November's come to an end and my final word count was 55,593. I could have done more but the past two weeks I barely touched my laptop. I was burned out from all that writing at the beginning of the month. LOL! I'm only about half way through Lochlyn & Kendra's story so finishing it as well as Urs & Callum's story will take up my time until next November. At some point I'll also need to start sending out letters to literary agents. Ugh! That part of writing seems too much like work.

I'm finally past the 55,000 word mark and verified my word count on the website. Yay! I've been going whole days, sometimes even a series of days, without writing. It felt strange but my FM's been flaring up so I needed the break. I'm back now and my characters are not exactly cooperating. Kendra is unconscious right now because she's been in her human form for too long and is dehydrated. It's hard to sleep in water when you're a human being. Lochlyn put her in the shower stall but since he doesn't have a bath tub, it's kind of hard to get Kendra as hydrated as she needs to be. He knows she needs to change forms but right now she can't change without experiencing an orgasm and since she's unconscious Lochlyn is a little freaked out about it. This may be their first real fight - the one where Kendra walks out on him (or swims away. How does one get a mermaid out of a second story apartment without drawing attention to her fins?). This whole scene wasn't in my plot points and will change the dynamics of the up coming scenes. Sigh...

I read through the "take a dare" forum on NaNoWriMo.org and found an easy one: have a character named "Maverick Jones." I just wrote a scene where Kendra finds a book on Lochlyn's night stand that was written by her father under his pen name: Maverick Jones. LOL!

I also fulfilled my forum fairy duties by helping out someone who wanted more information on the business of banking. Wow, that was easy. LOL! I can't find the thread now, though. Sigh ... Hopefully Nikki will take my word for it. LOL!

After four days of not even turning on my laptop I managed to write a measly 1,064 words today. Sigh ... I'm kinda bored with the story right now. Funny how I always feel that way when I'm writing sex scenes. As soon as I get them to Lochlyn's apartment things will heat up again with a visit from Urs and maybe Vinny (he's always good for a laugh or two). It's the getting from point A to point B that I get tired of. I can't wait until November's over and I can get back to work on Out of Darkness.

I hit the 50,000 plus mark before the end of day 17. Yay! I'm only about half way through the story (unlike last year) so I'm going to keep writing to see how far I'll get. I might take tomorrow off from writing, though. A break would be nice.

I spent a couple of hours at CSW's house writing this afternoon and I really made progress there without all the distractions I have at home. Her cat still hissed at me every time she saw me and realized I wasn't part of her family. Maybe by the end of the week she'll be more comfortable. LOL!

50022 / 50000 words. 100% done!

Not too many distractions today so I wrote nearly 5,000 words (only 450 short but I don't have it in me to write that much more before falling into bed). I did write more than 10,000 words in the past 3 days so I'm pretty happy with that. It helps that today was a bank holiday so I didn't have to work and only wasted time watching TV, cooking, eating, messaging friends, and talking on the phone. LOL! I've also written every scene that I had planned out so I'm going to have to figure out where Lochlyn & Kendra are going from here. I did get them into bed, though. Well, not a bed actually. First it was the floor and then the hot tub. LOL! Did you know that half-mermaids can't retain their form during orgasms? Neither did I. Makes life interesting for Lochlyn.

38500 / 50000 words. 77% done!

The weekend was pretty good for writing. Over 2,000 words yesterday and over 3,000 today. I'm back on track after my illness and busy Friday and Saturday nights. Yay!

I added a cameo by brightshadowsky's character in chapter four and even found a way to make it work for me. Tamal jumps on Kendra's shoulder and accidentally scratches her. That scratch made her super sensitive to the other realms so when she jumps in the lake, she gets really, really ill. Lochlyn helps her and wraps her in his seal pelt. The pelt heals the scratches but she'll find out later that she is still connected to the other realms. Tamal also talks to Lochlyn and Kendra, which is a little disconcerting, but I have a future scene planned with Urs and Callum where they speculate that Tamal was actually a Kait Sith. It'll be fun! LOL!

33549 / 50000 words. 67% done!

I caught some stomach bug from someone at work so I stayed home today. Wish I could say I spent the entire day writing but between trips to the bathroom and sleeping I didn't even get dressed until after 3pm. I did get about twice as much written today compared to yesterday so that's good. I've also passed the half way point. Yay! Chapter four is coming along swimmingly and they're just moments away from discovering April Dawn's car in the lake. Chapter three is filled with clues as to Lochlyn's and Kendra's supernatural origins, I just hope they're not too obvious.

I had a lot of time to think this morning so I wrote notes about Undines, Selkies, Naiads and such. Right now Lochlyn's mom is the most fleshed out. She's an English Undine who moved from England to Upstate New York near the Great Lakes when Lochlyn was a child. She never re-married or even forgot about her fickle husband because Undines mate for life (I had to give Kendra some hope that Lochlyn could settle down with one woman, after all). Undines are cold, fresh water spirits with webbed hands and feet, green or blue hair, and a mouth full of very sharp teeth. They live mostly on a diet of fish and water plants. Lochlyn's mom was a healer of her people and she was called upon by the Selkie pod (what is a group of seals called?) to help heal one of their young whose mother was a seal rather than a human. While among the Selkie folk she met Lochlyn's father. They mated and she became pregnant. Lochlyn's father, though, couldn't give up his Selkie ways and harem of females. She couldn't live that way and didn't want her son growing up under his influence so she immigrated to the U.S. She had surgery on her hands, removing the webs, and filed her teeth down and capped so she'd appear more human. She tries to keep her green hair dyed brown. She uses her healing and herbal knowledge to create organic beauty products and she's starting to sell her formulas to large producers. Lochlyn doesn't remember much about his father and has no desire to see him again.

25312 / 50000 words. 51% done!

Ugh, I'm writing worth crap today; I'm at just over a thousand words since 7:30 tonight. It's not that my plot or my characters aren't cooperating because they're right where I want them to be, it's that I'm tired and feel like crap. I hope I'm not coming down with something - several people at work have been ill.

Tomorrow will be better.

Good Night!

20070 / 50000 words. 40% done!

I'm at 19,014 words and am feeling a little burned out. I'm still not where I was at this time last year, though. I need a couple hundred more to meet it (19,325 according to my post in Shadow Walking). I should be able to hit it tonight before I go to bed if I can refocus my thoughts and get my back to stop hurting. Ugh! Since I had less time to type today (after working all day), I forgot to take my 500 word breaks. I have to stop doing that, seriously.

I took Sybil to work with me today and managed to write a little over 500 words while I was at lunch. I need to find good typing food. What can I eat while still maintaining my typing speed? The only suggestion I've had so far is soup through a straw. Doesn't sound very appetizing. What I can't live without while writing is: chai tea without milk and Fruitbars (the black cherry ones are my favorite right now). I don't know what it is about hot tea and popcicles but it works for me.

Okay, back to the Darkness. I'm nearly at the first swimming scene so things are starting to heat up. It's always good to get your characters nearly naked in a romance, right? Completely naked is even better but that's coming later.

Good Night!

16875 / 50000 words. 34% done!

Chapter two is complete and I'm trying to decide if I want to continue on to Chapter three and my 5,000 words written today goal or not (I actually may have surpassed the 5,000 word goal since I can't remember exactly where I ended last night. I think it was somewhere around 11,124 but I could be mistaken). Aarggh! I need at least another 300 to 500 hundred to make sure. 

I'm at 14,050 words right now and it's break time once again. This time I wrote straight through 1,500 words and that was a really bad idea. My back is killing me. I need to make my computer beep at me or something every time I write 500 words. Maybe an electric shock collar. Nah, I'd like that too much. LOL!

I'm nearly done with chapter two. Things are moving right along and Lochlyn is picking up more lovers even though I didn't really plan it. Writing ideas here obvious triggers things in my subconscious. LOL! Kendra's starting to get jealous so that's a good sign. I don't know if she'll be enough woman for him to remain faithful to her for the rest of his life, though. Maybe merfolk are more passionate than I previously thought (not like dead fish, then. LOL!).

I really like Maggie Blackwing and if I hadn't already planned a book around her I definitely would be. Her gift of premonition is really interesting since her premonitions are pretty mundane and while Lochlyn notices that she seems to know a lot of things before she should I doubt my readers will pick up on the gift. Kind of like I'm trying to hide the true natures of Lochlyn and Kendra until later in the book but still give the reader little hints at it once in a while. We'll see if I'll be successful at it or not.

Well, it's been nearly a half hour, I should get back to the book.

I'm at 10,261 words right now and am taking a break from it, though I'm not sure if moving from the couch and Sybil  to a chair and Satan is really taking a break. I tried to update my word count on the NaNo website but it's down right now - too much traffic, I think. Sigh ... the joys of a new site and too many people home and writing on a Saturday.

Since I've surpassed my goal for the weekend already my new goal is 15,000 words by tomorrow night. I think I can do it as long as things keep moving along the way they've been going. I'm about a quarter of the way through chapter two and the sexual tension between Lochlyn and Kendra is heating up. It's kinda fun since Kendra isn't a very pleasant woman - stubborn and argumentative as I imagine Merfolk to be (ocean living isn't easy - lot of competition for food and such). Lochlyn's more laid back, seals are more into communal living, though I wonder if he shouldn't have a harem of women since in a seal group there is usually one bull to a bevy of females? Hmm, something to consider. Would Selkies live more like seals or humans? Probably seals since they spend the majority of their lives in seal form. And would Selkies mate with seals? That would make life interesting for the seal mother if she gave birth to a Selkie child. Okay, now I'm just off on a tangent. I should get back to the novel

I've hit over 1,700 words already today and I've only been writing since 11:30 (plus have taken a number of breaks, including one to update both of my LJ's). I'm trying to get up and walk around and stretch every 500 words so I won't kill my body in the process of writing this month. I have about half of Within Darkness outlined and things are moving right along according to schedule. I'm hoping to hit 2,500 or more today and 5,000 tomorrow - though I may take a long break tomorrow and get tattooed. I want to hit 10,000 words before I have to go back to work on Monday. I knew there was another reason to take this week off work other than not to have to deal with Halloween at work with my old manager. Well, I should get back to the laptop. I've been away for over an hour.