run to the breakers

So the nanowrimo webpage is scheduled to go down soon, only to emerge triumphant on 1 October, stripped clean and ready to go.  A month after that and the madness will start again.

If you’re unfamiliar, nano is essentially an event where tens (hundreds?) of thousands of enthusiastic folks from all walks of life (and all over the world) tackle the daunting task of writing an entire novel from scratch in a short thirty days.  It’s humbling to watch the words stack up, and how QUICKLY they stack up, both for total numbers and for the individual regions.

Of course, I have the honor of writing for Seattle (greater seattle really, as we have folks from the east side, folks from the north end, folks from the south, even some from the peninsula who throw in with us) which has put up the most words of any other region for the last two years running.  Of course, two years ago was my first year participating… coincidence?

We also end up with a pretty high per-writer total too though, and a respectable number of completions (people who have reached the goal of 50k words by the end of the month.)

Personally my goal is 100k, and while I fell far short in ‘06 (topped out in the low 60s) I came much closer last year and then came back to it last spring to put on the finishing touches.  This year I’d like to actually FINISH, but the more reasonable goal I’ll be setting is just to hit 100k and finish up later.  (Of course, my editor will be done with the first pass on Skeleton Army halfway through the month, which might end up distracting me.)

Skeleton Army, by the way, is my 2007 nano, and will be the first book published by Roosevelt Books.  The sequel will be written during nano 2008, and after that who knows?  (I have lot of ideas floating around for these characters and this world is what I am trying to say)

This weekend I settled on an editor. In addition to providing editorial services he also maintains a blog in which he discusses different topics relating to the publishing industry and writing in general, in addition to posting book reviews &c. From reading the blog posts and conversing with him via email he seems like a pretty good guy, and I really liked the sample edit he did for me and the ideas he’s already had about the book.

Some of my test readers have expressed confusion as to why I’m hiring an editor. When they do that I laugh and laugh.

Because while the book is perfectly readable, and my friends and family are very nice people, the book has some pretty big weaknesses I need help with. It’s definitely not ready for prime time. I’m super excited for the edit though, because I’m normally pretty terrible at taking either advice or criticism, but in this case I’ve resolved myself to the fact that I absolutely need to, so I’m looking forward to taking that step.

Also, my ISBNs arrived today. Which was a wonderful surprise, since I wasn’t expecting them for another week+. Since it’s going to be a while before I’m ready to publish anything I opted not to pay for rush processing. However, since I needed them in order to apply for for an account with Lightning Source I was more than happy to take early delivery. So I also applied for an account with Lightning Source.

So I’ve got my editor, got my ISBNs, waiting on account activation over at Lightning Source.

And quietly storming ideas for the second and third books.