Next month is National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo), and I’ve been conned persuaded to try it again.
The idea is to write 50,000 words of a new novel. No continuing something that’s already been done, no rewriting an older piece. Outlining ahead of time is okay. I’ve tried it a few times in the past, but November’s always been a rough month schedule-wise and I never managed to pull it off.
Things are a bit different this year, though. For starters, I’ve got several friends (including most of the folks attached to Evileye Books) who are going to take a crack at it, so there will be a little more competition and encouragement going around. I’m also coming into the high of Winter Kill‘s imminent release and I’m feeling the creative rush of preparing for my next projects, both for The Pack and for other works. Finally, it’s high time I brought another novel to market.
Powerless is… languishing. Maybe it’s been sitting in the brain too long, but I’ve had a tough time getting up the energy to get back to it. I’ve also lost all confidence that it’s any good, but I suspect that’s a subjective opinion. I’m not ready to call it dead, but given it’s not eligible for NaNoWriMo anyway, I’m going to move on for now.
I’ve got two candidates for NaNoWriMo: Wounded Gods and Sick Day.
Wounded Gods may sound familiar to long-time readers, as I first developed it as a comic. After kicking it around a while, I realized it could easily be a prose novel, and the only reason I pitched it as a comic in the first place is I was trying to continue off the launch of Werewolves: Call of the Wild. It’s set in the Vietnam War and focuses on the conflict between a couple of soldiers and includes a supernatural element.
Sick Day is an idea that hit me over the summer as I read a few crime/thriller novels. I bounced the idea off a friend who digs on that sort of thing, and he gave it two thumbs up. This would be a straight-up thriller, possibly in the vein of what I was doing with Muy Mal and including a hint of the supernatural. Hell, maybe I’ll even set it in Port Ransom.
The advantage of Wounded Gods is it’s already plotted. I wrote a first-issue script and outlined the remainder of the mini-series, so it wouldn’t be tough to start fresh with prose and cruise along. Sick Day is still little more than a general idea, but given the concept, it could be a lot of fun to write. Decisions, decisions…
I’ve got two weeks to figure it out, and maybe to take some more notes. I also have an OGN script to deliver and a book to proof. Best get crackin’.
About Mike Oliveri
Mike Oliveri is a writer, martial artist, cigar aficionado, motorcyclist, and family man, but not necessarily in that order. He is currently hard at work on the werewolf noir series The Pack for Evileye Books.
