NaNoWriMo Wrapup

Well, I didn't win but I did make it to 40,522 words which is a hell of a lot further than I thought I'd get. After a rocky start, wherein I ended up writing a completely different idea from what I'd planned on doing, things went pretty swimmingly for most of the month. I did find out that I write best at work on lined notebook paper, which kind of hampered my progress and that it is possible to write when I'm on the regular lines and that keeping track of my progress actually helps me keep focused on what I have to do.

I think I could have made it if Amy and I hadn't managed to spend more or less the last week of November sick. I got bronchitis last week and while I *could* have knuckled down and tried to work through the sick (particularly since I stayed home on Friday night) it boiled down to a case of "Don' wanna" and I spend Friday night crashed on the couch in the warm embrace of codeine cough syrup.

An aside: Here's what I wanna know -- any other cough syrup/Nyquil-like medicine out there tastes like spoiled feet, except maybe for Children's Dimetapp which is about the only OTC cough syrup I will take and even *that* is a fight but the stuff Amy got from the doctor for her cough that has codeine in it and that has a warning label about possible addictive properties has a sweet, not-awful taste to it. WTF? Was the reasoning: "This stuff is addictive, so we're going to make it taste good so you won't want to take it?"

Another side effect from NaNoWriMo: I've started reading horror novels again. It started off with reading about vampires, since that's at least partly what my book is about but when I was at the bookstore looking for Stephen King's "'Salem's Lot" Amy found some of Brian Keene's books and I picked up "The Rising" and "City of the Dead" which were about zombies and I was hooked. Brian Keene is an amazing writer who, like Stephen King, has a way with writing ordinary people in extraordinary situations. And his treatment of zombies is amazingly fresh and new (his zombies are *smart*) -- though the books aren't exactly 'feel good' reads. He sets up a nearly impossible situation for his characters and he plays pretty darn fair with it throughout both books ("City of the Dead" is a sequel to "The Rising" and I recommend picking up both books at once because you will medically *need* to read "CotD" after you finish "The Rising").

Since my Nano was about vampire hunting, I've also been rewatching some of my vampire movies, most specifically "Kindred: The Embraced" which makes you wish that vampire hunters would show up with some shiny tinfoil on a string and just take these people out for the good of the Camarilla. From a World of Darkness POV, it's actually not a bad way to introduce newcomers to the old Vampire: The Masquerade game -- though you'll spend a lot of time going "Okay, the clan they're calling the Brujah should really be called the "Giovanni" and the average Nos only looks that good after a whole lotta tequila fanny-bangers and any Prince who started dating a newspaper reporter would probably find himself invited out to a stake dinner by the primogen council but other than that...."

I also rented Blade: House of Cthon last night, which was the pilot for the Spike TV Blade series. It's not bad, but the guy playing Blade is a little too baby-faced for me and the girl just...gahhhh "I was a sergeant in the Army" is all well and good, but what was your actual *job*?

And since I was trying to stay up so I'm not tired at work tonight, I started watching "Land of the Dead" which was actually not as gory as I thought it would be -- I mean, it was gory, but it wasn't as gross as I was afraid it would be. I like the post-apocalyptic feel to the world and I really need to finish watching it since I fell asleep. Doh. Our couch has magical properties of sucking away your will to be awake, seriously. Love our couch.

I also managed to put my Nano in order yesterday and I'm going to try and finish it, hopefully in time to do the editing thing in March. Boo yeah!