General Catch Up Post

So - now that the fun and frolics of NaNo2008 are done with, I am sorting out the rest of the stories.

Firstly - Now and Then has been posted on both sites in its entirety. There were a few modifications from the original text (mostly spelling and grammar, but a few minor changes to the way things were phrased), and overall it was what I first wrote during NaNo.

Second - The Darkest Dawn is being posted on both sites. It is taking a little longer to post, because I am beta-ing it as I go along (since it's over two months since I wrote the first dozen chapters or so). Again - it's mostly staying the same, with a few changes of what people are saying.

So once TDD is finished (there's one more story chapter, then a number of "bonus" chapters) I am going to return to Nineteen Years Later and The Western Sky Series 2. In addition, I have restarted M.I.B and am doing full plotting stuff at the moment.

Annoyingly, I have an idea for a time-travel story involving Luna (a single story, rather than the single-chapter story that is "The Smartest Witch"). It came about from watching the Andromeda episode Ouroboros, and made me start thinking about either Luna doing the same thing (without telling anyone else). Plus most time-travel stories are about Harry going back - Harry being the last survivor, and I figure it's about time someone else got to have some fun. But that really is just in the rough planning stage, and doesn't have a suitable plot or title, and consequently is not on my urgent list.

Nineteen Years Later is being replotted (I lost the notepad that contained the complete pre-history, which means it has to be rewritten), and I should get back to that in the New Year (due to work and other commitents).

The Western Sky is an on-going thing, and I am up to Episode 2x05 ("Shadows From The Past" is the working title), even though on 2x01 has been posted (I am doing a three chapters ahead thing).

So - that's where things are.

NaNoWriMo 2008 - And lo, I is a winner!

That's right. At 10:31pm on the 29th of November, I finished "Now and Then", a story about a girl keeping a promise.

The story is 81,556 words long, and totals twenty chapters of fun and frolics (and, admittedly torture, genocide and murder, which is less fun and frolicsome. Unless you're a Dark Lord).

Hopefully it will be published soon, but since I have been writing (more or less) non-stop for 29 days, I haven't done much beta-reading on it. There are spelling and grammar mistakes (I have already spotted a "you're" instead of a "your", for example), and I really have to re-check the continuity of the characters (making sure that someone who died in Chapter 4 isn't alive and well and kicking some ass in Chapter 15) and time-lines.

But hopefully I can publish it within two weeks (there is work stuff going on that is quite important for once, so that might delay me a bit), but almost certainly by Christmas.

Anyway - three wins out of three. Which entirely and totally rocks!

NaNo : After Day 1 (4,261)

So - depending on your perspective, I either wrote around 4,261 words or approx 8,800 words.

Why? Well - the site I was using to write the story has a very annoying and unusual feature. If you are merrily typing away, then click in the "Load File" box by accident, it freezes the text you have. And if you save it, it ignores it.

So, at various points yesterday, I ended up typing the entire chapter in again.

First I had to type the last half in, and then - because I am a moron - I pasted that over the original and so lost the first half. But the site had retained it in its buffer, so I had to retype it out, add it on to the start of the part I had already and then save it again.

But all in all, I think that I did very well to get anything posted, let alone nearly 5,000 words.

It is going more or less like I want at the moment - but to be honest, since I have no plot arc and no plans at all, it will pretty much ALWAYS go like I want. The only major change is Minnie's departure from Prison.

(Oh - I have also finally accepted I have a set idea for the future of HP. Hermione will be called Minnie. She will be friends with Luna, and possibly some Slytherins. Bones is Minister, Tonks is the D-DMLE and Dumbledore is still around. Some of this varies sometimes, but generally I like writing Min, Luna and so on, so my stories all run like that).

Anyway - time to go shopping for food, and then back to the Saltmines. And I might even consider writing in Notepad and pasting it across, simply so I don't have to do any pokery-jiggery today.

(Note : If you haven't figured it out, I am going to write the entire story, then post it. This is not because I plan on going back and changing bits, or rewriting whole swathes of the story, but becaus I am not checking spelling or anything else while I write, and I do have some standards, if not very many!)

Random NaNo Action

Hermione Granger was sent to Azkaban for the attempted murder of her best friend.

And now, seven years later, she's been released, and intends to finish the job.