World Traveling and World Building: Interview with Fantasy Author R.J. Vickers

R.J. Vickers is a fantasy author, photographer, and traveler who says with a laugh that she enjoys juggling multiple projects at once. She’s currently hard at work on a New Zealand adventure travel guide, the second and third books in her YA fantasy Natural Order series, and an epic fantasy novel set in a new world she’s been developing for almost ten years now. She’s here today to talk about Beauty’s Songbook, which, like Awash in Talent, is being published by Kindle Press. 

Author R.J. Vickers 

JK: What is Beauty’s Songbook about? 

RJV: It’s a fairy tale with nods to Beauty and the Beast and Into the Woods. I’ve always been a huge fan of fairy tales, especially retellings in the mode of Ella Enchanted (Gail Carson Levine) and Goose Girl (Shannon Hale), so this was my chance to take a stab at the genre.

JK: Have you written many fantasy books?

RJV: Well, I’ve written seven fantasy novels in all, but only two (The Natural Order and Beauty’s Songbook) have been published. Three more of those are in various stages of revision, and the last two will never see the light of day! 

I love writing novels during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) every November, and I see most of these as experiments where I try something I wouldn’t ordinarily write in order to hone my craft. I’ve written a psychological thriller, a futuristic dystopian novel, a contemporary romance, and a pirate story within the confines of NaNoWriMo—and not a single one of them will ever be published.

JK: How do you draw readers into your fantasy world?

RJV: One of my favorite parts of writing is creating a world and bringing it to life.  I love weaving all sorts of sensory details into my writing, and adding those quirky details that really give a world character. For Beauty’s Songbook, I wrote a whole set of songs common in the region, and added a set of folk legends to give the world flavor. 

JK: What are your main inspirations?

RJV: As I mentioned, I’m a huge traveler, and I love taking bits of the world that inspire me and incorporating them into my stories. The setting of Beauty’s Songbook is modeled on Finland, where I happened to begin writing the story, and another recent novel is set in a landscape resembling the fiords of New Zealand. That particular idea came to me while hiking through those exact fiords, and upon returning to the same trail, I was so inspired I had to write the book.

JK: What nonfiction do you write?

RJV: I’m sure you’ll be surprised to know that most of my nonfiction relates to travel. My first nonfiction book was College Can Wait, a gap-year guidebook for reluctant students with a huge emphasis on travel. And, of course, I’m hard at work on the New Zealand travel guide. If that’s successful, I’ll follow it up with more travel guides to all of my favorite places.

JK: What is it like publishing Beauty’s Songbook with Kindle Press? 

RJV: When I originally submitted Beauty’s Songbook for the Kindle Scout nomination process, I didn’t actually expect to be selected. I was very curious, though. Kindle Scout is one of the newest entries to the publishing scene, a model that combines the best parts of self-publishing and traditional publishing. I’ve been blogging about the whole Kindle Scout publishing process here. 

You get complete control over your cover (though the quality control kicks in during the nomination process—you won’t get many votes with a bad cover), and Kindle Press does a very thorough edit of your book—for content and conventions—before publication. You get an advance, but you also get to keep a much larger percentage of your royalties than you would in a traditional publishing deal (50% compared to around 12%). You don’t get to decide on your book’s pricing, but Kindle Press will drop your price for promotions and submit your book to a number of promotion deals, circumventing the need for the author to pay for these. 

As traditional publishers have had a very hard time competing in the ebook market, due to bad pricing choices and a lack of marketing, models like Kindle Press are starting to look very desirable.

Anyway, Beauty’s Songbook just came out on April 19 (you can check it out here), so I have yet to see whether it performs better or worse than my three previous titles. But it’s been exciting to learn more about Kindle Scout and Kindle Press along the way! 

JK: Exciting is an apt word for this whirlwind process. Thanks so much for being here today, and best of luck with Beauty’s Songbook.

November Recap

In November, I've done a few things, including:

I met my NaNoWriMo challenge goal and wrote 25,000 words for Waterfire, Part II of the Providence Trilogy Awash in Talent, converting it officially into a novella. More on that later!

I cut more than 2,000 words from my epic Seven Noble Knights (while keeping the old copy just in case) as well as cutting a few words from the title. I sent out a few query letters, got a few rejections, and a few leads.

I edited and copyedited and proofread my story, "Axe Man," for the anthology A World of Joy (debuting soon!).

Rare photo of a male Javan rhino. IRF

My husband and I decided to celebrate the holidays by giving. We chose to donate to the International Rhino Foundation because of all the organizations we looked into, the money seemed to go the farthest with them. It is my fond hope that our small amount of cash will make a difference in the lives of the most endangered, largest land mammals on Earth, Javan rhinoceroses. We also decided to "adopt" a Sumatran rhino through the World Wildlife Fund because we couldn't resist the swag! Merry Christmas and prosperous 2014!

Yours truly with WWF Adoption swag, an
achingly cute (and hairy) Sumatran rhino plush. We'll put
him back in the bag to open on Christmas.

In other rhino-related news, I wrote five pieces of flash fiction in October, in honor of the five surviving species of rhinoceros, and submitted them to an anthology after polishing them in November. My husband loves these little vignettes and I hope at least one of them is accepted. They will be added to the Rhinoceros Dreams omnibus in the future.

I haven't moved yet, so that's still hanging over me like the Sword of Damocles. There was a lot going on at Loose Leaves, too, enough for a full time job!

For the month of December, this blog will be celebrating books! I'll have interviews with six of the authors from the new free holiday anthology, A World of Joy, and at the end of the month, for the third year, the annual Knauss Awards.

In December, I'll also be taking a course in writing magical realism. I'll be sure to let you know how that went in January. Thanks for stopping by — see you again soon!

The Votes Are In...

Thanks to everyone who let me know what they would prefer to read, here or via Facebook or Twitter. I read a lot of helpful comments and learned something about my readers, so that's always a wonderful experience!

The overwhelming vote was for the firestarters.

I'm really excited to go full out on this story and finish it! It's conceived as a companion to "Middle Awash in Talent," which is now going to be called "Hope & Benevolent." It takes place in a world where most things are just like they are in our daily world, but the general population is joined by people with three different kinds of Talents: telekinesis, pyrokinesis (firestarter talent), and psychics.

Because these powers manifest in members of otherwise normal families when the child is in his or her early teens, these stories are YA or NA and most characters are 13 to 20 years old. Once I finish this one, I plan to start a third story, about psychics. No promises that I'll be able to start it in November, but that would be the ideal.

Otherwise, this series of long stories, which I will put together in a single book when they're all complete, is intended as a celebration of Providence, Rhode Island, where I spent some of my formative years among college students. So the series will be called PROVIDENCE and this firestarter story, "Waterfire."

Waterfire is a real-life art installation I can't wait to describe for you in the story. Suffice to say for now that it's amazing.

Time to get to work! These pictures are sure inspiring. The blog will be confined to practical updates and supercool announcements about publications. (Watch for those!) Otherwise, I'll see you again in December!

Goals

Next month is NaNoWriMo, a month which has become sacred in the lives of professional writers and those who plan to use it make the leap into professionalism. It's a marathon writing session, and like real races, the writing athlete has to train for this one.

Mainly, what's involved is research and planning, because the words come out a lot more slowly when you have no idea what you're writing about.

It seems I find myself here most Octobers: how do I decide which project to work on in November so I can do the proper planning? It seems my muse loves the change of seasons, because I get more serious ideas for writing projects in the autumn than at any other time.

For the 2013 exercises, I'm really not sure how many words I'll be able to make for a reasonable goal, because I anticipate a lot of fundamental life changes. Then again, I made my goal of 25,000 words and actually completing my novel in spite of a few setbacks and my husband coming home to vacuum when I was ready to type the last word. (I'm not sure I'll ever know what that was about.)

Setbacks this year include:

   Not having any of those trappings I pictured and wrote about in my completion post. There was some serious inspiration in those unassuming objects, and as of this writing I'm still (five months later!) in a hotel with only the barest essentials. I left behind everything but the computer, convinced we would get the sentimental objects out of storage within four to six weeks. Sigh. But I do have story notes I can use because the ideas for both projects came to me here.
   Not being able to decide which project to write!
   Probably moving and waiting for my stuff in storage to come to me some time in November.
   Most likely, my husband ending his job. Nothing like money worries to take one's inspiration away.

But I have grit. Cervantes wrote in prison, and a hotel is definitely better than that. So here are the possibilities:

A YA paranormal story about a sassy girl who can start fires with her mind. Her school is oppressive and she's got to find the self-confidence to break out in spite of some serious traumas. It's conceived as a companion piece to "Middle Awash in Talent" (title soon to be changed), which is about a sassy girl whose sister can move objects with her mind and who has control over whom in that relationship. Like "Middle Awash," this one would be 16,000 to 20,000 words and I would complete it if I chose it for NaNo. Then the question would be whether to try to carry on with the third story I plan to write in that universe, thus completing the book-length project entirely. The third story will be about a psychic as defined against the Talents in the other two stories.

OR

Begin and pledge a reasonable number of words for the rhino novel. An ingenue stumbles into corruption and intrigue on the rhino preserve where she gets a job. The ideas have become unexpectedly thriller-like as I think them through. There is some urgency to this project, since I'd like to complete a novel about rhinos before they're gone from the real world.

And I must make this decision while furiously typing away on a story for a holiday anthology due at the end of October (more on that soon).

Please weigh in. Firestarters or rhinos?

Finished... with the First Draft

So, did I meet the challenge presented by National Novel Finishing Month?

Yes, I did.

I can't believe it. I never really imagined a world in which I was not writing this draft of The Seven Noble Knights of Lara. Every time I used to go to sleep, I would think about a character or a scene so that I could process it overnight and have a few good words or sentences for that purpose the following morning. Now I don't know how to fall asleep!

The current draft totals 131,105 words, by far the longest thing I've ever written. It's twice as long as my doctoral dissertation! This month alone I wrote 28,600 words, hands down the most I have ever written in a single month.

There at the end, I was having a lot of trouble transitioning from pounding away at the keyboard with my head in the fictional world into a nice evening at home with my husband, and I feel I've neglected him terribly. On the Tuesday before I finished, he got a fairly deep, bleeding cut on his thumb. I should have washed the cut with antiseptic, put pain reliever and a Band-Aid on such a grave wound, not because he can't do it, but because it would have been kind and supportive. But I didn't! That dear blood wasn't nearly as much as the metaphorical amounts coming out in the study during the day and I was far too self-absorbed to take anyone else's pain into account.

I hope none of my other fine novels will be this wrenching to finish.

I was grumpy after I placed the last period, on top of all the other abuses my husband suffered, and I think it's the authorial version of post-partum depression. This thing I'd just given birth to seemed like a horrible twisted monster, and yet I missed it percolating in my head. I've still got to do a lot of research, revising, and polishing, and who knows what else, so it's not like I have to completely let go of this thing yet, and I can't decide if that cheers me up or not!

I snapped this picture of where I worked minutes before I composed the last paragraphs.

It's a cheap card table we bought in Tucson when we had no furniture and no money, but on it rests everything I needed: a window to cast natural light on the subject; a chair I upholstered with my dad and needs already to be re-upholstered; an old lamp from my grandmother, who passed away in 2002; a picture of my critique group, who believes in me; a phone to get calls from my husband, who also believes in me; the book with the original texts upon which I based my novel; a chapter outline; a picture of the place where Margaret Mitchell wrote about half of Gone with the Wind; a bottle of water; a heart-shaped frame with a picture of Alfonso X el Sabio, my hero and the one who had the surviving texts written down; and to the right, left, and behind the laptop (no internet connection) as well as on the floor in a bag leaning on the table leg, notes. Some wonderful books about the middle ages inhabit the shelves you can see in the picture, and you can't see the music that I had playing, various instrumental pieces from as close to the tenth century as I could find. I had a pretty similar setup in Georgia with a gorgeous tree-filled view, but I started the novel in Tucson with the laptop literally in my lap and only some of the notes to guide me. It's been a long, strange trip.

But I'm hoping to reintegrate into society now. Book reviews, interviews, and history tidbits coming your way soon! As well as the occasional update on The Seven Noble Knights of Lara.

NaNoFINISHMo

The delightfully twisted Pavarti K. Tyler created this wonderful graphic, and I think a lot of authors are enthusiastic to use this month not to start a new novel but to finish one! Wish me luck. I'll be loading and unloading, packing and unpacking, and still trying to finish The Seven Noble Knights of Lara.

And, not to be missed! A brilliant take on the NaNo Rhino -- why haven't I heard of this before?

Scary Stuff: Amazon Author Rankings and a Move

Amazon is crazy about rankings, and they've always ranked books in a such a way that each author can track her own books, and the top ranked books are clearly visible to anyone who cares to look. Now they've taken to ranking the people behind the books. Take a look.

Of course, I'm not in the top 100. But as I looked through these, I was struck by the fact that I'd only ever read anything by J. K. Rowling out of all the authors in the top 100, and didn't find anyone else I would even consider reading (okay, maybe one or two). I'm probably weird, but an author's popularity doesn't attract me to their books. Does it attract you? Does it attract most readers? Is this author ranking the best thing for readers looking for new authors to read since sliced bread? Please comment and let me know.

In other news, I'm well into the boxes, tape, and cellophane. My husband and I are headed to Illinois to make our home for the foreseeable future.

For those of you keeping track, an appropriate response might be, "She's moving again?" It's my response, too, but we haven't made a go of it in Atlanta, wonderful as it may be, because my husband has been so unhappy at his job. The new move represents a new lease on life even more than the move to Atlanta did. It's a clean break and I can't wait to see what amazing doors open because of it.

Of course, it puts my goal of a complete first draft of my WIP, Seven Noble Knights, by year's end in severe jeopardy. For at least some of November -- NaNo challenge month, which I made such wonderful use of last year -- I'll be packing and unpacking all my notes and plot point scribblings. But I'm still going to do it. Just don't distract me.

I'm not sure when I'll be able to blog again. When I do, I will bring you some amazing historical posts and short, easy to consume bouts of logophilia. In the meantime, it would be a huge help to me if you play around with the carousel of books, below left, and click on them and consider liking them or leaving reviews. I'll thank you when I get back!

Crossroads

Today I'm at the Crossroads Writers Conference in lovely Macon, Georgia, to shake off some of the isolation inherent in writing and be inspired. The keynote speaker is Chris Baty, founder of NaNoWriMo, and if there's one person in the world who can tell me how to finish my novel this year, it must be he!

NaNoWriMo Update: Where I am with The Seven Noble Knights of Lara

As I learned after making a goal of 25,000 new words on a novel I'd already more than started, I was a NaNo Rebel this year. The only time I tried to do NaNoWriMo officially, I failed miserably. But being a rebel seems to help: a few days ago, I met my goal of where I wanted to be in the story! (It turned out to be the end of Chapter 12.) Yesterday, the very last allowable day, I finished Chapter 13 and started Chapter 14 and surpassed my word count goal (just barely).

The first draft (maybe technically second, since this is the same book I started for the official first NaNo) of The Seven Noble Knights of Lara now stands at 50,960 words, 25,061 of which emerged out of my laptop during the month of November 2011. I'd say I'm three quarters of the way through the plot, and since I'm not prolix, especially in the first draft, a lot of details need to be added, so it may end up in the 100,000 word range, which is pretty astounding.

It's also been happening astoundingly slow. I started this draft in February 2011, so my average is only 5,000 a month. I've always believed I was a low-output writer, but only recently has that become less than acceptable to me. A few months ago, I wrote 9,000 words of my other project, "Middle Awash in Talent," over the course of two or three days (hard to remember specifics when so much creativity is coursing through you!), so I know it's possible. If I want anyone to read my completed SNKL before the end of the world next December, I had better get serious.

Here are some things I think will help me finish before the Mayan apocalypse:

1. Write every day. (This is tough when my job has become unbelievably demanding... but no excuses!)
2. Write a consistent amount every day.
3. When I run out of the plot I have sketched out, take the time to sketch out the end of the book in some detail.
4. Keep enjoying the writing as much as I did in November. Yep, even though I had work and holidays and ten million things to think about other than the psychology of Gonzalo González, sitting down to immerse myself in his (and his aunt and uncle's) world was pure pleasure.

Roni Loren, Rachel Aaron, Susan Kaye Quinn, and Zoe Winters seem to have had success with similar notions. This bodes very well, indeed!

NaNoWriMo and Things To Do

NaNoWriMo is about to come roaring down the highway at us. At least it doesn't sneak up.

These are the items I need to get done in November, in no particular order:

1. Write 1,667 words per day of The Seven Noble Knights of Lara as an unofficial NaNoWriMo. If I don't make a really big push now, the project could languish for a few more years, and no one wants that. 1,667 words a day is a lot for me, and I'll probably have to rigidly schedule a time to sit down and do it until it's done. I've resisted rigid schedules because I now have so many demands on my time, with priorities that change more often than I'm used to.

2. Fireship Press: Acquisition work. At a meeting this week, the new COO said we needed to shift acquisitions to someone with fewer qualifications than me so I could get back to higher-level editing. The thing is, I love acquisition work! Deciding whether a piece has what it takes to make us request a full MS, and then deciding how much editing the full MS would require before it was ready for publication can be the most thrilling part of the entire publishing process. So far, if I've had a hand in approving a book, it's then been assigned to me for the aforementioned high-level editing, and it's tremendously satisfying to take a book all the way through, from MS to the exit gate. Acquisitions is probably the least time-consuming of all the tasks here, but it does mean that much less time to do everything else.

3. Fireship Press: Editing work. Currently, I have four books I need to pay huge amounts of attention to in order to ensure their overall quality. I prefer to do them one at a time or I'll become distracted and irritable, because I typically have intense consultations with the author in order to better understand his or her vision and shape it as changes come through. I also love this part of the process because it's where the real metamorphosis takes place. Needless to say, it's the most time-consuming aspect of my Fireship work.

4. Fireship Press: Copyediting. Exciting, higher quality standards and a severe dearth of staff mean I have to take on a lot of the tasks Tom taught me how to do, although they aren't officially in my job description. We already have a new copyediting system in place that should eliminate misuse and mistakes, but if I see a mistake myself, I can't help but correct it. Hopefully, that instinct will lessen the work load of the official copyeditors.

5. Fireship Press: Production. This includes all aspects of formatting. I don't mind this at all and would gladly keep doing if it weren't so time-consuming. Again, the company is working on offloading these tasks, but for now I either have to do it myself for the books I'm editing or work closely with the other staff members to get it done right. One important task this month is to "teach" everyone how to upload the book for the printer. Which brings me to:

6. Fireship Press: Admin. We're working most of the time from our own home bases, but meeting once a week to update each other and teach each other about all the little details no single one of us has complete control over. Yet. At these meetings I also tend to be assigned more tasks.

7. Blog. In November, I will have to reduce the blog to excerpt days on Saturdays and Sundays and the occasional book review I'm already preparing. I'd love to provide much more exciting content for you, but as you can see, I'm stretched a bit thin at the moment.

8. Açedrex Publishing. My company isn't the cash cow I was promised, but my theory is that hard work will pay off eventually. My strategy is to keep increasing the catalog with irresistibly fascinating titles. Of course, the timing is perfect (not!) and I'm now working on a couple of especially intensive projects, which I will unveil when the time is right. In the meantime, you can always help by purchasing inexpensive but high quality titles! Acedrex.com

9. Publicity. In a perfect world, I would have the financial and time budget to promote my writing and my company. I don't need to point out that this is no perfect world.

10. Keep reading good books in order to keep gaining exposure to good writing for my own uses. I also enjoy being of some help to talented writers by putting my reviews out there.

11. Taking care of my husband. He doesn't literally need taking care of, but mainly emotional support as he works just as hard as I do, but at a job he doesn't feel drawn to, just to keep a roof over our heads. And save to get our stuff in storage back to us some day. He's easy to please: he's thrilled just to spend time with me. For that reason, I can't be working on any of these other items at the same time I'm taking care of him. No, all that other stuff has to be done when he's at work. Such "rules" help to keep me grounded. I love my work, but it's important to work to live, not live to work. Also during November is my husband's birthday. I wish I could seize the moment to show him how much he means to me, but a card and a restaurant visit will have to do.

12. Thanksgiving. We'll probably be pretty pathetic. We can't travel to be with loved ones, but at least I assume my husband will have some time off to cook a turkey breast and give thanks for all our blessings. It's a great opportunity for calm and attention.

13. Staying sane. Under this umbrella fall eight hours of sleep per night, going to my writers' group meeting, keeping a private journal, and taking a moment to cook a nice meal once in a while. Some kind of contact with my actual friends would help, too, but I guess I'll put that off until December.

If we could assign a universal effort unit to each of these tasks and total them up, I think we would be looking at several months of work. The effort I put into each task is pretty intense, with the result that I'm a slow writer and a pretty slow editor. I always want to get it right the first time, which obviously doesn't apply to the writing process. Oh, the incessant push and pull of my different instincts!

So, November will be an experiment in quantity/quality balance. Wish me luck!

Decisions...

September, which I had intended as a full month of concentrating on my writing (with a refreshing trip to San Diego on the side), got derailed. I wrote a lot, but I didn't finish SNKL Chapter 8, and a lot of things happened that were beyond my control. So I look forward to the pledge I made to do NaNoWriMo in November as a way of asserting structure back into my professional life.

The question is, what to work on?

I could do NaNo unofficially and just pledge to write 1,667 words a day on the Seven Noble Knights of Lara.

Or, I could spend any free moments in October separating the 12,000 words I have of "Middle Awash in Talent" into chapters and sketch out the plot structure a little a more firmly, so as to prepare to do NaNo officially.

SNKL is my official project and I won't be satisfied until I bring it to some kind of conclusion. "Middle Awash" has brought pleasure to my beta readers and has gained undeniable momentum and I wonder if I should just go with its flow.

How do I decide? What do you recommend?

A First Glimpse of My Exciting New Project

I was planning on writing a tidy introduction to my giant new project here, but as luck would have it, I've  gained a spot in the NanoWriMo pitchapalooza put on by The Book Doctors. You, my dear readers, now have something you can take action on.

My book pitch is listed on their blog here. My pitch is the sixth down: The Seven Noble Knights of Lara by Jessica Knauss. They will select a winner, who will be put in touch with an agent or publisher, as appropriate. They'll also award a prize (a book and personal consultation) to the readers' favorite. Please vote for me!

A note: I would never have compared myself to The Godfather, thus seeming presumptuous (wow, is that ever the opposite of what I really am!), except that I thought the family revenge saga fit with the work. I hoped that was what would pop into readers' minds when they saw that, momentarily forgetting what an institution Puzo's novel has become. The suggest to reword it is great. Well, all their suggestions are great! I'll be rewriting the pitch and sharing it here, so there's something to look forward to!

Thanks  for voting, readers! I would love to get a copy of their book. As you know, publishing and writing don't really bring home the bacon these days. I deeply appreciate your support, in any form.

The Challenges of NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month is a great concept! Write enough words every day in November to have 50,000, and that will be your first draft of your novel. It introduces some much-needed, concrete, obtainable discipline into the big idea of writing a sustained piece of fiction. Some of these books have gone on to be published and met with great success.

November is as good a month as any, I suppose. But my challenge with NaNoWriMo has usually been that it falls during a month when I've got some huge upheaval going on.

This year, we're getting ready to move. I'm lucky to write this bit here, since the computer is now on the floor, the desk having escaped to greener pastures a couple of days ago. Because my husband is out with his nose to the grindstone earning us a few dollars so we can eat, I'm left with most of the sorting, packing, and throwing away duty. I'm one of those writers who likes to have a dedicated nook for working, with everything close at hand, nicely decorated, ventilated, and perfumed, for maximum sense inspiration, so this is not the month for me to be writing. I admire anyone who can produce any creative work in a disrupted environment.

Last year, if you can believe it (I can hardly believe it myself!), we were also getting packed up to move! If anything, there was a lot more emotional strain in 2009 because we were leaving Cambridge, Massachusetts, a place I love as if I were born there. We came to this state for a job that didn't work out, and now every time we go downtown, my husband is appalled at how run down it is, and astonished that he ever took me here. In other words, we can't wait to leave. This time, we'll use our intuition a bit more in finding a new place to live. Cross your fingers that it works!

Two thousand eight was a banner year, as I met my husband! The part before November was pretty disruptive, and I wasn't in a mindset to take up the reigns of my writing career yet, and we flew to visit my parents in Oregon for Thanksgiving. Excuses, excuses.

The previous year, 2007, was the only November I had an idea, a plot outline, even! I had a desk to work at that wasn't going anywhere! I had tons of free time for the first time in five years, because I'd just completed my PhD! I was accustomed to taking on large projects! And most of all, I had ganas. I was able to keep up the NaNo pace pretty well for the first ten days of November, but then I started to feel pretty poorly. I thought, I'm sick, but that doesn't keep me from typing, I'll keep chugging...

But no. It wasn't to be. By the twelfth, I had self-diagnosed myself, using WebMD, with strep throat, and then it was off on a difficult journey to the doctor for tests and drugs, because back then, WebMD and/or other web sites had no qualms telling me that if left untreated, strep throat will kill you. YIKES. Now of course, they admit that that's not necessarily true, but it was pretty easy to believe at the time that I was about to die. Oh, the pain! Needles and knives all along my throat! I couldn't eat, couldn't speak, could hardly breathe. The last thing I remember about that November is that, in immense physical anguish, I had to call up a Spanish friend of mine I still haven't seen since, to tell him I couldn't meet him in New York, where he was running the marathon. Sorry, Antonio! And mostly, I'm so sorry, book!

Before that, I was shackled to my PhD, and NaNoWriMo was just getting started in California.

In November of 2011, I can only hope my desk won't have run away from me and that I won't come down with a dread disease. Just a little stability is all I ask. It's not a lot. I pledge now that, even if I'm working two jobs or something equally time-consuming, as long as I have some semblance of an idea and a desk to write at, I will participate in NaNoWriMo. I will write 1,667 words a day of the same story.

(Uneasy grin.)