Announcing My NaNoWriMo 2018 Novel Projects

Before I get into my projects for this year's NaNoWriMo, I think it would be befitting to first explain what that is for all of you writers and those that want to be writers out there.

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WHAT IS NANOWRIMO?

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National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo as it is affectionately called by us participants, is one month out of the year where writers all around the world take the time to work on that novel that they didn't have time for during the rest of the year. It is a concentrated effort to actually finish a novel.

Now, in most literature terms, any book that has more than 40,000 words is classified as a novel. So if you are able to write more than that, you can officially call your work a novel by industry standards. NaNoWriMo has as its goal 50,000 words to be achieved. And the prize? Self-satisfaction that you have actually accomplished your goal. There are also badges of merit to be attained on the website when you log in your word count, such as writing a certain number of days in a row, or completing a certain number of words.

In the end, you can copy the entire work you wrote during the month and paste it into a word-count calculator on the website itself. Don't worry, it is safe. The words are jumbled up and just used for counting. Plus, you as the writer can copyright your work before using the word-count just to ensure that no one steals it.

If this is something you may be interested in, feel free to visit the Website for more details. You would have to create an account and then indicate which novel you are working on. If you want to be fancy, you can create an image for your work and give a small synopsis.

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YOU ARE NOT ALONE UNLESS YOU CHOOSE TO BE

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Thankfully, NaNoWriMo is a vast, global community of writers. You can chat to anyone to help you or guide you. There are mentors on the site as well as mails that get sent to your NaNo inbox to motivate you. There are also Regions, which you should assign yourself to early. This way, they keep count of which Country, Province and Region is doing the best in the world and count your tally against your Region.

More importantly, each Region has a Municipal Liaison, or ML for short. Sometimes they have more than one. These wonderful MLs are there to coordinate things running smoothly for their Region. Our Western Cape Region has a Whatsapp group that is available all year long, but mostly used for November when NaNo is running strong.

These groups are wonderful. You are not forced to communicate or participate in events like Wordsprints (a timed event where you write as many words as possible for your novel with complete disregard for grammar or spelling). Yet, there are always others that you can learn from just by reading their chats where they give guidance to each other.

Finally, you can also buddy-up with another NaNo writer on the site. Once you confirm them as a buddy, the two of you can motivate each other daily on the site.

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MY NANOWRIMO EXPERIENCE

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I started in 2015 with NaNoWriMo after having been told for the third year in a row that I should. I had already been a published author since 2007, starting my writing in 2000, and by 2015 I had started publishing my own novels. By that time my Celenic Earth Chronicles epic fantasy trilogy had already been published.

So my journey into NaNo had less to do with wanting to become a published author and more to do with finally communing with other writers and being able to guide young writers. My first project in 2015 was an unplanned novel, just something I was using to test the system. It was a fantasy erotic novel called "Secret of the Hidden Banshee", about a young girl learning about her new powers while discovering her mixed sexuality.

Having won that NaNoWriMo, and obtained a shirt that says I was a winner, I thought the NaNo journey was over for me until the next November. Boy, was I wrong. I was introduced by my NaNo Region that there were two NaNo camps during the year in April and July. These are not part of the official November NaNoWriMo, and Camp NaNoWriMo has its own website. With the camp, you can set your own word-count goal and milestones to achieve with your novel.

So for April and July 2016, I used the camps to work on my first horror novel, Silent Hill: Betrayal. This allowed me to finally publish it in October 2016 with a lovely total of 127,000 words.

This left me an opening to work on my romantic fantasy novel, Dream Whispers, which is the first book in the Dreamweaver Saga. However, Dream Whispers was worked on in November's NaNo 2016 and 2017, as I did not work on the novel throughout the year. Also, August 2017 I established my book publishing company, Celenic Earth Publications, which slowed my novel writing down so much.

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MY NANOWRIMO 2018 PROJECTS

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Now tradition holds that Wrimos usually work on one novel. This year, I would like to change that. I have been aiming to complete two novels at the same time, namely the sequel Silent Hill: Obversion and my dark fantasy novel, Malum: Rise of the Deadly Sins. This will afford me the opportunity to not only finish and publish them at the same time, but also start them at the same time. I have already planned out Act 1 and 2 for them both, and I have a feeling that the first Acts of both novels will easily help me reach 50,000 words.

Here are the synopsis for both:

SILENT HILL: OBVERSION

Cassandra Sanders wakes up tied down to a gurney in the psychiatric ward of a dark and broken hospital. After barely escaping from demented doctors and other horrific horrors, she breaks out of the hospital and finds herself in the tormented and haunted town of Silent Hill.
While searching the streets and buildings for clues as to what is happening to the town, she discovers links to her past that have troubled her for most of her life. Signs of her family start appearing, and something sinister in the crippled creatures that hunt her calls out to her. Was Cassey somehow responsible for some of the things that had happened in Silent Hill? Was she indirectly responsible for the massacre that happened so long ago?
And in her reflections, captured in the fog of Silent Hill, she sees the face of someone she once loved, someone so close to her, who had been taken from her by her own father. And she can hear the cold axe ringing through the streets, on the chill of the air, coming for her life, the one who got away that fateful night….

MALUM: RISE OF THE DEADLY SINS

Inspired by Blizzard’s dark fantasy game series, Diablo, comes a dark fantasy novel filled with magic and darkness. In a small town of K’vornash, the villagers are starting to act strangely. Once polite people with only slight hints of ambition, the villagers begin exhibiting behaviour completely against their nature. Once chaste men give into their lustful desires, honest women begin stealing in the dead of the night, and dead clergy are found strewn around the holy cathedral.
Rumours spread in the surrounding towns of these happenings and several warriors, mages and mystical sorakfighters arrive at the town to discover the cause of this dark turn. At first, nothing gives sign as to what has occurred until whispers reach them of horrific creatures rising in the depths of Kor’nosh Mine.
The heroes delve into the darkness, battling every foe they come across. Yet, the more they fight, the stronger the demons become. The mines hold a deeper secret than the minions that fill the vast passages in the mountain, one that threatens the lives of every human on the planet. And it becomes clear that some among them are aligned with the darkness.

I am really excited about this year's NaNo and will keep you updated with progress. Remember to sign up to the newsletters below for each novel to receive special information about them.

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Kind regards

Shaun M Jooste

Joint-Owner: AIR Entertainment (https://airentertainment.biz)
Director: Celenic Earth Publications (https://celenicearthpublications.wordpress.com)
Author, Screenwriter, Gamewriter, Journalist (https://celenicearth.wordpress.com)