So far it has been used to slay a giant demonspawn bat. I already have plans for it to take out a vampire. Here's to hoping.

____________________________________________________________
Previous NaNoWriMo,
2005: Wolfsbane
2006: The Grove / Wolfsbane II (otherwise 'Untitled')
2007: Love, Death, and Neuroscience
2008: Harbinger

My main character is turning into a whiny cry-baby. Things dont go his way, he packs a bag and gets out - runs away - and in doing so has doomed his 2 best friends. He's not playing ball, not being a hero. I had plans for a sort of "symbolic" death later on, at the hands of aliens who can basically fix his physical body and reanimate him as a mindless worker. Symbolic death at the hands of The Traveling Shovel of Death? I'd not thought about it before, but I've been infected. Looks like the shovel will be appearing in the next 5-7000 words or so.

I used it to kill the neighbor of the best friend of the protagonist. It helped me get in a few hundred words, at least.

i used a shovel-shaped ray gun to kill a space probe. does that count?

The shovel fell out of a worm hole and into my MC's hands. He used it to kill a couple of drug dealers and tossed it into a rive, where another worm hole picked it up and dropped it into someone else's novel. I thin the shovel may exist in multiple universes at the same time, perhaps as a reflection of its true self. Incidentally, the worm holes do not appear in my novel, everyone is blissfully unaware of the shovel's traveling nature.

As kids we fried ants with magnifying glasses. Now that we are adults we fry characters in far more interesting ways with plot twists

I know it sounds sadistic, but I'm kind of in love with it.

One of my supporting characters kinds a shovel in a garden shed and takes it for self-defense, but misses her brother getting killed by another dude, who is actually her best friends boyfriend, and she kills him, not knowing who he was, so now her ex-best friend is after her.

Make sense?

The path of the shovel is a bloody one, filled with tears and dirt.

next year's NaNo: The Traveling Shovel of Death Chronicles, Chapter 1.

I think the Traveling Shovel of Death, or TSD, may be a sentient and malevolent being exerting it's will on innocent bystanders as well as novelists.

Alison, could you post a description of your shovel please?

As kids we fried ants with magnifying glasses. Now that we are adults we fry characters in far more interesting ways with plot twists

What is the traveling shovel of death exactly?

Nevermind, I so forgot about the explanation... ignore me... ^_^

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
'07 Winner - TMIU
'08 Winner - TGILB
'09 Winner - OTTM Illusion 2

It's a beautiful thing.

I had a slightly bad day today, and felt like taking it out on my novel's characters. So I just killed an innocent peripheral character with a shovel for no real reason. It's done wonders for my word count, but should I feel slightly guilty about it?

This is the description of the shovel from my novel. Just the shovel, not what it does, or to whom.

And a little later

http://www.quantumtea.com/blog/

lol, my shovel is a deadly energy collector, but i get better word count writing dialog, so my novel lacks any nuance at the moment.

i'm getting ready to unleash it, tho. i think it's going to go after an unwitting helmsman. i'm writing sci-fi. it's always the extra that gets killed.

The shovel is visiting now... it's about to do something. But here's the passage:

"I lie to him. I whisper the answer in his head and we let that be it. I run to the shed for any weapon I can find. A shovel catches my eye. I grab it and a pair of garden scissors that I stuff into a pocket. My clothes haven’t seen this much roughness since arriving at the Noft. I doubt they’ll ever see anything like it again."

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
'07 Winner - TMIU
'08 Winner - TGILB
'09 Winner - OTTM Illusion 2

It's a beautiful thing.

I'm proud to say that the TSoD has now visited my novel for the first time :D! One of my Archangels, Raphael, whacked a poor messenger over the head with it -_-'...