I’m trying to design some business cards for WorldCon later this year. I’ve got it down to a couple of designs, the only difference being how the picture of me is oriented with relation to the text, which consists of my email, Twitter, Facebook, and website addresses (that would be here).
Both of them have a picture of me (different pictures), and underneath the image it has my name in full, and underneath that, my Twitter bio, which is this.
Creator and Destroyer of Worlds
But a couple of days ago in a chat with a friend of mine, I said the following.
I invent imaginary people and make them have conversations in my head. I also write.
I don’t know why, but I find this quite funny. My friend, it must be noted, neither laughed nor even reacted, but that is probably because she expects these kind of statements out of me, and believes that any reaction — positive or negative — could be taken as encouragement.
Is it just me, or is that better than Creator and Destroyer of Worlds? It’s a big longer, but . . . maybe I could make it work. I don’t know.
Hi, everyone. It’s been a few days since I posted. Well, OK, it’s been since November 30th. Since I completed NaNoWriMo. A lot of Real Life™ has happened and I’ve not had the time to write, much less update a blog. But that’s winding down for the most part, now, and I’m going to try to maintain some semblance of a regular schedule (said the serial procrastinator).
But in the meantime, I was tagged! A friend of mine from Viable Paradise, Camille Griep, tagged me to participate in “The Next Big Thing,” a blog-tagging activity especially for writers. There are ten questions about our current work in progress (i.e., the “next big thing”) which we are to answer, and then tag other writer bloggers to do the same.
And now, for the self-interview.
What is the working title of your book?
The book’s working title is Death Scene, but I’m thinking Scene of the Crime or Crime Scene might also work. It is the first book in a series I’m calling “The PCIU Case Files.” PCIU stands for “Paranormal Crimes Investigation Unit.” I have the plots of the first and third books basically done, the second one in the works, and there’s a three-book arc that ties those together. I also have ideas for books four and five.
The reason the first and third books are plotted (and partially written) is that book three used to be book one, and book one used to be book two. Which means book two was originally book three, so it’s the one I hadn’t worked on at all. You’re welcome to diagram that if you like, but you may need four dimensions.
Where did the idea come from for the book?
The opening scene, wherein a boy scout troop leader happens across the scene of a crime while hiking with his scouts to where they’re going to camp for the weekend, popped into my head fully formed. The scene he finds is a young woman burning at the stake. But it’s frozen in stasis, flames and all.
What genre does your book fall under?
Urban fantasy. It’s set in present-day Atlanta, but magic works.
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
I don’t ever think in terms of movies when it comes to the characters, at least as far as who in the real world would play them in a movie (with two caveats I’ll mention below). But when I gave it serious consideration, I realized I only have vague notions of what two of my characters look like. So I went through literally hundreds of actors in IMDB (by birth year) and by Googling. I don’t picture my characters as ‘beautiful people,’ and actors with recognizable names are sort of ‘beautiful people’ by definition, so this was hard. (Also, seriously, have you ever tried to get a list of ‘normal-looking actors in their 30s’ or 20s? Try it. You get nothing but ‘hottest’ lists.) But I’ve picked out some names that come reasonably close to the general look I have in mind (disregard acting ability; I don’t even know some of these people’s work). I also realized that I haven’t actually decided on the race of one of my characters. I’ve used Caucasian actors below, but I may make him African American.
Detective Charlotte “Chuck” Norris: Eliza Dushku, Alyson Hannigan, Laura Prepon, or Felicia Day (I have always pictured Chuck in my head as a petite strawberry blonde with an attitude, but when I thought about it . . .)
Detective Derek Meads: Hunter Parrish comes closest, although Shia LeBeouf would work, I guess. Derek is the most recent addition to my cast so he’s a bit . . . amorphous. He could even turn out to be African-American.
Manny Gutierrez: And here we run into a problem. Manny is nearly 7 feet tall, rail thin, and has a dyed, spiked mohawk. Good luck finding that. If Aarón Díaz were seven or eight inches taller, he’d be about right. But much too pretty.
TV reporter Monique Johnson: Since she actually is a TV personality, she is allowed to be “beautiful.” (I’ve been picturing her as a younger Alfre Woodard, which is the other caveat I mentioned above.) So: Yaya DaCosta or Annjee Diggs.
Now, as I said before, I never think of these things, but having now Googled many image searches looking for actors and actresses of approximately the right ethnicity, age, hair color, and height . . . I may have a better idea in my head what these people look like. So, yay for being tagged!
Disclaimer: I loves me some Eliza Dushku, Alyson Hannigan, and Felicia Day (Buffy for the win!). Adore. And Laura Prepon got in there because of one particularly bad-ass image of her I ran across that said “Chuck Norris” to me. Eliza would make her hair red(dish) for this role, I’m sure of it.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
FBI mages cooperate with the Atlanta Police in a race against the clock to solve a series of seemingly unrelated, escalating, horrific murders committed using magic.
The X-Files meets Criminal Minds is one of my “pitches,” but I’m not sure it’s accurate. I had a completely accurate one one day and didn’t write it down. It is gone forever.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
In a perfect universe, I’ll send in my query letter and Big Publishing will throw bags of money at me. Joss Whedon and J. Michael Straczynski will get into a fist-fight over which one of them gets to direct the movie made from my book. But if that doesn’t end up happening, I’m not entirely averse to the idea of self-publishing. :) But I’m gonna try traditional before that.
The Viable Paradise oath involved submitting until Hell wouldn’t have it.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
It was a NaNoWriMo novel to begin with, so it took 30 days. But it had no subplots, very little in the way of character development, and no arc.
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Since I identified the genre as Urban Fantasy, I’ve been eagerly reading other UF books, hoping not to see anything too close to what I’ve developed. So far, so good. Kat Richardson, Katharine Kerr, Jim Butcher, and Ilona Andrews come closest in “feel” to what I’m aiming for, but all of them are so different.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
This book was originally the second book in the series. I was working on the first one (now the third one) when NaNoWriMo came up and I needed something else to write. So I thought, “Why not work on book 2?” As I said above, the opening scene popped into my head, and the rest flowed from that. I figured out who my “bad guy” was about the same time my characters did.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
As I said, I’ve purposefully gone out of the way to keep it different than what else is out there. There are several other UF series set in Atlanta where magic works, and mine is nothing like any of them.
Magic is not a crutch. It doesn’t automatically solve all problems; all too often, it causes as many as it helps solve. What matters is good detective work, team work, and the proper application of magic when needed. The characters are more important than their magic.
My magic system is not overpowered and there is a price to using it. So if any of that appeals . . .
On the Quillian Chronicles, each time we present a story, we follow it up with an interview with the author. My interview is now live, if you have any desire to hear it. :)
I loathe the sound of my own voice. But I think everyone does. So . . . there you have it. Go. Listen. Download. Share. But only after you share the story as well. :)
It should come as no surprise to anyone who either knows me or reads this blog that I am participating in NaNoWriMo again this year. This will be my seventh consecutive year participating in NaNoWriMo, and I hope it will be my fifth consecutive win. As I said in a previous post, I already have my project picked out for this year, and it promises to be something kind of fun, but more importantly, useful to me as I write my PCIU Case Files novels.
What this means for those of you who do see these posts is that the frequency is going to pick up. Perhaps drastically. From one or two per week to one every day, or perhaps multiple posts per day.
For those of you seeing this over on LiveJournal, I’ll kindly put a cut so you aren’t inundated by my spewing effusively about whatever I’ve written that day. Or, alternatively, lamenting the words I did not write that day. But please bear with me as the link-up between WordPress and LiveJournal is . . . a little fickle at times, and I’ve never gotten the cut to work just right.
So, I’m going to test it, right now. On my WordPress site, you’re about to see a "more" link, and on LJ, it should show up as an LJ-cut.
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. I appreciate it, truly.
I apologize, however, for requiring registration in order to leave a comment. I know it’s a hassle. I really do. I would open things up if I could, but from the first day I set up this blog, I started getting spam comments, spam pingbacks, and spam user registrations. I’m still getting spam user registrations to the tune of five or ten per new blog post. The point of it just escapes me. They’re all using emails from 163.com, mail15.com, and hotmail.com.
If you have any useful suggestions on how to stem the tide without making it impossible for real people to comment, I’d be grateful to hear them.
Note: I don’t make it a habit to rant, here, but I felt the need to vent about this.
This is something I wasn’t aware of until some friends of mine pointed it out last night. A writer of their acquaintance whom I shall call "Jack" sent out an email to the Atlanta Writers Club with the following title:
Jack Writer Has a New Pulitzer Nominated Book
Jack is published through what I will call a small press, but an argument could be made for calling it a vanity press. I’ve met the owner of this publishing house, and although he seems like a nice, earnest person, there was something about his answers to basic business-of-writing questions that told us he’s not really all that knowledgeable about things like contracts and rights. Which a publisher should be, if he expects to stay in business long.
The email provided a link to the book’s PR site (part of the service provided by his publisher). The page contains a number of blurbs (a.k.a. "puffs") written in that breathless style seemingly reserved for such purposes. "An instant classic!" "A tour-de-force!" "I wasn’t able to put it down!" "Jack’s story grabs you by the throat and won’t let go until the final page!" Etc. You know the type. The purpose of a blurb or puff is to influence you to buy the book. Authors (or their publishers) generally get well-known authors in their genre to provide quotes. According to Marilyn Henderson on AbsoluteWrite,
When an author gives another writer a blurb, it implies an endorsement or recommendation of the novel. Her fans may buy your book on the strength of her liking it enough to let her name be on it. It also implies her fans will like your book, so you must choose the author you ask carefully.
If her stories do not include on-stage murder, violence or profanity, for example, her fans don’t expect any in a book she recommends. They assume a novel she "endorses" will be similar to hers. If it isn’t, her publisher may get angry letters, and she may lose fans and sales.
Just as you must know the audience you write for, you must know the audience of the authors you ask for blurbs.
Recognizing none of these authors’ names, I looked a few of them up and discovered that they, too, are either self-published authors or published by small, niche-market publishers. One of them was billed as a critic for a prominent online newspaper which I will decline to mention. I looked him up, and sure enough, he’s a critic. A film and TV critic. Who publishes his reviews on his own site. And then this newspaper links to them.1 He has several books . . . also published by a small, niche publisher.
My point is that these book blurbs were all written by people in the same basic position as Jack: an author whose small publisher is probably pushing them to scratch a back in the interest of reciprocity. I have no proof of this; I’m supposing.
Now, let me be absolutely, crystal clear: none of that is an issue. I don’t have a problem with self publishing. I don’t have a problem with small publishers. I don’t have a problem with niche markets. I don’t have a problem with people getting their work in front of people by any reasonable means necessary. Except for one thing.
Pulitzer Nominated.
Surely that can’t be right. Can it? The Pulitzer is a major award. It seems unlikely that a book by an unknown writer would be nominated for such a prestigious honor.
So my friends looked into this a bit.
Turns out, anyone can enter the Pulitzer Prize competition. You pay $50 and send off a few copies and it’s "submitted." Officially entered in the contest for the Pulitzer. Notice that "submitted" is not the same as "nominated." That is a very fine distinction.
Read more here (Huffington Post article by Steve Lehto). A salient quote from that article:
The Pulitzer Prize organization has juries which select finalists in various categories and then the Pulitzer Prize Board picks the winners from those finalists. According to their own website, the only people who should say they are "nominated" for a Pulitzer Prize are the finalists who have been selected by the juries for consideration by the Pulitzer Prize Board.
Jack himself may not have had any say in this. The publisher may very well have paid the $50 and be urging him to hype the "Pulitzer Nominated" nonsense. And having met him, I can’t say that I would put it past him. That very earnestness I noted above may blind him to the negative impact something like this could have on both Jack’s and his own reputation.
So the morals of this story are these:
Do not ever do this. It is at best a cheap marketing ploy. It is at worst a bold-faced lie. And if you’re caught at it by your peers, you’re going to have a hard time regaining whatever trust this costs you.
If you hear of an author claiming his book is "Pulitzer Nominated," check the Pulitzer site before you believe it.
My problem is the implied lie. Or lie of omission, if you will. Saying he is a "critic" "for" the ElectroNews Times (or whatever) implies that he is a full-time book / literature critic working directly on the payroll, not that he is a film / TV critic on his blog, which the publication then features. It’s the difference in saying, "Here comes the president" vs. "Here comes the president of the PTA." Both are true, but one is more truthful.
I am taking a needed break from Facebook, right now. I was spending time on there I should have been using for writing. I think I might go back after the election season is over. I’m . . . so very, very done with it.
And I have been writing. I re-visited my “B Is for Bard” story from last NaNoWriMo and came up with an Actual Ending™, toward which I am now writing. I’m trying to end my Fairy Tale Private Eye story. I’m idea-wrangling several other stories, as well as my newly redesignated first novel in the PCIU Case Files series. (It was formerly known as the second novel, but the previous first one needed to be third, so two is now one and three is two.
I’ve also been reading and making progress in a couple of books I’d been neglecting.
And I’ve been listening to podcasts. I have a crap-ton of them on my iPod, including a new-to-me writing-oriented one called The Creative Penn, hosted by Joanna Penn. I mentioned it before (here). Since then, I’ve heard a few more, and it’s definitely a keeper.
Now, “James Chartrand” is a pseudonym. “James” is actually a woman. He “came out of the closet,” as it were, in December of 2009. After about three years of being successful and presenting a male persona to the Internet.
Go read that blog post that explains why Chartrand chose that pseudonym, then come back here. It’s a very enlightening read.
<hold muzak>
Done? Good.
There are a few things that I just don’t get. Why does it matter whether someone is male or female when it comes to writing? Chartrand said that she would often submit the same ideas as her real name and as James, and they’d be accepted and even praised as James, but not as her real name.
How is this still happening? Seriously, how is this still allowed to happen? Maybe I’m just naïve, but I thought things were better than this. I thought the writing was what mattered, not whether the author has breasts or a penis. No wonder so many female authors use just their initials! (J. F. Penn (Joanna Penn, herself), J. K. Rowling, C. J. Cherryh, V. C. Andrews, P. D. James, A. C. Crispin, A. J. Orde, E. E. Horlak, B. J. Oliphant (the last three are all Sherri S. Tepper), D. C. Fontana, J. D. Robb, K. A. Applegate, C. S. Friedman, S. E. Hinton . . . the list goes ever on.)
But aside from that, one other thing surprises me a lot about this particular “outing.” After Chartrand was revealed to be female, her male fans/clients/readers took it pretty much in stride. But the women . . .
She said in the interview that by far the worst reactions came from women. For instance, this blog post by Amanda Hess. Not to say she’s/they’re not somewhat justified, if what Hess says in her blog is accurate. She does make it sound like Chartrand went too far in her pursuit of coming across as masculine, going as far as to do to other women what had been done to her, and that is inexcusable.
My point is that it shouldn’t matter. Honestly, I find myself looking for male characters in science fiction and fantasy because I can identify with them more, but I don’t let that stop me from enjoying female main characters. In the urban fantasy subgenre, it’s mostly female main characters, and I’m fine with that.
Men writing female main characters or women writing male main characters . . . it’s all part of what we learn to do as writers: Writing the Other. If we didn’t learn to do that, all our characters would be just like ourselves. I would only have middle-aged, upper-middle-class white male characters with no hair, a cat, and a southern accent. Jim Butcher would never be able to carry off Murphy, Molly, Mab, the Leanansidhe, or Susan, all of whom are wonderful characters. J. K. Rowling’s main character was not only male, he was substantially younger than she. But Harry rang true to me, as did Hermione, Ron, Draco, Dumbledore, Hagrid, Molly, Tonks, and the other 300 characters she brought to life.
Just because she has ovaries doesn’t make her unable to write about a male character. And just because Butcher has testicles doesn’t make his female characters any less believable.
It’s what writers do.
The funny part of all this is . . . I have considered using G. D. Henderson as a “pen name” just for that ambiguity. Precisely because the lion’s share of urban fantasy authors are female, and to fit into the genre, it might actually be best (Jim Butcher, Stefan Petrucha, D. B. Jackson (a pseudonym for David B. Coe), James R. Tuck, and Simon R. Greene (among others) notwithstanding) for me to be ambiguously gendered.
And that’s just . . . weird.
I guess there’s a lot more work left to go before people stop injecting prejudice into everything. If you don’t read a book or blog because of the gender — or race, religion, sexual orientation, or anything else — of the author, you’re missing out on some great writing.
Third base!
I had a boss back when I worked at a steel mill in Alabama. This particular boss started out having morning meetings where he would talk to all four of his department of computer programmers equally: me, another man, and two women. Then slowly, over a few weeks/months, he scooted his chair more and more into the room until he was sitting in front of the two women, talking only to me and the other man. Rather than calling him on it, we decided to ram it down his throat. “Sue” (not her real name) made a suggestion, one morning (from behind him), and he hated it. Shot it down as no good and unworkable. Later, “Joe” (not his real name, either) suggested exactly the same thing . . . and our boss loved the suggestion. Couldn’t praise it enough. Then Sue called him on it. He turned red, left the room, and didn’t say a word to any of us about it.
Google that phrase. Seriously.
Note: Edited on 8 December, 2018 because the original image was removed from Flickr. Minor formatting changes were made to conform with later style decisions.
Evidence or GTFOThis will come as no great shock to anyone that has known me for any length of time, but: I’m a card-carrying skeptic. There. I’ve said it.
Now, by “skeptic,” I don’t mean “that guy who always says ‘nuh-uh!’ every time anyone makes a claim. Nor do I mean the habitual debunker, who feels compelled to—often gleefully—reply all to every credulous chain email with 5 links disproving whatever silly story is contained therein.1
I also don’t mean the kind of “skeptic” that simply doesn’t believe in something because it goes against my particular world-view or dogma or agenda.2
I’m the kind of skeptic that is epitomized by the image of James Randi above: give me evidence or don’t be shocked when I fail to believe your claim.
I don’t believe in ghosts, magic, bigfoot, psychic powers, angels, demons, gods, devils, alien abduction, mermaids, the Loch Ness monster, qi/chi, homeopathy, therapeutic touch, ear candling, or a very, very long list of other things too numerous to mention for which there is simply no well-tested scientific evidence that shows an effect that could not be accounted for by other things such as abnormal psychology, pareidolia, coincidence, or the placebo effect.
When people know or learn this about me and then see the kind of thing I write (science fiction, fantasy (epic, urban, and dark), and horror), I sometimes get the response where they tilt their head to one side and you can practically hear their neurons undergoing cognitive dissonance.
“But…if you don’t believe in any of that stuff, why is that all you write about?”
It’s a very good, valid question. And one for which I didn’t have a good answer. But something occurred to me during lunch, today, and I think I have a glimmer of understanding.
One of the most basic tools in the Skeptic’s Toolbox is this simple question: If X is true, how would that affect the world?
For instance, here’s an example. If homeopathy3 were true, how would that affect the world?
Well, first of all, every time you drank water, you’d get what amounts to a massive dose of medicine that should cure every known disease or ailment. And the irony of homeopathy is that the less of it you drink, the higher the dose.
If that were true, how would that affect the world?
Well, there’d be practically no sickness, because all anyone would have to do to cure themselves would be to drink a glass of water. Doctors and hospitals would only be needed for treating trauma. Drug companies would go out of business. Insurance companies would deal only in accidental death and dismemberment policies. (Alas, no amount of medicine cures stupid.)
There would be no more depression, no more malaria, no more common cold, no more cancer, no more epilepsy, no more ebola, AIDS, herpes…the world would be entirely different.
And if by diluting a substance that causes an effect, you can cause the opposite effect in the body, think of the amazing new illicit drugs! Dilute something that causes pain and taking a miniscule dose of it would cause euphoria. Meth and cocaine and LSD wouldn’t hold a candle to some of the designer drugs you could whip up in your own kitchen sink.
Of course, you’d have to have a way of removing the ‘remembered vibrations’ from water, so there’d be a market for that kind of thing. If for no other reason than to make sure that the human race didn’t go extinct or have a population boom. Think of all the substances out there that cause either fertility or infertility. Dilute those enough, and you have a potent birth control (by diluting the fertility-inducers) or fertility drugs (by super-dilution of fertility-reducing substances).
On the other hand, maybe “regular” tap water is nearly perfectly balanced, so all the things that would cause X and all the things that would cause -X cancel each other out. Maybe diseases are caused by water supplies being slightly tilted in one direction or another. People who could analyze the content of municipal water supplies (or wells) could make a mint by offering to re-balance the water supply.
Imagine a world where you might be hyper-allergic to water, because it contains a massively dilute form of anti-histamine compounds. How would you survive? You’d have to have a way of “detoxifying” the water so you could drink it (i.e., removing the ‘vibrations’; erasing the ‘memory.’)
Ooh, or how about all the estrogen or testosterone that winds up in the water supply? Even if there had never been a drug industry churning out metric tons of artificial examples of both hormones, people gotta pee, and that pee’s gotta go somewhere. If your municipal water supply became gender-imbalanced…if there were too much estrogen and it were diluted enough, it would have the same effect as a massive dose of anabolic steroids. <shudder>.
Do you see what I’ve done, here? This is exactly what a writer does when doing world development. It’s just world-building!
If elves existed, how would that affect the world?
If ships could travel faster than light, how would that affect civilization?
If lycanthropism existed, how would it work? How would it affect the world?4
What if the ancient Mayans were right, and all their gods do exist, and the world really is going to end in 2012?
So I think the answer to the question, “How do you write this stuff if you don’t believe in any of it?” is that by being a skeptic and really looking at the world through a skeptical lens, you’re improving your ability to ask really interesting world-building questions.
Note: I realize that I have said some things here that will not sit well with some people. I will not allow the comments here to turn into a debate. If I have said something here to offend you, I apologize, but there will be absolutely no name-calling, no diatribes, etc. I mention the definition of a skeptic and the negative examples in the footnote below for informational purposes to show readers what I mean—along with the majority of the skeptical community—when I use the word ‘skeptic.’ If you have a differing opinion, you are certainly entitled to it. But we are not going to debate it, here. All comments are moderated. Capisce? Buona.
Well, okay, I actually do this, but it’s beside my point.
In other words, climate-change skeptics, who claim there is insufficient evidence that either our climate is changing or that mankind’s activities have contributed to it significantly; 9/11 skeptics (“Truthers”), who claim to be skeptical that 9/11 was perpetrated by terrorists; “Moon Hoaxers,” who claim that the United States never landed on the moon and that the entirety of the Apollo program was faked on a soundstage; “Birthers,” who claim to be skeptical that President Obama is a US citizen; or Holocaust skeptics, who claim that either no one was killed by the Nazis or far fewer than is generally accepted. In each of those cases, the scientific consensus goes with the overwhelming evidence, but the ‘skeptics’ go against that evidence. The kind of skeptic I’m talking about is the kind that goes where the evidence leads, even if that is to a place his/her sentiments oppose.
This link at Wikipedia does a much more thorough job of explaining homeopathy than I can.
At least one author in the Urban Fantasy genre (Kat Richardson) had one of her characters—a skeptic, amusingly enough—point out that the energy required to literally reshape the tissues in a living being into another form would generate enough heat that any such creature would explode. She uses this to explain why there are no were-beasts in her novels. Vampires, yes. :)
Well, after quite a bit of hard work and a lot of cursing and name-calling (I definitely implied that the parents of the designers of WordPress, several widgets, and a number of plugins I’m using, as well as those of the designers of the theme I eventually decided I like were never married..and may have also suggested that they indulge in unsavory sexual acts best left undiscussed), I have finally gotten my newly minted website up and operational.
Huzzah.
There are a lot of reasons it was time. LiveJournal is and will continue to be my first love as far as blogging is concerned, but as a writer who wants to be published, I need a home site where, eventually, my fanatically loyal minions readers can go for information about me as an author. LiveJournal…has a lot more of me than that on display. :)
Mostly, though, it’s because I eventually want to have a story in Mike Stackpole’s Chain Story, and one of the requirements is—you guessed it—a website on which to host the story itself.
I’ve been putting it off for several months. It just seemed overwhelming. Every time I looked at themes and tried to figure out WordPress, it seemed so arcane and I just didn’t want to expend the time. But this week at work, I’ve had some downtime (shhhh!) and so it gave me ample opportunity to play.
I’m going to beg everyone’s indulgence over the next couple of weeks as I iron out the kinks. I may double cross-post a time or two, or who knows what. This will be a learning experience for all of us. I’m going to try to post all my writing posts here on Writewright (catchy, no?) and everything else will be on either LiveJournal, Twitter, or Facebook, depending on the nature of it.
It’s a brave new world, and I just hope it doesn’t bite. :)
It should come as no surprise to anyone who either knows me or reads this blog that I am participating in NaNoWriMo again this year. This will be my seventh consecutive year participating in NaNoWriMo, and I hope it will be my fifth consecutive win. As I said in a previous post, I already have my project picked out for this year, and it promises to be something kind of fun, but more importantly, useful to me as I write my PCIU Case Files novels.
