NaNo Day 10

Daily Words: 1,601
Total Actual WC: 15,302
TOTAL WC GOAL: 16,670

Not my full complement of words today either, though much closer. Tomorrow and Thursday I’ll be going to write-ins, and those always help my word count. So with luck I’ll be back on target by Friday.

Snippet:

Sheila glanced over her shoulder again, and saw only the fog. She stopped running, instead looking around her with a sense of rising urgency. Where had he gone?

“Do you even know where you are?”

“Andover,” she whispered. This time, unlike before, her voice did not echo. Silence met her answer, a more complete silence than she’d heard since falling asleep.

Looking around her, she could see no evidence that this was still Andover. Assuming this dream-world ever had been.

She took a step forward, moving cautiously now that she was no longer being pursued. When the figure did not reappear, and no voice taunted her from the shadows, she took another step. And another.

And felt herself falling through the fog into nothingness.

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy, reprint/re-post without permission, etc.

Updated to add stats…

NaNo Day 6

Daily Words: 971
Total Actual WC: 10,017
TOTAL WC GOAL: 10,002

Here’s a snippet for your Friday…

This is a longer snippet than I’ve been posting from the NaNo novel, mainly because it’s Friday and I wanted to. Do bear in mind that, being NaNo, this is rougher than my usual first draft. Names and places and such are usually the first decent option that comes to mind… I can’t guarantee they’ll stay the same in the final draft, especially if I realize that I used a name because I’d heard it before. (AKA – I’m not intending to borrow names, and if I have, I’ll change that.)

Anyway, without further ado, here’s a bit from “Into The Fog” (which, as a working title, is also subject to change…)

Sheila sighed. “I know what you want from me,” she said, “but I don’t know that I can help. Yes, I came out of that fog, but I was in my own world before that. I don’t know what it hides over here. And I don’t know how to get rid of it.”

She’d decided to tell the truth, or at least as much of the truth as they’d be able to handle. They didn’t need to know that they were figments of her imagination, characters in a novel she was writing. And they certainly didn’t need to know that she’d dreamed up this world and its problems without also coming up with a way to solve said problems.

“I’m not from here,” she said as they continued to stare at her. “I don’t know anything about this place.”

Okay, so that last bit was a lie. She knew everything there was to know about Andover, since she’d created it. Sadly, there wasn’t much to know. Her worldbuilding was very incomplete on this one.

“There is still something you can do,” the prince said, and though he spoke slowly she could tell it was because he was lost in thought and not because he had a limited intelligence.

“What?”

“Of that I am not yet sure.” He frowned as he looked at her, but didn’t seem to be frowning at her. “But Alex is convinced you are the key to this mystery, and his hunches are never wrong.”

“Never?” She raised her eyebrows in disbelief. “He’s human, isn’t he? He’s bound to be wrong on occasion.”

“No. He’s not.” The man who’d reminded her of a dancer spoke for the first time, and his voice was as lilting as his movements were graceful. “Alex is born of faery blood. The Taint manifests in us all differently, but in him it provides just a hint of the Sight.”

“So he can foretell the future?” Now the sarcasm was creeping into her voice, but she let it. Fortune telling was not something she intended to let into one of her novels.

“Of course not.” The disdain in Alex’s voice was as obvious as the sarcasm in hers. “True Sight belongs only to the Fae themselves.”

“But when he has a hunch,” the prince continued, sounding more sincere than the rest of them combined, “he is never wrong.”

“I see.” Sheila crossed her arms across her chest and glared at them all in turn. “And just what does this hunch say I am going to do?”

“Fix the problem. Save the kingdom.”

“Look, Your Highness — you are the prince, I presume?”

“Of course.” He frowned at her a moment. “And yourself? What are you that Alex holds you in such high regard?”

“My name is Sheila.” She looked at Alex, who would not meet her gaze. “And I don’t know why I would be crucial to your success.”

“And yet, you are.” Alex spoke with such conviction in his low voice that, for a moment, she believed him too.

Then she looked back at the king, frozen on the dais, and a knot formed in her stomach. She’d better believe that she was crucial to their success. Because one way or another, she needed to find out a way to end this book.

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy, reprint/re-post without permission, etc.

NaNo Day 5

Daily Words: 1,852
Total Actual WC: 9,046
TOTAL WC GOAL: 8,335

Snippet:

She moved to follow the rest of the crowd when a hand caught her elbow.

“I think,” Alex said from where he stood beside her, “that you would be of better use here.”

Glaring up at him, she pulled her arm free of his grip. He might be a favorite character on paper, but in person he was infinitely more annoying.

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy, reprint/re-post without permission, etc.

NaNo Day 4

Daily Words: 1,811
Total Actual WC: 7,194
TOTAL WC GOAL: 6,668

Snippet:

Alex opened the door without another word and went inside, Gregor following him like a shadow. The door swung nearly closed behind them, but stayed open enough that she could hear murmurs coming from inside. As she waited, the voices grew louder, and more alarmed. She couldn’t make out any distinct voices, but the tone of what she heard made her nervous.

It made the guard nervous, too. He glanced back and forth between her and the cracked-open door, as if torn between his duty to guard the door and keep her outside, and the need to protect his king. If he would only decide to help inside, then I could…

Sheila nearly smacked herself on the forehead. She was being stupid. This was her dream, dammit, and she was not waiting calmly for something to happen.

Especially not when something was already happening behind that door.

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy, reprint/re-post without permission, etc.

The story is moving along at a nice clip at the moment, and I’m very pleased. Things are where they should be! I’d like to be at 7500 words, but I also like stopping at logical places — and since I just finished chapter 2, that seems like a logical place to me.

In addition to my NaNo posts, I thought you might like to see a knitting post! Though, you might not like what I have to say in it.

First of all, I had to frog the Serenity Coriolis socks. This is how far I’d gotten before I realized they were going to be way too big for the recipient:

(I was knitting them at the theatre while running sound. But this is not why they were too big – I just calculated my measurements wrong.) Back to square one on those. But I would rather restart and have them fit right…

And then there’s the Central Park Hoodie.

Do you see anything wrong with that picture? No? Here’s a hint. It’s supposed to look like this:

Yes. I did the wrong cable. So I had to ladder down several rows and pick the stitches back up.

It seems this is a common occurrence with this particular sweater. I was actually doing fine with it until I started cabling without a cable needle. Now, normally I can do this without a problem, but switching technique mid-way through the project caused trouble. Not doing that again. Next time, I’ll have to remember to either use — or not use — a cable needle all the way through the project. No switching back and forth.

Ah well. It’s fixed now. I’m actually done with the hood, too, and on to the edging. Hopefully there will be a FO post soon!

NaNo Day 2

Daily Words: 1,386
Total Actual WC: 3,438
TOTAL WC GOAL: 3,334

Snippet:

With fingers numb from more than just the cold, she pulled her cell phone out of her jeans pocket. Maybe the GPS app would be able to point her in the correct direction. She’d left for home going the right way, but then had gotten distracted by the fog and might have taken a wrong turn…

Yeah. Sure. Keep trying to convince yourself of that. There was only one actual turn on the way home. It was nearly impossible to get lost.

And yet, she was lost.

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy, reprint/re-post without permission, etc.