NaNoWriMo Excitement and Other News

Hello, everyone! It's almost Halloween, and guess what that means? It's nearly time for . . .

 

Yep. that's right. NaNoWriMo, otherwise known as "30 days and nights of literary abandon", otherwise known as "one of the two months in the year where Sarah goes slightly crazy with excitement and it's actually a good thing". (The other month, if anyone was wondering, is July, which is Camp NaNoWriMo.) Believe it or not, I'm more excited about NaNoWriMo than I usually am about Christmas or my birthday. (Ok, maybe not Christmas. The excitement there is probably about equal. But I'm definitely more excited about it than I am about my birthday, which happens to be drawing near.)

This year, of course, I'm about four times as excited about it than I was last year. Why? Here are the reasons:
♥ My plot and characters. I've wanted to write this plot for several months now, and my characters are some of my favorites I've ever created. This is my plot for this year:

Emma Alyron isn't fond of the danger and adventure so many of her siblings seem to relish. That's why she and her mother moved away from Alyron Village and to Port Metre in Beylend so many years ago. Now, with her mother dead, Emma is alone, friendless, and defenseless. She doesn't mind too much- at least she's safe . . . for now.

Meanwhile, Emma's ne'er-do-well brother, Jared, is in trouble once more. Having run up more debts than he can pay, he's fled from his creditors and headed straight to Port Metre, where he hopes his luck will change for the better. It seems to have when he runs into Emma and falls in with a group called the Circle of Eight, but soon he begins to wonder if he's jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire.

To make matters worse, Gwen Alyron and the Firhirt siblings are on their way south, in search of another Alyron brother, Jake. They too run into Emma, much to the consternation of both Emma and Gwen, neither of whom is very fond of the other. Gwen and the Firhirts' search is cut short, however, when friends arrive with news of a terrible emergency. Thanks to Jared, Emma knows a secret that could be the key to solving the emergency, but will she share it and not only help Gwen, but become permanently entangled in what she's been running from for so long? And that's not her only secret . . . will she risk everything for this? Find out in Secrets and Searches, the third book in Leilani Sunblade's Berstru Tales series.

 For the record, "Leilani Sunblade" is my username on two forums: The Underground (which I'll be talking about again later) and the NaNoWriMo YWP (young writer's program) forum. 
♥ As I think I've mentioned, I'm doing it on the official site this year. Basically that means that I have a place where I can get help from other NaNoWriMo participants when I get stuck. And if I get my novel finished and edited in time, I have the opportunity to get five free copies of it.
♥ One of my favorite authors, Wayne Thomas Batson, is also doing NaNoWriMo! Even better, the book he'll be writing is Dark Sea Annals #3! For those who don't know, the Dark Sea Annals series is pretty much my favorite Wayne Thomas Batson series of all time. Book 2 in the series, The Errant King, also has the double honor of being my favorite book by Batson, as well as having one of the most awesome covers I've ever seen. So, you can imagine how excited I was when I learned about this! (This paragraph was actually two reasons for why I'm quadruply excited for NaNoWriMo this year, by the way.)

In other, non-NaNoWriMo-related news, I recently received the honor of being chosen as a Sentinel (moderator) on The Underground, one of the three forums I'm on. The Underground is a forum based on The Berinfell Prophecies, one of my favorite series. Needless to say, I'm pretty happy about it, and I enjoy being able to help on the site. The other moderators are all quite busy and don't have as much time as they used to, which is part of why they were looking for a new Sentinel.

Editing my Camp NaNoWriMo novel is going well. I hit the 2/3 mark this morning, which I'm happy about. Since the last third of the novel is probably my favorite part, I'm hoping it'll go a little faster than before. Of course, I won't get it done by NaNoWriMo, but I'm hoping I'll be close enough to being done that I won't have much to edit after November and I'll be able to start editing my NaNoWriMo novel soon after finishing it.

Finally, I watched Ever After last night with my family. I enjoyed it, though I like the Narnia and Lord of the Rings movies better. I'd probably put it about on par with The Princess Bride. I'm hoping that we'll have time to watch another movie on Saturday, preferably one of the longer ones that we were going to watch last night but didn't because didn't have time.

Well, that's about it. Thanks for stopping by!

- Sarah