Saturday, November 29, 2008

Nanowrimo Winner

Here it is, suckas! Strolling in a day early for the 50,000 word verification - I am a winner of the 2008 Nanowrimo Challenge.

I win access to this little .jpg as well as a certificate. I printed and framed my certificate from last year. The Choose Your Own Adventure novel is coming along nicely, and it certainly has had its challenges. I honestly didn't think I was going to make it this year, but the story pushes along nicely and works really well. Plus, there's a lot of fun writing the 'endings' every now and again.

No doubt, if I'm going to have a reader go through five or six pages just to have the protagonist die, then I'm going to reward them with something cool - like the flamethrower I was mentioning earlier. It was recommended that I have someone die at the hands of a lion at the zoo - and I think I know a way to make that work (although I don't think the zoo really fits into the story very well).

So - a good day for me. It's a bit awkward for me to post this novel up online, because part of the novelty of a CYOA is turning to pages and checking where the story goes - which is not quite the same with a .pdf document. I admit, you'll have to wait for this one to be printed out (and finished) before you get access to it.

Unless I post it up with the blog and have links to the appropriate pages. I don't know if I want to do that just yet - I mean, perhaps I'll post the first part of the book like that, but ... I'm not certain I want to do that just yet.

Now I can get back to updating the Maple Leafs Challenge, which I haven't touched in almost two weeks. The participants must be getting edgey about it. Sorry.

See y'all around.

Friday, November 7, 2008

Here's a great obituary for Michael Crichton that came to my attention today.

One of the items that has me wondering was what his next book was going to be like. HarperCollins, his publisher, had scheduled for his next book to be released in December, but his illness postponed its release indefinitely. 

The private illness Crichton's family kept out of the media doesn't tell us much regarding how long he was ill. We can't really be sure how much of the novel was complete before his sickness postponed his efforts. Either way, we also don't know whether or not his final work will be finished or published posthumously. 

I can't even find any clues as to what it was about, but it should be available next May. So we'll get a glimpse of it.

Wikipedia has an excellent article on Crichton, if anyone was interested in more of his thoughts.