At least, according to the extra last chapter of my NaNoNovel, they are.

To earn the Random Ending Merit Badge sticker for my scrapbook, I tacked on a Chapter Twenty-Eight even though “the end” was after chapter twenty-seven. Chapter twenty-eight is called “What Really Happened” had has a dreamlike sequence of events that make no sense whatsoever. At the end of the chapter I claimed they were all true. BWAHAHAHAHA!

So according to the logic of that chapter, turtles are the bad guys because they are green. Everything that is green is evil. *nod* That’s what happens when you allow anything that comes to mind be the explanation for why something can’t happen. A bit earlier in the chapter the FMC stopped an army all by herself. How? She told them they could not pass, because she was there.

Yeah.

It was the second funnest thing I’ve ever done for NaNo. The first funnest was when I hit 50k during a word war (had more than 100 words left and less than a minute to write – but you should read the full story).

And yes, I am insane. Did you think I named this website on a whim?

NanoMoneyCorp

ESTADO: A PAGAR

Investimento desde: 21AGO09

Valor Investido: 100 USD

Investimento Mínimo: 20 USD

Prazo: 60 dias úteis.

Juros: 1,2% a 1,8% ao dia

ROI: 45,40%

Método de depósito: LR, PM e TIB

今天这个股市是一个冲高回落的走势。10点多看到NANO涨了10%左右开始下坠，在11.6空了1000股。

Science of Fullerenes and Carbon Nanotubes
M. S. Dresselhaus, G. Dresselhaus and P. C. Eklund
Elsevier Science USA, Academic Press San Diego 1996
ISBN 0122218205

Every November brings back the recurrence of National Novel Writing Month, an international contest in which writers challenge themselves to write a 50,000 word novel in only 30 days.  You can plan your story in advance, but cannot begin writing it until November 1st rolls around.

This is my fifth year participating in the NaNoWriMo and I am continuing with the challenge I set for myself last year: only write at write-ins.  Write-ins are basically social gatherings of writers who all desperately try to reach their word count goals.  Sometimes more socializing happens than writing, but they’re usually a lot of fun to attend, especially since they most often take place in restaurants and coffee shops.

If you’re interested, you should consider checking out the website to learn more:

www.nanowrimo.org

Even if you do not want to try this year, you can always start planning next year’s novel.  It might seem crazy to attempt a novel in 30 days, but if you don’t start it Nov. 1st, when will you actually give yourself the chance to try?

Here is a graph representing the official Nano Progress thus far:

Now, before you roll your eyes, keep in mind that I have 30 more pages of hand written stuff that I am transcribing. While I am still woefully behind, I do a ton left to transcribe. What I have learned thus far is this:

1) I do get cranky if I do not write at least a few hundred words a day
2) I enjoy writing about my parents
3) I may never get published, and I am no where near as good as some of my friends, but I can write something.

Those three lessons are far more important than 50k words in 30 days.

Now if you will excuse me, I am going to drink a delicious beer from New Glarus, Wisconsin. Here is the brass kettle where my beer was brewed:

Well I had posting daily and doing NaNoWriMo both on my list of things to do, but neither worked out so well. I was crit by the RL Monster again. See, I knew that my friend I moved in with was not going to be the easiest person in the world to live with. But it’s turning out to be more of a challenge than I anticipated. Now don’t get me wrong because I’m not trying to sound like an ungrateful, spoiled brat; I am truly thankful that she was willing to share a room with me, and give me a roof over my head. But that doesn’t mean that a good 75% of the time she’s not the most opinionated, selfish, pity-party-throwing, bitchy, rude motherfucker I have ever had the *joy* of meeting. Now for those that know me IRL (and if you don’t, well then hey you’ll learn something new right now) I am generally a happy person, even if I am having a horrid day, I can still usually brush it off and keep going about my business. This makes living with someone who thinks the whole world is out to get her and thinks that she has it worse than everyone else a real challenge. Also, I am a total friend person. I have lots of friends and MOST of them are people I’ve known for a long time (as in, a vast majority of my inner circle are people I’ve known since kindergarten or before) and I have been through lots with them all. So I talk to them A LOT. I’m always texting someone, but I try to be really polite about it, if I am out in the living room with everyone then my phone is on my lap, or in my shirt (hey, teh bewbs make a great cell phone holder!) or under my leg and on vibrate so the constant beeping doesn’t bother anyone. Or if i’m sitting at the table talking or eating, then it’s on silent and non-vibrate so that I see it flash and no one has to deal with the beeping or the buzzing. For some reason, this bothers my friend. She is contstantly rolling her eyes at me, and demanding I tell her who I am talking to or looking over my shoulder to try to read my messages. And it’s even worse if I’m on my laptop. That’s a nonstop parade of “OMG AGAIN WITH THE LAPTOP”s and “Turn That Fucking Thing Off and Socialize”s, though her idea of Socializing involves sitting on the couch upstairs and watching TV in silence and then discussing the show during the commercial break, and I’m not much of a TV person. I enjoy shows, but there are very few that I HAVE to watch, and I’m fine with streaming them online whenever I feel like it. So my texting/twittering/WoWing/blogging have suffered simply because I don’t want to deal with the headache of listening to her bitch. But hopefully I have it all worked out now.

Plus I started my new job so my body is trying to get used to waking up early and trying to get on some form of a schedule, so I am sleeping at the most random times. But so far everything is good on the job front, everyone there is really nice and it’s a pretty kick back atmosphere. Most everyone just kicks back and listens to their headphones so it’s always really quiet except for the pounding of keys. It’s just nice that no one freaks out if a cell phone is out on a desk or anything like that. (hell one guy plays aion from his phone all day!) The job itself isn’t too hard either just a lot of memorizing codes and the like. The hardest thing is that there is a lot of little details to remember, what cities have added fees and stuff, but there’s not really an easy way to look all that up, so I’ve made a lot of mistakes so far, but everyone is pretty nice about telling you what you did wrong and not being mean about it.

But in other news, I participated in TWLOHA day, and it was amazing. I’m actually thinking of working the word love into my sleeves that I am planning. Yay for first paychecks so I can buy the hoodies I’ve been dying to get from them. I swear I could spend hundreds of dollars on their site and be happy. I’m just sad that I missed the big walk fundraiser that was in Seattle a few months ago, I would have loved to participate. And for those of you who don’t know what TWLOHA is, it is short for To Write Love On Her Arms and is a charity that helps with Addiction, Suicide Prevention, Self-Injury and trying to get some of the social stigmas taken away. It’s a great organization and some of the stories have meant the world to me and I’ve met some great people working with them. I’ll have my story up here at some point, but I don’t know that I’m willing to share the whole thing just yet.

Well, it is time for me to “help” with the cleaning so I’m off. I promise the regular updates will resume again shortly. As well as the Get To Know Tart will be back.
<3

Somewhere along the line this year got behind me. I can’t believe we’re in the last week of November. I’m not too sure about making my goal of 10 contracts by year’s end. While it’s still obtainable, it’s unlikely. I’ve been busting my butt writing this month and I will have at least three books to submit before New Year’s.
I realized that I do have two submissions out that I’d forgotten about so if I do hear about them or I should say if they’re accepted that would be my 10. Still, I’m not counting on anything. Everyone is busy with the holidays.
I’m moving along nicely with book one in the Lady Shea’s Manor series. Paige and Jed are taking unexpected turns. This book will be longer than I expected, but that’s okay. Book three was targeted for 20k and I hit 26k by the time I finished.

I had a very relaxing weekend. After working 55 hrs at my day job I needed it. I took T, the grand daughter out shopping with me yesterday. It was so much fun watching her eyes light up at all the Christmas decorations and crowds of people. She talked(or babbled) up a storm. By the time I dropped her off to mom and dad she was thoroughly exhausted. This helped because they were getting ready to hop in the car for a 15 hr drive to GA. I’m still waiting for a call letting me know they arrived safely. Kids! They just don’t understand how we worry so much. Yes, I did try to call them, but their phones are off. Maybe they stopped to sleep.

Time for me to do laundry for my trip out of town!

Nano count for today – 2943
Total so far – 34889

Carbon Nanotube Science
Synthesis, properties and applications
Peter J. F. Harris
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2009
ISBN 978-0-521-82895-6

Sooooo…I’m now 13,000 words behind. That translates into roughly 8 days of writing. And I have 6 days left. *laughs hysterically* *chews on hair* Anyway, since I have no exciting or inspiring things to say (I’m all out), I thought I’d post a horrible excerpt to show you exactly how my writing has deteriorated in the past three weeks. It’s freeing, depressing, and hilarious all at the same time. And mysterious! Will my skill return? Has my inner editor died or is she just quiet? Will she hate me? Will she ever cooperate again? Quick, Frederickson and Elizabeth (my muses)!!! Give her water!! We need her, come December! We only have six days to revive her!

Here are the excerpts. They’re from different parts of the story, obviously.

First:
I woke on my own a few hours later. Richard sat with his arms resting on his pulled-up knees, staring at the flames. I crept quietly until I sat beside him, and touched his shoulder. Startled, he trned his face towards me and inhaled sharply.
“Sorry,” I whispered. “You can sleep now.”
He rolled his eyes at his own jumpiness and nodded his thanks, falling asleep beside Telltale almost instantly. I placed another piece of wood on the fire and watched sparks swirl in the air. Suddenly an alien dropped out of the sky and transported us to the next morning, where things were less boring and there weren’t any more premature romantic foreshadowings.

Second: (note the typos)
“He shrugege.d “If we ride while the sun is up and do’t stop for lunch – “ at this my stomach protested – “and if we go at agood pace, it should take about seven days.”
My eyes widened, and now my rear began to ache in anticipation. “Seven days?”
He looked at me sympathetically. “I know it’s bad if you’re not used to it” he said. “But trust me, by t=day three, you’ll be used to it.”
I watched as he stuck thwo twigs through each fish, which was about the length of a hand from pulse to finger tip, and he handed me one. We placed them over the fire, the fish butterflied and laying with their scales facing down, toward the fire.
“Where are yous siters?” I asked him.
“The youngest is fifteen, and she’s at the palace. She has magic, so ELizabth is teaching her to control it properlu. She has a bit of a temper,” he added with a smile. “Her name is Granolinne. The next one, Serusel, is a guard in the kingdom of Drahmas. You might know the people who live there better as vampires,” he added with a grin. “But they’re not blood suckers. They have silver eyes with pupils like cats, and they have fangs. She’s eighteen. Then there’s her twin, Farael. She’s an earthscout, like me. She’s in India.”

Third:
It occurred to me, as I fell into pace, that I was doing an incredibly idiotic thing.
The contents of my backpack consisted of a history textbook, Their Eyes Were Watching God, my pencil case, a large, three-subject spiral notebook, a water bottle, and A SUPER AMAZING SURVIVAL KIT WITH FOOD AND STUFF.
I stopped and looked up at the authoress. “What?”
“Right,” the authoress replied. “Sorry. Continue.”
“Now that you’ve broken the fourth wall, you can stop obsessing over not breaking the fourth wall.”
“I know, I’m excited,” the authoress said. “Now I’ll continue writing where we last left off.”
In books and movies, characters who do these things always have some sort of survival kit with food and a flashlight that they just “happened” to carry around with them. I, however, was a normal person not in a book, don’t even think about breaking the fourth wall again, and all I had were school supplies. At least I had a half-full watter bottle, but Alexis was right: I had no food.

Fourth:
I slowed my pace, trying to breathe deeply despite the pain that was shooting through my ribs and lungs. I wheezed loudly and grasped my stomach, praying I wouldn’t pass out. Especially since Write Or Die sessions are unbelievably intense and should not be done except in absolute emergencies. There goes that fourth wall again. Who needs it anyway.
“Excuse me, but I’m kind of dying here,” I reminded the authoress, who was very relieved to have just passes her word goal.
“Sorry. This fourth wall thing is so distracting,” she said. “Moving on.”
I continued at a fairly quick pace through the forest, but more or less decided I didn’t have to run. Besides, I was going in a different direction than they were. I was probably already way out of their line of search…ing. Searching? Or search? Does that make sense?
“Argh!” said the authoress. “Sorry! Continuing as if nothing has happened.”

Reached my goal of 150k words tonight! I’m so excited! I expected to feel happy – I forgot that last year, just like this year, I feel sad too. It was almost heartbreaking to write those last few words of the story. Knowing that it is over.

With a week left of NaNo, I’ll be continuing to write. What exactly? I’ll be adding other scenes to what I’ve already written. There’s conversations and other stuff that I forgot to do as I went through the story, so now’s the time to write them and have them count toward NaNo. So what if there are a few inconsistencies. Editing is for December.

Lots of fun.

Are you as behind as I am in your NaNo word count?

Try one of these techniques to add more words to that fledgling novel:

• add a dream or nightmare sequence
• your protagonist finds an unmailed letter in a library book
• your character lets a phone call go to voicemail and the result is tragic
• add a childhood flashback
• listening to a song brings back a hurtful memory: use songs lyrics here, too!
• truth about a minor character is unveiled, shifts tone of a relationship
• spring cleaning in any season: character rummages through a car glove box, items under a bed, a junk drawer in the kitchen, an hierloom chest or an inherited house

What are your ideas for adding more meat to your novel?

I am currently less than 5k words away from my month-long goal of 150k. The next time I write in here, I am a WINNER!

NaNo Day 22

Daily Words: 1,631
Total Actual WC: 36,144
TOTAL WC GOAL: 36,674

The wrist is better than it was. Here’s hoping it stays that way.

There is still knitting. If you’re lucky, I’ll have the time and energy one of these days soon to take pictures and post them.

Snippet:

Sheila looked up, her eyes following Brooke’s outstretched hand to a wide stretch of green meadow split down the middle by a wide river. The water flowed fairly fast, as far as she could tell, and looking to her right she could see why: there was a waterfall only about a mile away.

Everything looked normal and peaceful, like the type of place you’d bring a picnic lunch on a summer afternoon.

Except it was fall. And the flowers in the meadow were just budding, as if ready for spring.

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

Well day 22 is over. At least my typing for the day will be once I finish this post. Another daunting day of typing. I hammered six thousand four hundred and thirty one words out on my Scottish model M today. So I won the bet I made with the boys and they do not get the big bag of candy. They got a bit irritated when every time I passed one of their word goals for the month I played taps through the computer stereo setup that we have. Since their highest goal was twenty five thousand I hit them all. And I did in the twelve thousand in two days too. They were gunning for me towards the end. The first two hours were not all that difficult for me the creative juices were running well. But that third hour was when creativity started to dry up on me and the ideas just would not come. Now four thousand words a day with good creativity is nothing to sneeze at but I had the bet on with the boys. And I am now only nine thousand five hundred and fifty eight words behind. Well it will be less once my main character analyzes this post and rips it apart but the ripping will be tomorrow not now. Today was most a roaring success. I never thought that I could slog my way through twenty five percent of my goal in only seven hours of typing. I feel that I am justifiably proud of myself. Yay me! All for now. Later!

Item: USB 2.0 Cable for Charging, and Syncing your iPod to a PC. Supports USB 1.1 or USB 2.0
Compatible With: iPod Nano 1-3, iPod 1st-5th Generation, iPod Video, iPod U2, and iPod Mini, iPod Classic, iPod Touch, and iPhone
Condition: New. I never used it.
Price: $4.00 (includes shipping & handling)

Behind a Forced Smile, I Harbor a Grown Shadow

Myro woke slowly to the sound of several dragens talking at once. Then one voice over-rode them all. “Hush, friends. Elder Myro has been through a great deal. More than anything he needs rest.” The voice was a familiar one. It hadn’t been that long ago since he’d heard it. He let it draw him back to consciousness.

“Where am I?” he said blearily. He forced his eyes open but his head felt like it was stuffed with cotton and he was having trouble getting his eyes to focus. He’d heard Elder Jesin, but he didn’t really recognize anyone else.

“You’re in the Starburst Cliffs,” an older sire said from close by. “I’m Elder Taurin. You saw me at the convocation but we didn’t speak to one another. How are you feeling?”

Myro closed his eyes, trying to shake the cobwebs loose from his mind, then opened them again and sighed when things stayed just as unfocused. “I’m still a little woozy,” he admitted. “The fire dragen elder… I should know his name…”

“Zarentil,” Elder Jesin supplied. “You said he attacked you. What happened exactly?”

“I got overheated and landed in a stream – or the meadow that surrounded one, rather.” He closed his eyes, giving up on forcing his eyes to focus. The thought that something might be seriously wrong with them flitted through his mind but he pushed it away. Now was not a good time to let his more hypochondriacally driven tendencies run away with him. “I splashed water on my face but it didn’t help that much, so I decided to take a short dip – wait for the sun to go down a bit and the heat of the day to lessen. I was just starting to relax when I heard a familiar voice. I looked up and saw that it was the fire – Elder Zarentil and he had a horde of demons with him. He was quite calm about the whole thing too. Then he told me to relax and began chanting in some strange guttural language. He was just about to grab my shoulder and… I suppose assault me, so I flew.”

“You found your way here and away from them and then collapsed,” a sea dragen dam said. She seemed familiar as Myro opened his eyes to look at her. His vision was starting to clear as well, much to his relief.

I just heard back from the agent who requested a partial.  They passed.  Said the story was flat.

NANO is not going well.  I’ve been so stressed and busy I haven’t really worked on it at all.

Bad day today, but hopefully tomorrow will be a good one.

I arrived back from Turkey a little over a week ago. Now that the jetlag is gone, I can really get serious about National Novel Writing Month. Only problem is, I’m a bit behind (though the trip was very worth it–I’ll post a link to pictures soon as they’re all up).

I’ve worked out a schedule that, thanks to Thanksgiving break (four day weekend), might allow for me to actually “win.” For me, this would be a remarkable feat considering I’ll have started in earnest more than halfway through the month.

Currently, I have a little more than 11,000 words. The schedule is as follows:

11/23 – 18,000 words
11/24 – 22,000 words
11/25 – 24,000 words
11/26 – 26,000 words
11/27 – 36,000 words
11/28 – 46,000 words
11/29 – “Win” a day early

I will post my wordcount here at the end of each day. If I manage to win, then next year during NaNo I will aim to write 100,000 words in the month of November because if I can put together 50,000 in less than two weeks, 100,000 should be a cake walk!

Olá,

skimmer morato

Ufa…  estava na dúvida se iria ou não montar um skimmer, se não conseguisse encontrar um que teria custo e beneficio iria tentar construir este daqui, mas estava determinado a comprar algo já pronto, não que estes montados não consigam chegar a um resultado satisfatório (veja aqui) é que skimmer é uma das peças mais importante de um aquario marinho, como disse queria algo com custo x beneficio e encontrei, esta semana chegou meu skimmer, depois de dar uma fuçada na net encontrei o amigo Robson que tinha um skimmer morato 250 com uma bomba maxi jet 1000 onde acredito que será o suficiente no inicio para este nano reef, valeu Robson !!!

Bom por enquanto é só, agora irei em busca das lampadas para este marinho.

Abraços

NaNo Day 21

Daily Words: 2,221
Total Actual WC: 34,514
TOTAL WC GOAL: 35,007

I’ve been writing, but have been forgetting to record it properly. So, here’s the best I can do – today’s count. I’m not sure how much of the rest of it is from yesterday, and how much the day before.

Also: I tweaked my wrist earlier today. So I didn’t get as much written as I had planned/hoped. I’m hoping it heals in my sleep and is all better for tomorrow.

(Oh – and yes. Sock knitters will recognize one of the names in this snippet. I needed the name of a barony that sounded like it could be pseudo-medieval-England, and guess what book was lying around providing inspiration? )

Snippet:

“That is all anyone knows.” Ariane’s normally even voice caught as she spoke. “There was trouble brewing for months, with a few disappearances and suspected deaths, and no obvious way to stop it. And then one day, it just stopped. That was the very day –” Her voice broke and she shook her head, unable to continue.

The others all seemed to understand her reference anyway, dropping their gazes to their food, and staying silent. All except Sheila, who was horribly confused.

“The day that what?” she asked at last, unable to combat either the heavy silence or the curiosity eating at her.

“Can’t you guess?” Alex said softly, meeting her eyes for the first time since they’d gotten back from exploring. “Is there no subject that we’ve been talking around ever since we came here?”

“No.” She maintained eye contact as she shook her head, trying to read the answer in his eyes.

“That day,” Rupert said in a voice completely devoid of emotion, “was the day she died. Melissa of Bordhi. My mother.”

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