A Brief Introduction of Characters

Today, I'm posting a series of images, brief blurb cards for a hand-picked selection of characters, mostly main characters, but a few have important supporting roles. All character images were created using Azalea's Lord of the Rings Scene Maker from Doll Divine.

William was jolted awake by the carriage coming to an abrupt stop. He could hear nervous snorting and restless hooves, and the coachman's steadying voice. Beside him, Anna's fingers sought out his hand, gripping it tightly, and with eyes long-adjusted to the dim light, he could just barely make out James moving off the bench to retrieve the weapons stored below. Steel glinted dully in the meager light. A clatter of hooves came quickly up the road beside him, and William's fingers itched to draw back the leather flap and look outside.

"Stay here," he heard Roth tell the coachman. "We're not alone in these woods."

"Aye, sir."

For what seemed to be an eternity, it was quiet and still, save for the nervous snuffling of the horses, and the creak of the trees and carriage. Then from out to their left came a garbled scream that made the hair on the back of William's neck prickle. There was the ringing sound of steel striking steel, and low voices he couldn't quite understand. Brilliant light flashed around the edges of the window coverings as a spell was cast, followed immediately by the sound of wood shattering and the screaming groan of a trunk buckling, toppling through the branches of its neighbors, and the grating sound of bark on bark as it never quite hit the ground. The carriage lurched as the horses shied, and it felt as though the coachman was barely able to rein them in. He heard a terrified whinny coming from behind from the horse tied up behind the carriage, and the ring of its hooves striking the wooden walls as it reared.

Anna let go of his hand and he realized too late her intention, as she did what they all wanted to do, and peek out beyond the covering to see what was unfolding, to give an image to the frightful noises they heard.

"Anna, stop!" he hissed, moving up beside her. But he couldn't make her lower the curtain, for he too was intent on looking outside. James looked out the other one, and they watched as Roth, still on horseback and expertly handling the mount and a wicked looking sword, faced off with three men. Only one was on a horse, two were on foot and William couldn't tell if that was by design or if they had been unseated at an earlier point.

"The man on horseback is a mage," James whispered. "I've seen him before."

One of the men on foot lunged at Roth, slashing out with a jagged, curved blade that Roth parried while backing the horse away from it. That had the intended effect of forcing him away from the carriage, and the other man on foot bolted for it. As he grasped the handle, his eyes met William's, and a dark grin crept over the man's face.

Then Roth shouted, an arcane word in a guttural language he didn't know, and the man convulsed, frothy blood appearing from his mouth as he collapsed.

"So it is you," the mage said. "What manner of treasure lies within that carriage, I wonder."

"Back away, Mileil," Roth ordered. "You now know it is I, so you must know what I am capable of doing."

"So do you, Ashlor. And you can only do so much without sending the horses into a stampede of terror, which would jeopardize what's in there." He smiled. "I have no such concerns, however." He held up his hand, and a red glow quickly formed with a rushing noise of wind.

James swore and dove at them, although William wasn't certain how he hoped to protect them from the incoming fireball as it enveloped the carriage. He felt the hot rush of air, then nothing. The roaring flames suddenly dissipated, and the carriage lurched. He heard Roth shout a command he didn't catch, and then they were flying down the road, away from the fight.

And so begins November

Blogger is on West Coast time. When a post would be published at midnight, in reality, it was already 2 in the morning where I was.

It's 2am in Nebraska. Right now, I'm probably getting home. From midnight onward, I was writing at the Perkins on O Street, kicking off November.

It's National Novel Writing Month, or as it's more commonly known as, NaNoWriMo. The goal is to write a novel, 50k words or more, in 30 days. It's an exercise in turning off the inner editor, to hang up the hang-ups over whether or not that's the right word, obsessively editing what was written and pacing back and forth over the same ground without making any real progress toward the end. The editing, the polishing and proofing and ruthless cutting, that comes after the meat of the novel is produced. NaNoWriMo produces the meat. If you choose to cut it into something marketable, it's up to you.

NaNoWriMo has produced novels which, after polishing and cutting, went on to be published. NaNoWriMo has spawned ideas from the monthly projects, a tangent thread to follow, which in turn produces a novel fit for publication.

It's not a formula that works for everyone. Some people flounder instead of fly in the unbound freedom of it all. Not every novel, even if cut and polished, will be fit for publication. Very few novels actually face the wrath of an editing pen. It's a month of nonsense, a lesson in powering through writer's blocks, training in a habit of writing a little bit every single day.

All you need to stay on the goal is 1667 words a day. That will put you at 50,000 words by November 30th.

There's a novel idea I've been wanting to do for a while. The core elements, the basic plot. But I hadn't found quite the right setting, the perfect stage to make the characters shine. In 2013, I think I might have solved that problem.

In November 2013, I also received my breast cancer diagnosis. I was ahead of the projected word count, I was turning out easily 2,000 to 3,000 words a day. But the diagnosis derailed me. Hard.

I did some more writing in the spring, but not very much. I'd lost the motivation for fiction writing. My energy went instead into this blog, into a memoir which is still far from being where I can give it a final period.

I knew November would come around again. They changed the rules, a work in progress was now allowed as a novel entry, provided we started counting the word count at zero on November first, and only factored in the words we wrote through the month of November.

I'm picking the novel back up. It only has 30,000 words to it. A little more than that, actually, but not by much. I want to find my creative drive again. I want to get this story told, about the daughter of a necromancer, the science-minded son of a mage, a shadow dragon and his family.

If I can do this, if I can finish this novel without falling behind the curve (some allowance will be made over Thanksgiving as we're hosting it this year) then I will allow myself something else: the attempt to get into nursing school. If I can't keep up the energy and drive to stay ahead of the daily word count, to finish this novel, then I can't keep up with the demands of nursing school. If I want to go, I'll get this done.

So take a break from a month-long parade of anti-pink, and expect updates to be more sparse this month. What does come across this blog will very likely pertain to writing woes.

And in case you're a fellow NaNo'er, my pen name on the boards is Zanne Chaos.