Now, it's not November, you may say, so why write a novel? Well, for many reasons - honoring my characters by finishing their story and giving them purpose, contributing to the sci fi / fantasy genre that I've loved since the first of 81 volumes of "Journey to the West" fell in my lap a score ago, racking up publish-or-perish points for grad school (yeah, so I'm a musicologist. Hey, the novel's protagonists are musicians, and they play shawms. Shawms!**), entertaining my homies, showing off to my homies, and making some bank because I've noticed my employer shortening hours over and over again due to financially delinquent parents.
Rounding up, I'm now to 30,000 words and I've been clocking an average of 3,000 per day since I've started forcing my butt into gear. Yes, unfortunately I'm still on the first draft of Kyrinahl. I'm also working on a time-travel mystery novella with my friend Mike. This yarn is turning into a fantasy epic - there's a big battle at the end, with nukes, espionage, and magic swords. I've cut out the hacker subplot because it's just so damn cheesy. Not that the book is not cheesy without it. After all, what is fantasy but WoWish cheese, consumed with a good-sized horn of mead? Raise your horn to the great gods of SF/F and go support your local fantasy authors today.
* I did not just watch The Craft, nor do I enjoy too much Viking metal, nor am I a clichéed metal / neofolk poseur with too much time on my grubby studio-apartment dwelling, record-pawing, East Village crawling hipster hands. Go to my Livejournal, whose contents are naught but psychospiritual discourse.
** Shawms are totally fergalicious. Shawms are the predecessor to the oboe. Here are some.
