cornerofmadness

It's NANO time! I can't believe it's less than a month away. I'm pretty sure I have my novel idea firmly in place...sort of.

I'm planning to do a sequel to another nano, my dieselpunk mystery Beneath the Torn Sky . Right now I'm calling it The Orphan Train for lack of a better title.

Here's the cover if you missed it yesterday.


Beneath the Torn Sky has bits up on my original fiction filter under the tag of the same name. It introduces the characters and solves the mystery of who killed the protagonist's father (which isn't done yet). In fact I have almost all of it done but the ending and the placement of a few more red herrings. I don't think I use red herrings as well as I should.

The Orphan Train opens with the titular train rolling into Mount Oliver's vast station and Detective Howell Killingsworth is waiting for it to select an apprentice from the cattle car of orphans. It's not a job he particularly likes having been orphaned himself. Quickly dead orphans are being found broken all over town. Howell and his partner, Thomas Wakefield are on a task force with Placid Longstaff and his partner Reanna who seems to have no last name 0_0 (seriously 62 uses of her name and no surname in the first book. blinks).

Placid is still recovering from the murder of his father last book and reeling from the reunion with his younger brother, Julien a wealthy chemist who went into perfumes and perfumed soaps, and his schoolyard love, Dr. Melantha Honeycutt. Placid was injured during his time in the air corp, losing a leg and suffering PTSD. He has a neurografted metal leg but his mental battles have been harder to overcome. He is just at the point of admitting he's happy to be reunited with his brother and is still very much in love with Mel.

No one is resting easy with the idea that there's a pedophilic cannibal running lose in the city. Placid is anything but his namesake when his plans to ask Mel to marry him go sideways.

And last night I saw what Gotye looked like and thought he'd do nicely for Wakefield.

Which is about all I have.


However I also had the idea in the car that if my rights to Mysterious Spirit reverted to me that means the rights to Crisis in Faith will be too. I really wanted to get their novel done before that happens. I was SUPPOSED to be writing it for both Camp Nanos. I was even in Vegas this year trying to do research. I know I can't do another 50k on this (it would be very long if I did) but I might sneak a little of it in as I go because wow, I need to get this and Temple/Caleb/Agni's novel done. I'm on the last two freaking chapters there and it's come to a halt.

So who is with me this year? What will you be writing? I know a few of you are editing instead of writing. Who shall I be looking for and cheerleading for. I know cajunshewolf, silvrethorn and katimac8 are doing this. I know evil_little_dog is on her usual fence about it. Anyone else? I thought maybe bay115 had said something about it but you can't trust my memory.

ETA - someone just tweeted this and I thought it was a good article on how not to write a mystery

yearly word count -