After a two year hiatus, I'm once again participating in NaNoWriMo. I'll be writing a new Night City story.

For those of you with LiveJournals, I'll be posting the WIP in locked posts over at the Night City Tales community. Please note you'll need to be a member to see those posts.

I'm also working ona rewrite of Zombies in the Spring at the same time, so this should be an, ah, interesting year!

I got annoyed with it ten days in and stopped. I'll keep the best of the lot up.

---
'Selves' is a personal project. I wanted something to fill up November like NaNoWriMo used to, but the last thing I wanted to do was start another novel. I decided a few days before November I'd do a drawing every day for the month, and instead of just drawing whatever, I picked a unifying theme and medium for the month. Hence selves--drawings of different aspects of who I am/was/might have been, and ink, a medium I quite enjoy and don't do enough with.

Each day I pick a subtheme or topic and use that to develop a drawing. I've been picking from a list of themes, but I may well use songtitles or random words picked out of books. I might go the other way 'round and find a word to attach to a concept of myself I've decided to draw.

My goal for this project is to complete a more or less finished drawing every day of the month (or more if I find myself in a mad scramble to catch up, like I did yesterday), experiment with technique, composition, and subject, and to have fun.

I don't have any expectation that most of these will be great or even very good--after all, this is my own personal mad dash to get lots of stuff out in a month. If as much as ten percent of the drawings (that's a whole three) are strong finished pieces, I'm going to be pleasantly surprised. But it's rather like mining; one has to dig up and refine a lot of ore to get any gold at all. I'm sure I'll learn things about my drawing processes and techniques, and come up with ideas I can refine later.

I'll be updating with a batch every five days. Have fun watching, and feel free to comment and critique on any aspects of this you wish to.

I just finished my serial novel, Zombies in the Spring. 33 chapters, 148,890 words.

I've been working on this for a little more than a year, so I'm kind of... out of sorts and hyperventilating right now. My gods, did I write all of that?!

Just tonight I finally finished one of my big projects that's been almost a year in the making. The initial idea for this story world started a long time ago, but it was for National Novel Writing Month last year that I decided to write a novel in it, and with it I decided to make it a whole project. I have a lot of stories from it to share, and I want other people to be able to play in it too. The world is just too damn big for me to ever explore it all.

The website is Night City. I made all of the graphics myself and coded it (with aid of Dreamweaver to make the gruntwork go faster).

The shining jewel there right now is the short novel in the Stories section, 31 Days. I didn't quite finish it last November, even though I reached 50k, and it sat for 8 months before I finally was able to complete and edit it. It's not perfect, but it's as good as I could make it. It also broke my heart.

I'm really excited about this, guys. This is my baby. I know I sound blase but that's because I've poured so much into this. I'm happy and afraid all at the same time.


Imagine a city where organic-looking skyscapers rise nestle together with old tenaments, baroque buildings, and burned-out shells. On one street high technology reigns in the form of an elecronic billboard advertising the latest in virtual reality neural interfaces, and it's hanging on the remains of a building crumbling from simple neglect. In one corner of the city live commercial barons who reside in centuries-old mansions, some of which they built themselves... in the opposite corner the buildings stand abandoned, the streets quiet except for the howls and whispers of ghosts.

This is a city built of dreams and nightmares. The world is like ours but not, both more advanced and falling into entropy. It fades at the edges, and reality is never sure. This is a city that is the most modern in its world, but it is also a city where magic runs just under the surface, where vampires walk unnoticed among the humans, and where ghouls haunt the dreams of the living. This is a city that touches our reality but is not of it.

This is Night City.

The cast:
RENATUS: Me, the author.
RASPUTIN: Necromancer Protag of Zombies in the Spring. Tall, gangly, puppydog eyes.
ADRIAN: Aristocrat Protag of Zombies in the Spring. Atheletic, blonde, gorgeous.

----------

RENATUS: [Sits, staring with frustration at open document. Types a few lines, then deleted them. Sighs in frustration.] Is it really that hard? All you two need to do is eat breakfast.

RASPUTIN: We'd rather have sex.

RENATUS: No. You haven't eaten in ages. You need breakfast. You also need plot progression over breakfast, dig?

ADRIAN: We're two healthy men in our mid-20s. We'll live without breakfast. Make with the screwing, already! We've been waiting for this for chapters.

RENATUS: [Grinds teeth.] Breakfast. Plot progression. It isn't hard. Eat, read letters, talk about letters, finish eating, then you can bonk your brains out. Just work with me, all right?

RASPUTIN & ADRIAN: [Ignoring the author, they start to grope each other.]

RENATUS: ... Right, since I see I won't get anywhere with you two, I think I'll just go and draw. Hm... How about... pin ups of you both. [RASPUTIN & ADRIAN glance up as RENATUS taps her lips with a finger.] Underwear pin ups... and I'm thinking pink. Pink, lacy, and frilly.

RASPUTIN: [Looks alarmed.]

ADRIAN: [Looks concerned.]

RENATUS: Yes, I believe... Rufflebutt undies for you both, in pink and white. With matching ruffled collars! And GARTERS!

RASPTUIN: [Jaw drops open.] I, what, PINK? LACE?!

ADRIAN: [Cringing] Oh gods, that's emasculating! You wouldn't!

RENATUS: [Looks grim while she poises her pencil over a drawing pad.]

RASPUTIN & ADRIAN: [Look at each other with horror and embarrassment.] She would.

RASPUTIN: Eheh... what was that you said about breakfast?

RENATUS: And plot progression.

ADRIAN: My, my! I seem to be terribly hungry! And in desperate need of reading material!

RENATUS: [Grinning in a particularly vicious way.] That's right. [Watches RASPUTIN & ADRIAN, chastised, shuffle away, and laughs evilly.] I WILL NOT BE DICTATED TO BY IMAGINARY PEOPLE!