NaNoWriMo Year 3 - 2007

The third year in a row that I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) brought about The Expired Reality Anthology Volume 1. This was meant to be a collection of short stories that took place in my young adult series, Expired Reality. But The Expired Reality Anthology has proved to be so much more than just a short story anthology.

For starters, one of the stories - Black Earth - sparked off my entire Black Earth novel series. When NaNo was over with that year, I took another look at Black Earth and I realized there was enough material to make an entire series. The final book in this series is due out this Winter.

Another story found in the collection - Eden's Folly - introduced Eden Ambersay, a character who will be appearing in the Expired Reality series in the near future. Eden is a female archaeologist on the hunt for the shards of an ancient sword that can save humanity, and is also in the midst of performing experiments on Legion.

Yet another story in the collection - Parallel Dance - told of the dance that David and Carrie (from the Expired Reality series) attended in David's flashbacks in Endangered Memories, but from the point of view of an entirely new set of characters - one of which actually has connections to Eden Ambersay. Parallel Dance has been renamed Parallel Extreme (for the moment) and is planned to be released as a novella (or possibly a short story series) in the near future.

Another nugget of fictional shenanigan that took place in The Expired Reality Anthology was a scene I ended up writing that details the death of Carrie Green. Now, I'm revealing this not to confirm whether or not Carrie will die in the Expired Reality series, but to point out what I felt compelled to write for NaNo that year. The scene takes place in an abandoned hospital and Carrie's body is wasting away while her soul is kept within a necklace David Corbin wears. Not sure how much of that - if any - will make it into the Expired Reality series as canon. Time will tell, though.

It worth mentioning that this was the year I finished NaNo in 9 days. The Expired Reality Anthology came to 50,108 words, contained some great starting points to other writing projects, and was finished - at least the NaNo version - in only 9 days. I believe that was the year I was working two jobs as well.

Just goes to show that anyone can do NaNo.