NaNoWriMo Week 4 the finale!

Okay folks, I really don't have a lot of time, it's the last weekeend of National Novel Writers Month and I have three days to write 9,000 words so I really have to get back to Red Ellen. I made a lot of progress in the last week, a lot has happened, though I can't say a whole lot because it would be a bunch of spoilers. I will say that in the timeline of the story we have gone from St. Patrick's Day to October, the last month of the cycle of the story becaue the big ending will be on Halloween. At the moment I'm in the middle of a big scene where Jade is about to have twins, in case you forgot that's the girlfriend of Jasper, the cousin of the main character Ellen and both Jade and Jasper are dragonkin, descendants of dragon changelings. Sound complicated? That's juat a subplot, imagine what the rest of the book is like. Also Hope, Ellen's nanny is back in town, and on that note I would like to review the supporting cast behind my main characters as mentioned last week.

The parents: Mr. and Mrs. Red, Sarah, Ian, Tom and Uncle Alistair - These characters simply give background to the main characters by saying where they came from. I purposely avoided giving names to Ellen's parents to highlight how unimportant they were. There isn't a whole lot to say what you see is what you get they are functional, one-dimensional background characters, I really don't want them drawing attention away from the main cast.

Amy and Tasha - The secondary antagonists, these are Jason and Ralph's alternate girlfriends, their exes who presumably they would hook up with if Ellen doesn't choose them. These two are, simply put, jealous psycho bitches. We've all met them, we know they are real and in Ellen's world it's no different, they just take it to another level, a supernatural level. I have a very good reason for these two to fill in a hole that I created, and I hope that it will work out as well as I intend.

Ashley and Brittany - The names say it all. They were inspired by the cliques from the cartoon Recess where a group of girls were all named Ashley and in one episode we discovered they all had younger sisters the same age as each other all named Brittany. I couldn't help it but after that all I can think of is that Ashley and Brittany mean something and what that means is the most shallow one dimensional stereotypical girl who is so self-absorbed she doesn't even care that she's nothing but a stereotype, and in fact may go out of her way to be the human Barbie doll everyone seems to think she is. They don't appear a lot in the story, their only purpose is to simply be the normal girls in Ellen's life, a symbol of how simple things used to be.

Rainbow the Unicorn - When I decided to make Ellen a fairy princess in a love triangle with a werewolf and a vampire, I was trying to play into stereotypical girl fantasies and I figured having a unicorn was the one thing I was missing to make the picture complete. I went with the name Rainbow because of the phrase "All rainbows and unicorns" which usually refers to someone being overly optimistic. Although it seems to be a joke, my real point is that Ellen actually has the dream going for her, she actually has the rainbows and unicorns literally. Also, I wanted to throw in another fairy type character because I was kind of light on those.

Orlock - named for the vampire from Nosferatu the first vampire movie, Orlock was the vampire that turned Nate. For the most part he serves the same role as the parents of the other characters, but he's also the scapegoat for Nate that he can blame everything wrong on. Orlock is also arguably the one who originally set everything in motion.

Hope and Morty - I really can't say a whole lot about these two characters, but there is a lot more going on with them than it appears. They appear to be merely servants of Ellen and Nate respectively, but pay attention to how they always seem to be where they are needed just when they are needed...there is a reason...

Okay, that's enough for now, gotta get back to writing, bye!

NaNoWriMo week 3 and VideoGames Live!

SO far behind on my book, gotta make this quick. First things first, last night I took a break from writing to attend Video Games Live at the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and it was awesome! You can see most of the stuff on YouTube, so there's not much point in going into detail, although one thing you probably won't see was one gamer proposing to his girlfriend on stage who responded "Yes I will be your player 2!" LIKE A BOSS! I was disappointed they didn't do One Winged Angel, but they made up for it with their rendition of the opera sequence from Final Fantasy 6, with vocalist Jilian Aversi in full Celes cosplay and a bouquet of roses she threw out into the audience at just the right time. Seriously once I can find that video posted, I'm so reposting it here. Some other fun stuff included a guy playing space invaders and using tracking technology he actually was the shooter, having to physically run bac and forth across the stage, and also a Guitar Hero champion met Tommy Talarico's challenge of scoring over 450,000 points on expert level on "Pretender" by the Foo Fighters, and at the beginning there was a costume contest where Sub-Zero and Reptile gave a good re-enactment of Mortal Kombat, and little Link almost beheaded Zelda twice, but the winner was the Mario Bros.

Meanwhile, I have had a productive week with Red Ellen. I got to 25,000 words so I got all of my badges on NaNoWriMo except the final win. Ellen has now been on dates with all three of her suitors and she found out she will be an aunt because her cousin Jasper knocked up his girlfriend Jade so we can expect a baby dragonkin by the end(SPOILER: it's twins!). I've finished the expostion and now that we all know about the supernatural world Ellen can go back to normal life...yeah right there is no normal! Okay so she's going to juggle three guys over the next few months and connect with her cousin and the only other significant girl in this story before the final showdown on Halloween..for this year.

I've been adding a lot of characters so I think I should bring the focus on the main six:

Ellen - Obviously she is the main character. I'm basically writing her as if it was me if I had been a popular girl instead of a nerdy boy. In hindsight, I've realized everyone feels awkward during those years, and this is about her dealing with the pressure of being what everyone wants and not being totally sure if she can satisfy everyone, so she's tyring to find her own place. It's all I know, so it's the best I can do for a main character, the amount of what I have to do with her just makes it too damn hard for her to be anything else.

Jasper - This is more of a reflection of me, or rather who I wish I could have been. Jasper just wasn't main character material as I got deeper into development so I pushed him to sidekick status. Jasper's a bit more flavor than practical, he's kind of just there, though he is connected to important characters, so I hope the audience warms up to him inspite of a lack of substance.

Jade - Jasper's girlfriend, she serves two purposes, first, I don't want people thinking there's any chance of Jasper being the fourth suitor for Ellen(they're cousins, but when you consider Ellen was switched at birth and they didn't meet until they were sixteen, this doesn't necessarily mean anything, but I still don't want to go there), so I figure sticking him with a sweet baby mama will make readers less sympathetic to the idea of him going with Ellen and understand that he's platonic towards Ellen. The second reason is, I figured I needed a female friend for Ellen so I can pass the Bechdel test, which is basically a feminist standard measuring a work by whether you can have two female characters talk about something other than a guy. Apparently someon actually took the time to notice that in 99% of literature, there are less than two female characters, and when there are more than two female characters, they inevitably fall into some sort of conflict regarding one of the male characters, so there's been a demand that they be less one-dimensional. I'm tryign to give Ellen and Jade a true friendship so that they do stuff that has nothign to do with the guys. Well, maybe Jasper, but only because that couple is actually young and in love and they are totally a package deal and I feel there's enough conflict in the story without them having drama...at least in this volume.

Jason - the hunk, he represents what evey girl is a suker for in the physical sense. He is Jacob from Twilight multiplied by a factor of Channing Tatum. He is the guy you just want to see with his shirt off, in just his underwear if you're lucky. You don't really need him to say anything, just stand there and look pretty. You know you want this guy even if you're ashamed to admit you're that shallow. Jason actually is a nice guy, but he just happens to come in the perfect package.

Ralph - the exotic gentleman, he has an accent, he's artistic, everything he does is sexy, even when it's lame, just because he's got that foreign refined je ne sais quoi. I even gave him the most pretentious name I could think of. He's another fantasy, but again, he's actually a nice guy who just also happens to come in a perfect package.

Nathaniel - the bad boy, Nathaniel is a bad boy, he is the guy you absolutely should never ever be with and yet in spite of that, or maybe, on some sick twisted level, because of it, you want him anyway. I once liked the idea of redeeming a vampire, but it got done to death and now everyone seems to think vampires are tortured souls, they've lost their horror edge. In this book, I'm trying to make vampires evil again, and Nathaniel is just a total dick. So far I've actually written him as a sympathetic character, but he's also a liar and when the truth comes out you will probably hate him for playing with Ellen's heart. Basically his part of the story is drawn from my experience with guys who are total dicks and yet still get girls while I am a gentleman and get friend-zoned by the same girls who call me to ask why this guy broke her heart. I totally expect that no matter how much of dick I make Nathaniel, there will be a sizable fan base rootign for Ellen to end up with him anyway. I'm just going to say right now, that is not going to happen, not in my story(SPOILER:at the end of the series, Nathaniel will DIE, Ellen will not be with him EVER). The moral of Red Ellen is that bad boys are no good and you should defintely explore better options.

Well, I need to get back to writing, so see you next week!

NaNoWriMo week 2

Again I have to make this quick because I'm really behind on writing Red Ellen for National Novel Writer's Month. All I'm going to say is that so far I'm up to chapter 6. Ellen has learned about her fairy origins and she's gotten her unicorn Rainbow who, ironically is actually pure white. She has met the major characters, Jason the werewolf, Ralph the wizard, Nathaniel the vampire, and Jade and Jasper the dragonkin. She is still getting to know the dragonkin, including her cousin Jasper who doesn't get along well with Ellen's father. She also went on her first date with Jason and is preparing for Ralph. Along the way she's getting a crash course in the supernatural world.

I came up with the idea for the world Red Ellen takes place in because I read a lot of stories that involve the supernatural and watch a lot of shows, and everyone seems to vary the rules slightly, so I decided to try my own take. Unfortunately I didn't really have a story for this all to take place in, until I realized there was a market for Paranormal Romance, so that's what I decided to make my story. I'm explainign the rules as I go along, leading up to a major history lesson coming up in this chapter.The basic gist is that the mortal world lies between two other worlds, the fairy world and the Netherworld. The other two worlds can't interact directly because they are diametrically opposed. Firies don't die and the dead don't dream, so they aren't connected, but they do both connect to this world, so they are kind of at war and this is the battlefield. The fairies leave changelings, the Netherworld is represented by the undead, but our world has it's own native supernaturals, including werewolves and weretigers who are the last of the animal shape shifters that got otherwise hunted to extinction and the magi, a catch-all term for every other mortal who has magical powers of any kind. The most powerful magi are wizards who have focused so much on their craft that they can do just about anything, but most magi merely dabble and have limited powers, usually just basic charms and rituals, maybe a few spells, whatever is practical. Magi and the werebeasts are neutral in the greater conflict between changelings and undead, but they can be swayed, and in Red Ellen, the region has only a few changelings left, so Ellen, as the princess, must sway the mortals to her side or the undead takeover. Of course, if the undead sway her, then all is lost, which is why her relationship to the devious Nathaniel is so critical.

As for the particular place, Red Ellen takes place in my hometown of Rochester, NY, because if you look at where stories usually take place, it would seem America consists entirely of New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Miami. It's particularly annoying to live in upstate New York, because if you don't live here, you just can not possibly understand what it's like to live in a state which includes the most famous city in the world, and half of us live a day's drive away and almost never actually go there. I have been in the big city about twice ever, and I really don't care that much if I ever go back. In fact I actually would rather New York City would separate from the rest of the state and form a new state with east New Jersey and however much of Connecticut that actually seems to matter more to them than we do, and they can call that "Tri-State", because that's how they think down there anyway. My passionate hatred of New York City comes from meeting city folks when I was in college. They think they are better than rest of us, they have better pizza, better bagels, better public transportation, better buildings, better everything. Rochester is actually a pretty bustling city, you can see a part of it in the opening chase scene of Amazing Spider Man 2, they filmed here, I went down to the set and saw it. We are the inspiration for the soap opera General Hospital. We are an awesome city. If you ask someone from New York City, they just think we're a quaint little burg. They don't mind taking our tax money, but other than that, it's either move in or crawl back under your rock. Okay, maybe it's not that bad, but my point is, Rochester needs some press, so I'm representing!

NaNoWriMo Week 1: Red Ellen and the future of 7th Moon

Hello all, it's National Novel Writer's Month and I'm working on a new novel titled Red Ellen, so I am going to try to keep my blog short so I can get back to it and meet my deadline. Before I get to that though I want to talk about 7th Moon. I have said that I wanted to continue the series and I do, and I am working on volume 2 of 5 and I'm in the third chapter. Two years ago I started it for NaNoWriMo but choked and never finished. I did pick it up again later, but it will still take time and I can't use it for NaNoWriMo again because I already went on record saying I tried it before, which is why I need to try a new novel. I do still think about where 7th Moon is heading and as long as I am a writer there will be a complete set of five. This next book will focus on mecha and what's going on outside of Japan in he rest of the world, think Gundam Wing, Code Geass:Llouche of the Rebellion or Gurren Lagann. It starts one year after the end of the first book and war is on the horizon, China is repeating the Three Kingdoms war, the Middle East is in a holy war, vampires with steampunk mechs are all over Europe, and the USA is now only five cities, and Hidariude and the other espers get dragged into all of these conflicts. In the third book, the truth about the multiple moons comes out as they fall out of orbit and crash to Earth, and while the immediate and obvious disaster is avoided, it does bring the kaiju, the mutants that resulted from the genetic experiments that destroyed the colonies. Hidariude and company will have to fight through the monsters icluding the six giant masters a la Power Rangers. Then we'll do Guardians of Paradise which will tell the story of the samurai, the monk, and the ninja who served Shinryuu 800 years ago. This will involve demons and mirror 7th Moon-only in feudal era Japan! Finally there will be one last book that will send off our characters in a thinly veiled tribute to Final Fantasy. I should note that not all of the characters will survive to be in the final book, but I'm gonna make you wait to find out who.

Now, back to Red Ellen, the story of a girl who finds out that she is a changeling, specifically a fairy princess, and she is now responsible for all the supernatural beings in her city. These supernatural beings include werewolves, magi, and undead, and each group has presented a young suitor to win Ellen's heart and her favor for their faction. Now she must choose between hunky Jason the werewolf, exotic Ralph the wizard, and bad boy Nate the vampire. It's similar to Twilight except that the vampire is the bad guy. No he's not a tormented soul in need of understanding, he's the sort of guy you warn your friend not to date and she dates him anyway, only he's even worse than that. My intent is to turn the paranormal romance genre on its head by making vampires evil again. We've been sympathizing with them for too long, sparkling was taking it too far, it's time for vampires to be the villains they were always supposed to be. this story started out as an idea I had for my own take on the supernatural world, but I didn't really ahve a story to use it with, and then I thought I could try the paranormal romance genre and use my world as a setting for the anti-Twilight. I hope it's similar enough to attract the existing audience while being different enough to win over people who would otherwise disdain the genre. I plan for this to be a trilogy, with each book covering a critical year in her life from her birthday which happens to be St. Patrick's Day until Halloween when the undead are at their stongest. The first book is 16, followed by 18, and then finally 21. The big twist, I'm going to let the readers help me decide whether she ends up with the wizard or the werewolf, or neither, or both, I'm open to polyamory.

So far I'm in my third chapter, Ellen has discovered what she is and met the key players, including her three potential boyfriends and her cousin Jasper and his girlfriend Jade, who are both dragonkin, one-eighth dragon and great-grandchildren of changelings themselves. I haven't really gotten past introductions so i need to get back to the book, so see you for my next update next week!