I’ve spent most of my weekend cleaning. I’m talking carpet cleaning, down on your hands and knees scrubbing, and tons of vacuuming kind of cleaning. The kind of cleaning that living with three cats requires. Ya’ll know what I mean.

So when I sat down to work on my NaNo project today, I was having a hard time getting my mind in gear. There are a lot of things going on right now that want to take up brain space instead of focusing on my (very important) writing deadline that NaNoWriMo is helping me reach. I was going to work on something else, but my sister offered, “At least get 500 words in first, then go work on that other thing.”

Okay, that’s not so bad! 500 words in NaNo life is hardly anything. I can surely get that many words in just doing a bit of tweaking on my existing piece really. Well… 500 words turned into over 2,000 words today. Not too shabby! I’m going to have to keep that trick in mind for the next time that I have trouble getting the words to flow. (Big thanks to my sister for giving me that boost!)

I’m still behind on NaNo by about 500 words, and that’s probably only going to get worse as the month goes by. We have friends coming in from out of town plus Thanksgiving later this month. So we’ll see if I’m able to keep up with these word count goals, but I’m certainly going to try!

Project: Broken

A land has fallen. An escape was made. It’s a victory of sorts, but at what price?

Shaleigh has made a terrible mistake, one she may not ever be able to fix. Lost and in a strange land with anger and death all around her, she must navigate her way through treacherous lands on her quest for redemption. Along the way she’ll have to negotiate with the mercurial Queen of the Fae, survive the dangers of the Masked King’s realm, and seek out a terrifying fire dragon.

With two powerful beings hot on her trail, Shaleigh has no choice but to keep moving, or else face the dangerous magic of the Madness that has already caused so much pain and heartache. With her sights on helping her friends and her heart longing for home, Shaleigh is determined, but will it be enough?

BROKEN is Book 2 of the Stolen serie

Words Written:
11/4 – 2,238

Current Word Count: 31,206

Progress:
Wow, I had a lot of fun digging into the psychological aspects of characters here. Folks had some very uncomfortable revelations and big decisions got made. I can already see myself coming back into this scene later to flesh this out even more, but considering this scene is around 5k alone, I think it’s at a good place for draft number one right now.

Next Up:
A major revelation just got made. Unfortunately they can’t really do anything about it, but now their heads are spinning. We have an escape followed by a rather terrifying encounter. That’s just how things go around here, okay?

Commentary:
Considering how difficult it was for me to get going this evening, I actually had a ton of fun with this scene! I thought it was going to be difficult figuring out where to go with it, but I really just handed the reigns over to the characters and let them figure things out. I’ve also got some ideas about how everything is going to be tied together here soon too, especially as we near that elusive halfway point.