TL;DR: Writers be crazy in November, when they band together for National Novel Writing Month with one goal: To write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days or less. Anonymous Source was originally a NaNo novel. This year, I’m working on its follow up, Undercover Exposé.
Remember when you were a kid, the magic of waking up early on Nov. 1 so you could start writing your novel before everyone else woke up? Remember how, after spending all those months plotting and planning and imagining scenes play out in your imagination, it was finally time to bring them to life?
No? Just me?
Let me back up. November is National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo), a time of year that I look forward to the way a kid looks forward to Christmas. Okay, now you’re caught up on the analogy.
For those of you who are unaware, the event brings together authors from around the world for 30 days of creativity, community, and, of course, writing. The ultimate goal is to write a novel of 50,000 words by the end of the month, but more importantly, for writers to create a writing routine and get their words out into the world. It is the one time of year when it’s okay to ignore household responsibilities, the needs of other people, and even your own hygiene in the pursuit of a written masterpiece.
As today is the first day of this most hallowed writing event, I’d like to give you a glimpse at my past NaNo novels—and what I’m working on this year.
Framed (2015)
My first installment in the Breaking News Mystery Series — before the series existed in its current state, of course — was an untitled mess I pantsed (wrote without plotting or planning, i.e., by the seat of my pants) in high school. It is now known as The Book That No One Shall Ever See.
There were a couple of other finished novels that came after, also in varying degrees of terrible, before I really got serious with Framed.
I’d tried to write Framed on two previous occasions and gave up partway through. So in 2015, I picked it up again for my first NaNo project. I plotted the heck out of it and hit the ground running on Nov. 1 and surpassed the 50K goal by about 7,400 words by the end of the month.
Framed has undergone one round of revisions and is currently in a second draft status, awaiting to be ripped to shreds and rewritten yet again. Whee! Ultimately, I plan for it to be the third installment in the series.
Untitled (2016)
The following year, I wanted to get out of Colsboro and meet some new people. My NaNo novel that year was a dual-perspective, third-person POV, romantic suspense in which the heroine, whose sister just died of an apparent suicide, hires a private investigator to find out what really happened. Spoiler: She was murdered!
This one didn’t even get a title, let alone a cover mock-up, but I did hit my goal and then another 2,000 after that. I do hope to return to this story somewhere down the road.
Clues (2017)
Back to Colsboro we go for NaNoWriMo 2017! I originally wrote Clues in college: It’s the story of an investigative reporter who’s following a brutal serial killer with an unhealthy obsession for her, and he sends her photos of his victims hidden in elaborately staged photos…
Wait, that sounds familiar! Is this Anonymous Source? Indeed, it is!
Looking back at the original story, I realized it had some good stuff in it, but it was also kind of amateurish. So, I scrapped the first draft and started over. Having finally realized that mysteries really need some advance planning, I plotted the heck out of this one, starting months before NaNo began. And, once again, I crushed it, topping out at about 54,000 words in November. I returned to it in April for Camp NaNoWriMo (a twice-yearly mini version of the big November event), adding another 10,000. At its peak, it capped out at about 130,000 words (ye, gods!) but lucky for you, I slashed tens of thousands of my word babies to get it under control. You’re welcome.
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Backseat Driver (2018)
This was going to be a collaboration between me and my hubby about a character with multiple personalities who does some sketchy shit but doesn’t know she’s doing the sketchy shit.
It is also the year we do not speak of.
See No Evil (2019)
I ventured out of Colsboro once again to explore the world of a woman who can see the last three minutes of a dead person’s life simply by touching them. She’s pressured into working with a homicide detective to solve the murder of someone who really, really deserved what he got.
I missed a handful of writing days this year but scraped by with 50,019 words with just a few hours to spare. Phew.
See No Evil is in a similarly unfinished state as Untitled (2016), and I plan to return to this one in the future as well.
Vanished (2020)
In the summer of 2020, I participated in a workshop of other novelists revising their completed manuscripts. During an intense 10 weeks, Clues underwent a big revision. The program lasted into September, which is when I typically begin plotting for NaNo. But I was burned out.
Vanished is the second novel in the Breaking News series, but it just didn’t get the plotting it deserved. I was convinced I wasn’t going to hit 50K, but I rallied at the end and made it 60 words past the finish line.
And then I dropped that sucker like a hot potato. Every time I tried to come back to it, I just couldn’t work up the motivation.
And then my dog died. And my grandma. Total creativity killer.
Which brings us to…
Undercover Exposé (2021)
Late this summer and into early fall, I got my mojo back. I bought my domain and built my website. Scooped up the social media profiles and started a mailing list. Set up a street team and started promoting my forthcoming debut novel, Anonymous Source. Yadda yadda, you’ve heard all this before.
I also returned to Vanished and dug deeper into that iceberg I’d barely scratched the surface of in 2020. It was as if I’d undergone a total mindset shift, and I felt creatively refreshed and staunchly determined to get this sucker done, like the sucker before it.
Undercover Exposé is a rebranded Vanished. In the second installment of the Breaking News series, my heroine is still reeling from the fallout of everything that happened in Anonymous Source. (Nice try, but I’m not giving you any hints!) She’s a little darker and a lot harder, and she’s struggling to resume her normal life. Maybe a nice undercover assignment will get her back on her feet, eh?
Writing starts today. Wish me luck!
