Ok, I did it. I wrote a friggin novel in November. Well, to be more precise, I wrote 50,000 words of a novel that will be considerably longer when/if I finish it. Then again, maybe it won't. There are huge chunks of the book, like the entire first chapter for example, that will be chopped if I ever decide to make it presentable. But, towards the end, it actually all came together in my head. That was quite a magical moment for me, I felt like a writer for a second. I was thinking about where to go and how to end the novel, then it dawned on me, and it was like "WHOA." It works, it's neat, it's unexpected. But, it may be a little cliche. Do you think you are masochistic enough to struggle your way through it? Go for it. I've posted it under the category (left hand column) My Very Bad, Terrible, Awful, No Good Novel. I have much confidence in it. I also added my neato winner banner on the left column of this page over there. See it?

Also, congratulations to Nick! He also completed the NaNoWriMo challenge. Of the eight of us in our little group that joined, only Nick and I managed to pull it off. That should give you an idea of how, sometimes, not having a life actually allows you to succeed where your friends with lives fail. Nick is also a character in my book. Maybe I should've taken another friends advice and made my novel about a guy trying to write a novel in a month, and had all seven other participants I know be the characters. Or not.

As for the novel...

If you are considering reading it, take the following into account:
1)NaNoWriMo is about quantity, not quality.
2) In my frantic typing I left some things out, like character development, exposition and conflict.
3) It will be filled with typing, spelling and grammatical errors. Again, see point #1.
4) On the plus side, all of the science and some of the pseudo-science, history and archaeology I've drawn on is real, including site layouts and alignments. Some of the legends and myths are real, or slightly modified to fit my whim.
5) All of the dream sequences are real dreams experienced by me, or someone I know.
6) The book is essentially a lesson in history, and pseudo-history, thinly tied together with a vague plot.
7) Entire sections of the story have been skipped, because I hadn't figured out how to write them yet.
That's enough about my literary drivel.

In Other News...

earthShine's bass player, Denver, has left the band. We're not sure what we're going to do, bandwise, from this point forward. We're going to record some of the songs we've written together, because we like them, then, who knows? I've started looking for other musicians and/or projects to partake in. Not really sure what I'm going to do with that.

Visitation

The blog, despite only One (1) update for the entire month, again set a new record for visitors. 2403 visitors in November. I guess there were a lot of people dropping by each day, cussing at me for not having posted anything, then moving on along. I'm still leery about whether that was 2400 real people stopping by, but I can certainly pretend it was.