Magenta Monster

Today is the day after NaNoWriMo, added to my GothNoWriMo writing challenge I did in October and I have written a lot in the last two months and I mean ALOT. So when I validated yesterday my word count was 112, 054 – and I managed to write the 4000 extra on the novel I wanted.

So what now?

Well NaNo ended with a fizzle and not a bang due to illness so I still want to have my writing weekend – not sure how I am ever going to fit that in during December! But I shall try.

But I do have some other challenges that I have set myself – for a start I am still working on the comic book which is being released in February so that kind of has to be priority but I don’t want to lose the momentum that I have gained these last few months.

I see the Punk’s Universe as a finite thing, even if there are many many stories based within it – so I am to continue at around 1000 words a day through out December. Hopefully I might finish some of the longer pieces.

There is also a Princess Programmer book I wish to write – it was on the cards anyway due to the outreach work I have been doing in Science and Technology but thanks to a Barbie book that came out, I feel the time is now – the world needs the book.

Of course I will be performing my The Little Book of Festive Poetry and reading Percival’s Christmas Wish at various kids events through out the festive period and hopefully you will be hearing alot more about it all.

I have editing and stories to type up (Advent and kids Christmas stories mainly that I have written whilst visiting family on other years). There is also a lot of scanning artwork and the like to happen and ordering or promotional materials for various things.

It is going to be busy busy 🙂

(once I get over this damn flu that is!)

I wanted to end NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month – a writing challenge I have been taking part in this month) with a bang, but sadly it has been a whimper.

I had planned to do the night of writing dangerously and a writing retreat but I came down suddenly ill on Friday afternoon and that was that.

Not that I am complaining and not that I failed NaNo – on the contrary, I managed great things this year. I finished in about a week and then set myself the challenge of 100, 000 words which I also reached with time to spare, so then I wanted 60, 000 words on this years actual novel Babel’s Key, rather than all the short stories and beginnings of more novels set in the universe etc… that I had written during my nano-fever.

I am currently 4000 words short for this last goal – I am stuck in bed still today but may attempt it – just for completions sake.

But for now I hall be heading over to the NaNo site to confirm my win.

Game designer and climber Sam thinks she’s in for a quiet night at home but when thugs break in and try to steal the research for her Lovecraftian game, her and her husbands lives are about to change forever.

Plunged into ancient secrets and under cover wars they may well have stumbled upon the key to humanities past and possibly the means to save their future. If they can survive long enough that is.

1) Read all of H.P. Lovecraft, find biographies and documentaries (that I’ve not already watched!)

2) Look up games and other literature based on the world

3) Work out where Marinanus fits in with the time line in general, when was it built and why – there is already a flash fiction about some of this

4) What society does the under water city have?

5) What does it look like?

6) What protections and safe guards do they have and are these Lovecrafts creatures/monsters?

7) Write ten flash fictions based in the city

8) Write five short stories about how it came to be and explorers of the past

9) Write a novelette around the secret of the city – what is Babel’s Key?

10) Draw the cover

Of course these can also be used as procrastination activities because I need some more of those 😉

But I do seriously find these useful and they are mostly research or pieces of work in their own rights. And from past experience these sorts of activities help build a stronger base for the story making it far more believable and also my comic book started off as something similar and I hey I try and produce one flash fiction and short story a week each week anyway 🙂

Warning – spoilers.

Multiple view points: def. Sam and Mack.

Starts with showing their lives and the game project and personalities.

Sam’s routine is the climbing wall, game design and kids, Mack is going through a stressful time at work which he has not disclosed all of to Sam.

Their friend sends them a package of game design gold but they are puzzled and worried as it is the actual Lovecraft journal and letters they have been sent which is incredibly out of character for their friend. The university he is a post doc at is not helpful even though there is a history of mental health and periods of running away.

Alex and Mack organise a trip camping and exploring the wilderness.

Of they go and Sam is home alone with the kids playing video games. They plan to check on friend after the trip if he doesn’t turn up.

Thugs break in and attack, Sam and the kids escape. It is obviously a well planned thing. She heads off to rescue her hubby which she only manages by using social media and email via her smart phone.

Her and Mack are very shaken and start trying to work out what has happened.

A female police officer who is helping the investigation and the Krav instructer become interested in the case – the police woman is a volunteer with no real powers as it were but she also happens to be an archeologist.

It turns out their friend really is missing and probably dead.

But he has left them a clue trail which they follow until they end up in the middle of an ocean looking for a lost city beneath the waves.

They are being chased and at least two factions are closing in on them.

Sam and Mack end up trapped in the ocean city whilst the female officer ends up on deaths door.

There is a battle between the elders.

The idea for Babel’s Key actually came out of a nightmare I had about my husband going off on an expedition with his friends from Krav – a self defence class. In the process of explaining it to him, it became apparent that I could mix it up with the Punk’s Universe.

As I began to turn the dream into a proper narrative it took on a life of it’s own and threw in elements of my gaming life – this is probably due to the Gamer Gate stuff happening at the moment. I had also been researching Lovecraft and trying to work out how to add his life into the Punk’s Universe – I knew he would have had an encounter with the Aquatic Apes or elders but not what.

Then I started to plot where I wanted the ocean empires to have been and realised I very much wanted an under water city as well as a subterranean one and wham…. it all clicked together, or rather is still all clicking together and will be for time to come I think.

So that is how it all started but not sure were it will all end 🙂 Best get back to the writing 🙂

The weekend saw me sale past the 100, 000 word mark – yes that is right – whizz! I am quiet frankly amazed – it would have been there sooner except that I managed to have a migraine which slowed things down by about 3 days and is still slowing things if I am honest as they last for an age even though I now have tablets for them.

That aside I am amaze and happy and wondering what I am going to do on the Dangerous Night of writing on Friday and the writing retreat I have on Sunday with Stroud Writing Space.

One of the things I have discovered is that I am happy writing about 2000 words a day either fiction or none fiction or rather typing in general – more than that and I am going to act the left shoulder and right wrist up. Having said that I love the focus and drive during the writing challenges and I learn so much.

And written so much…. really it is so much I am looking at the shear mass of material based in this world and the plan is that apart from the blog shorts there will be at least one title based in the Punk’s Universe going out each year – if I can manage it I would rather do it quarterly (bearing in mind there is a comic book series too!).

I have been writing this for over 5 years now and the base concepts I have been working on since I was 13!!! Yep 13!

A lot of the other stories I’ve written fit into this world so I need to dig all of them out as well – including upload and deep space ones.

Now to the crux – there is still basically a week left of NaNo so what now?

Well in truth I did not focus on Babel’s Key very much at all and I have bigger issues with the novel like the fact that I have about ten different view points and three to four time periods involved and I don’t think and I do not think I have something that will work as one cohesive narrative. Nor do I have a finished story in any way shape or form. In fact out of the 100, 000 words only 42, 395 of them are part of the story or elements surround Babel’s Key and around 5000 of those are notes/storyline that I ended up writing as I was typing up the actual story.

I would kind of like 60, 000 of the story written before the end of the month – so I suppose that is what I’ll be focusing on for the rest of the week – though I do have kids story stuff to do and a play too.

I think I have well and truly caught nano fever but at the same time I am so looking forward to December and the absence of NaNo!

Though I am planning on continuing at the rate of 1000 words of the Punk stories a day afterwards. Better get on with it I suppose – I keep extending the goal!

There is a secret that has been hidden/thought destroyed, if it is revealed then it unwrites humanities history. This is a Quest story as the protagonists find themselves sucked into a world of secrets, surviving and fighting their way though barriers and hurdles until they are faced with the finding. There they will face their true selves, the key to human existence and discover they have only just scratched the surface.

There is the risk of death or madness or both, what ever happens they altered and lost to their old lives forever, even if they get to return.

Having written that I am tempted to tweak it into a blurb 😉

Themes are always tricky, I’m never convinced a writer always knows all the themes, you have to take the stuff you put in on purpose, the stuff that is there because of your own situation, were you in history and so on.

Babel’s Key is part of the Punk’s Universe which has the overall “humanity coming of age” thing going on but it itself I feel is actually exploring issues such as being a female geek or a metrosexual male, and mental health. It did not start out that way but they are the topics which tumble through my facebook feed currently and being a female geek myself I will not deny the elements of self with this story – mainly because I can’t, it grew out of a nightmare I had one night just before NaNo when I was looking for a story – it was too good not to use.

So I suppose it maybe a social commentary but that isn’t really what I am thinking about when I am writing it. What I AM thinking is more along the lines of horror-crime-thriller, of the Davinci Code and the Laundary files. I’m thinking wouldn’t it be fun to throw this into the mix.

Only time will tell what the themes actually are!

Alex: the initial bad guy, big balshy strong, thug, ex military, has a tendency to under estimate geeks.

Krav Instructor: fit, dependable, police trainer, slight female who has had to become excellent at the actual techniques due to stature.

Friend: shy, has aspergers, hides, good looking, gentle – at the moment he is off page but may well have a couple of chapters coming.

Anna: neighbour who looks after the kids, lovely but English still not brilliant, very homely.

Tia, Tiamat, Lady Khaos: an aquatic ape elder and actual bad guy, webbed hands and feet, large forehead and eyes, is seeking Babel’s Key.

Aten, Baal, The Archetect: an aquatic ape elder and previous partner of Tiamat, he had thought Marinanus destroyed but had realised this was not the case when Lovecraft’s father tracked the ocean city down. He is the “good guy” though he is not squeaky clean.

Sally: special agent, police woman and archeologist who deals with “x-file” type cases, she actually works for Aten, or rather will work for him. She is from the Godex stories based 10-15 years in the future and this is how she ends up embroiled in the secret world. At this stage she is a voluntary community officer.

Morlock: Aten and Tiamat’s son, his is a sociopath who is apt to change sides depending on what looks like the best outcome. He want’s the hidden Key and will walk on, hurt and kill anybody to get it. Both his parent’s have a blind spot for him though in their hearts they know.