If you haven’t been following my day by day tweets, I won NaNoWriMo on the 20th, and finished up the final story in the wee hours of the 21st. The total by my count is 51,371 words, by the official count it’s 51,390.
I’m taking a short writing hiatus (just a tiny one I swear) but in the meantime I thought I’d post a couple of excerpts from this year’s stories. Note these are unedited from draft zero. Okay, I ran spellcheck, but otherwise they’re untouched! It pains me too, cause I can already see problems to fix.
No guarantees anything even remotely like them will appear in the finished works. Anyway, enjoy!
Aman
The mouse dodged the awkward blow, as he expected. They were always faster, but he could endure. The swings that looked mighty to them were as the swatting of fleas. Let them think they could outpace him, outthink him, outfight him. He wasn’t just a lump of muscle; this was his life, tip to tail.
Let them play at war.
Trump
“You’ve heard the rumors,” Pate said. “What do-”
A small light blipped on the desk, and Tom flicked it with his finger. “Here,” he said.
“We’ve picked up the Notrump’s transponder signal,” a voice said. “They’re requesting permission to dock.” Tom eyed Pate.
“Permission granted,” he said.
“Roger that,” the voice said. “Docking to hangar three, ETA eleven minutes.” The light on the desk winked out.
“Just relax,” Tom said. “Inspectors come and inspectors go. You run a tight operation here.”
“Tell that to the company,” Pate said. Tom shrugged, and Pate returned to his graphs. “You don’t have to deal with those fuckers. You lose an ounce of ore, they’re on you like… shit. Fuck. I don’t know.”
“Eloquent,” Tom said. “You want my advice, just don’t be yourself.”
“Fuck you.”
Sorry for swearing. But after a year and a half of working on Guineawick Tales, I needed the outlet.
/jon
Jon Thysell 