Hey,

Here is an excerpt from the prologue to my Nanowrimo ’09 novel, ‘Dark Beyond the Veil’.  It has been a real pleasure to write, and I hope that this little glimpse at it will help to give a flavour for those wondering what I’ve been doing in front of my laptop so often this last month!  You can find a review of Nanowrimo ’09 here, and a synopsis here.

James

Excerpt:

The Goul looked up, and my boot added its nose to the bloody mass of it’s face. It was quick though, damn it was quick. It rolled and sprang without a moments hesitation, and landed its clawed hands on my shoulders. Now it was my turn to drop and roll or have my face eaten, and that would spoil my night. I curved my back as I went down, rolling with him on top of me, both hands wrapped around its face to keep its teeth at bay. This wasn’t good, but at least I was on my back, not my front. I wrapped my legs and arms around the foul creatures back and pulled him close to me. Gross, true, but it stopped him biting. However, on a scale of one to ten, I was in trouble.

Hey,

Here is a quick synopsis of ‘Dark Beyond the Veil’, my Nanowrimo ’09 novel that I wrote to save explaining to people what it was all about.  It’s factual and dry, but has all the information within   I hope you like it!  you can see an exerpt http://griffinguides.com/nanowrimo-09-excerpt/.

James

SYNOPSIS:

In a quiet local town in the Valleys, Wales, A teenage girl discovers the existence of a vicious bloodthirsty group of ghouls, inhuman beasts with a craving for human flesh. She is introduced to a group who protect the local area from the monsters, but her joining causes a schism within the group between those who want to save the ghouls human slaves, and those who are happy for them to die when necessary. She goes out to kill the head ghoul to make the situation better. She lures him to her college, and succeeds, but inadvertently causes an open battle with them. This battle causes an uneasy truce between the two parties, and they fight off the assault, killing the huge henchman in the process with a member of the other side of the schism and her mentor. Just as they are about to lose, a shadowy figure drops from the ceiling and kills the brute. He doesn’t introduce himself, but remains dark and mysterious and invites them to join him.

Hey,

So, I’ve just finished Nanowrimo. What a totally crazy experience! For those of you not familiar with the unique brand of bitter-sweet torture that is November for those of us involved, allow me to explain. You sign up and agree to write (or try to write) fifty thousand words of fiction… in one month! Nuts. Well not for Kai, she’s amazing at writing fast and well, but for those of us who are mere mortals, nearly 1700 words a day is an intimidating prospect. I decided to take a new tack with my writing, and produce a young adult fiction novel about ghouls, vampires and a poor girl who gets stuck in the middle. I got to spend the month ‘being’ a 17 year old girl in my mind, not the easiest of propositions for a 26 year old man, but there you go, and it was a total blast! Ok, so I only managed 27k, but I’m still going strong, if I can keep it up, I should have the complete 60k piece drafted by February. Then it will be a matter of line editing etc. and packaging it up for submission. I’ve decided to include a bit of an excerpt here as a teaser – I was going to include the first chapter, but it’s only first draft, and it’s definitely as rough as it gets, I really need to draft it at least once more in order to iron out the most prominent folds. You can see the excerpt in another blog post here, and a synopsis here.

So what of my first (and definitely not my last) Nano? Well I got to meet some great people, chat about writing, drink much coffee (makes me type faster, and meting everyone in Starbucks helps) and spend hour upon painful and exhilarating hour watching my characters come to life before me. They did things that I didn’t expect, and I had a 3 day delay as Jen decided to properly kick off with each draft of one particular scene. Stupid girl! Anyway…

Many congratulations to rachel_c (over 50k), Kaibeirie (pure insanity – 117k I think), and Scotstimberwolf (24k) – you’re all legends! Thanks to each of you for all your kind support.

James