50,075.

I did it. I beat NaNoWriMo for the fourth year in a row. I'm also four chapters from the end of the book, but for now, that's something I can think about later. I also went back over the material. It rambles a bit, but I like it. It has an authentic feel to it all.

Maybe when I'm done, Dead of Winter will be coming to this space. Stay tuned, and enjoy the rest of your weekend. I know I will. ;)

Time for a literary update, of a sort. So far the word count for Dead of Winter stands at 37,122 words, and I am currently on Chapter Eleven. Now, especially when one bears in mind that I had only gotten about three hundred and fifty words into Chapter Eight before switching gears (sometimes it helps to jump around if you're in a word count vs. deadline situation; linear writing is not always conducive to a timely finish), the fact that I'm three-quarters done and am at just a bit over the halfway point of the novel shows that the chapters are definitely longer than I thought they'd be. It means that some editing will be necessary in the future--but then again, when the fuck isn't it?

On a completely unrelated note, the Oakland Raiders beat the Bengals O' Cincy today, and I was shocked.

I lost almost all of last week for writing; in fact, yesterday was the first day I had done any writing on Dead of Winter since last Sunday. This was directly tied to some issues I had last week with medication I was taking for anxiety, which had the horrible effect of not only intensifying what I was feeling, but also dropping me into that state for up to twelve hours at a time. Believe me when I say that I would rather have a broken arm than ever go through it again. I'll make a post on it in detail later this week.

Oh, and Mad Evil Chris and I went to the Ski and Snowboard Expo at Cal Expo on Saturday. In addition to getting him snowboard bindings for seventy dollars when he'd thought he'd have to pay two hundred, we also cheated the lines outrageously. With your entry free you get a free lift ticket (a great deal as long as you don't look at the fine print too closely), but the line to have it redeemed stretched... well, around the entire damn show.

This required quick thinking. Specifically, slimy thinking. "Follow me," I said.

Chris and I started browsing around the display next to the front of the line, and then I said, "Oh, we better go get our lift tickets validated before we really get started shopping." So I stepped up to one of the guys with the computers, handed over my info, told him about my injured collarbone from last year (thereby gaining me instant "slope cred"), got my ticket and thanked him kindly. So did Chris. Only then did he notice the line that stretched behind us... then one that went on seemingly forever.

"Did you know about that?" he asked suspiciously.

"I had an idea," I said innocently. "Now, let's go get those bindings since we just saved ourselves two hours, huh?"

Moral of the story: act like you know what you're doing, and rarely will anyone question you.

How was your weekend?

I haven't posted any updates lately on the progress of Dead of Winter, but it bears mentioning that I am now just a shade under 30k with half the month gone, which gives me about two to three days worth of cushion on the writing front. Since I fully expect there will be a couple days in there where I don't get to write because of household chores, trips to store or I just plain don't feel like it, it's good to have that little bit. I also hope to get some more writing done tonight, because every little bit helps.

On a purely nuts-and-bolts level, it's kind of interesting to see how the chapters have stretched out to be a bit longer than I expected them to be. I originally planned the novel to have a prologue and then nineteen chapters, all at 2,500 words estimated apiece in order to assure a 50k finish. However, I have just started Chapter Ten and am about to bust through the 30k mark, so my chapters are running a little longer than expected. This, of course, is perfectly fine.

Doom 3 is one of the best games ever. Major, major scare factor, gorgeously rendered 3-D engine, stunning lighting effects that give it a horribly authentic feel... yes, the geniuses at id Software did this job a little too well, possibly. I am going to have to get myself a copy of Quake IV, which also uses the Doom 3 engine. Good stuff.

Oh, and the NFL staggers on. At least, it staggers in our region of the country. Staggers like a smelly zombie, come to think of it.

There was some horrible football this week courtesy of the 49ers and Raiders, the difference being that the Niners won their game and the Raiders didn't, against a team that only had one win for the entire season thus far. By playing the Raiders, they doubled this total. This was not surprising in the least; in fact, I picked against the Raiders this week in our pick 'em football league. The Raiders are so fucking bad that I have really stopped caring about this franchise. I really have. The losses don't bother me any more, and that's a sign that the franchise is really in trouble.

Can't wait until the Steve McNair Tennessee Titans jersey arrives. Um... sooooooo, when does baseball season start?

The word count at the end of today on Dead of Winter was 12,323 words.  Not too bad.  I am beating the per-day average of 1,667 words by about a 2-1 margin, and the fair Bebe has served as an excellent nemesis to compete against.  I feel good about the way the plot is unfolding, and I am enjoying the banter between my characters.  So far, it's been a major change of pace from last year.  In 2008, I was writing a doctoral thesis.  This year, it's an actual novel.

My Steve McNair jersey should be here in a few days, since it shipped today via priority USPS and is only coming from Los Angeles.  I may have to make a photo post where I lay out all my jerseys; the collection is pretty extensive.  Another item I am waiting for is my upgrade copy to Windows 7 (provided free via Dell for those ordering within a certain time frame), so I can dump Vista and its annoying constant stream of pop-ups asking me if I am sure I really want to run a program, upgrade a driver or in general do anything at all.  Vista is all right, I suppose, but I am definitely looking forward to increased stability and wringing some more drops of horsepower out of Nemesis.

Oh, and I had a BSOD with the Alienware after installing a new set of display drivers, so thank God for Windows Restore Point software.  Whew.

Got a few more days left on vacation, and it's been rather restful this week.

Night, all.

I watched for a week and it all came crashing down tonight.  I bought another sports jersey.  Steve McNair Tenneessee Titans #9.  Price in store:  $220.00.  My price:  $39.95.

Thank you, Ebay.  And thank you to my wife for putting up with my addiction.

Word count right now on Dead of Winter is 7,784.  I'm having a glass of $60 per bottle wine to help my wife celebrate that one of her crappy co-workers got the axe today; my nickname for her was "The Emperess."  I am enjoying The Proposal with my man Ryan Reynolds, and the reboot of V comes on tonight.

Wow, occasional tooth pain aside, this vacation is going well.  How's your end of the 'verse today?

So today I finished the prologue chapter of Dead of Winter and also started the first chapter as well.  I finished pretty close to 5,000 words, and I got a lot of football watching done, plus I showed up for a taping of Good Morning Sacramento at 8:30 or so this morning.  You can see the story they ran on our group at this link, and I am the one in the red and white flannel shirt and the ponytail.  Plus, they used Nemesis for the starting point of the video, so I had a good hitch of pride there.  All in all, today was a good day.

Going to a write-in tomorrow and I'll play some Dan Patrick while chewing into the book.  All in all, a good start.

I've been asked by some people what the plot is for this year's edition of National Novel Writing Month.  Here's the sales pitch:

A grisly murder in Lake Tahoe draws the attention of a fledgling paranormal investigation team working on behalf of private interests and the United States government.  The previous incarnation of the group met an unearthly fate at the hands of unknown gathering dark forces, and now it appears the team is in over their heads as the mystery darkens and the body count rises.  Will the team even be able to save their own souls, much less those of the people they have sworn to defend?

That's the cover letter response.  The pat answer I give people is that Dead of Winter is "part The X-Files, part Ghostbusters and part CSI... and deadly business."  It's got ghosts, demons, serial killers, ritual torture, police procedure, skulduggery, smokescreens and general hellraising.

So yeah, that's my newest project.

Oh, and the laptop?  It's apparently going to arrive on Friday.  This Friday.

Life's good, my devoted peeps.  Life's good.

Here in Sacramento it's currently 103 degrees at 6:55 PM, but I don't care.  See, I'm plotting,

When asked where he got his ideas for writing, Stephen King had a stock answer:  "Utica.  There's a nice little shop there where I go in and browse around until I see something I really like, and then I buy it and go."  It's a great answer because the honest to God truth is that there is no one place where ideas come from.  They can be as fantastic, ordinary or strange as can be, and you'll never know where inspiration will come from.  All you can count on is that when the iron strikes hot, the ideas will flow like water.

I'm a huge fan of CSI, the J.D. Robb/Nora Roberts In Death series, urban fantasy fiction and a classic good versus evil struggle.  Dead of Winter will provide the opportunity to indulge all those joneses, so maybe that's why I'm already outlining the third chapter on yWriter and having a blast doing so.

And really, in the end, it's just good to have the passion bucket overflowing again.

So in my last post I was wondering what to do for NaNoWriMo 2009.  I am pleased--bouncing off the walls, actually--to report that problem is solved.

Back in 1993, I started a novel titled Dead of Winter, where a very determined young woman (who may or may not be psychic) is matched up against a serial killer.  She tries to track him through dreams and nightmares, glomming onto the case as her father is one of the detectives assigned to the case, and in the end has a bloody-as-hell showdown with the wicked entity... and discovers she is truly not the equal of the task.  I got the first chapter and a half down, whereupon real life blindsided me and knocked me right off these tracks and onto the ones which led to the novels Diablos, Suspiria and others.

Truth be told, it's probably just as well that I didn't get to see Dead of Winter through; back then my storytelling ability was vastly overrated by myself, and the bottom line is that just as the young woman was not up to the task of taking on the so-named Face Killer, so I was also not well versed enough in the art of writing to pull it all off.  There's actually at least two more novels that I germinated the ideas for during that time period, and I'm now finally at the point where I would be able to make a success of them.

This brings us back to the idea I threw out with the working title of CSI: Hellraiser, which is how I described it to my wife after a very vivid dream where... well, I'm sure you can guess what the content was, given the title, right?  The problem for this was that I didn't have a central crime, I didn't have a central bad guy, and I didn't have outside element to bring the team first together, and then on the path to the heart of darkness.

Now I do.  Seventeen years later, it's time to fly the black flag and make Dead of Winter the 2009 National Novel Writing Month project.

Very simply?  I'm psyched.  Peace.