A Touch of Dead - reading

Finished "A Touch of Dead" by Charlaine Harris. A collection of stories about Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic waitress with vampire and werewolf friends. The stories were entertaining and quick. Pick it up!

Ice - reading

Finished "Ice" by Linda Howard. First of all, if you name a character Darwin, I am expecting he will be the first to die. Second, if Darwin is coupled with Nikki, I'm thinking you're a Prince fan (Darling Nikki). There was a lot of repetition of phrases, and a lot of times when the phrasing didn't make sense - enough that it was distracting. There were times when I thought the author didn't do her research. The distance between the climax of the story and the end was much too long for such a short book. It wasn't all bad, though. On the good side, she wrote from the perspective of different characters and it influenced how she wrote each one. I thought the change in style from each character was well done. I could have done without the overlap in story when perspective changed, where the same section of story was told from both sides. The premise was good, and there were some good (though brief) tense moments. I didn't expect the sex scene, but I am not familiar with Linda Howard's other work. Maybe there's more of that in her other books. I was torn between rating this 3/5 ("I liked it") or 2/5 ("It was ok"). I must be feeling nice.

The Kite Runner - reading

Finished "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini. Sadly it was the abridged version. I will have to find the full version soon. It was beautiful. It was violent. It was poetic. It offered a glimpse into a culture I only know from the outside. I might have to see the movie, now.

Intervention - reading

Finished "Intervention" by Robin Cook. My first experience with Robin Cook was Coma, which I read when I was in high school. I loved it. Intervention, on the other hand...

*possible spoilers ahead*

The first third of this story was a waste of time since it never really went anywhere. I get what it was trying to do - establish the main character's beliefs - but it was really done poorly, not to mention I didn't like many of the characters. The middle was good when it got rolling. The ending was a let-down, though. The premise of the story was interesting enough, which I think is why the middle was decent. It just didn't hold up throughout.

2 out of 5 stars.

NaNoWriMo 2011 - The Rest of the Story

In week 3 I nearly doubled my word count from 12,160 words to 23,410 words. My words-per-day for the week was 1,607.1, meaning I was just a shade behind par for NaNoWriMo pace. In reality, I had three good writing days where most of my words happened, and several non-writing or low-writing days.

I nearly doubled my word count from 23,410 to 45,036 in week four, and then finished with 50,115 on day 29. While I did end up winning, I would certainly not recommend an exponential approach to anyone (doubling words week over week). It's too stressful! My best day of writing this year was when I had the house to myself all day and I did word sprint after word sprint on Facebook, netting 8,447 words in one day.

Now that it's done I can look back on it and make a few observations. The first is that going into the month with nothing of a story and no outline makes the writing process much more difficult. I didn't paint myself into a corner too often, but there were enough times where I just didn't know what was going to happen next and the story ended up sitting still for days at a time until I became inspired again.

And here for historical purposes is my graph from this year. It's a little inaccurate because there was a problem with it on the 15th or so. I actually reached 15,000 a day before it shows here. When word count is everything, things like that can be very distracting!

2011 NaNoWriMo Word Count by Day for theicemage

I am not crazy about the ending and am likely to change what I came up with during November in favor of something that gives a lot more closure and more of a full life cycle for the characters. And I say that meaning the story I tell in this should cover the birth to death cycle of the characters. They're fairies, and they basically live one year at a time. For more details than that, you'd have to read my story (when I make it available).

And now to get back to other projects that were put on hold to make time for writing, like translating the Visual Basic simulation for OrcSports.com into C# so I can get the site running again.