Sadly, Halloween has passed for another year. Our ‘Dr. Frankenstein’s Lab’ candy table turned out well:

We only had about ten kids come trick-or-treating, although apparently that was a good number compared to other neighbourhoods. The kids who did visit our house got quite a kick out of it, and my hubby and I did have a lot of fun handing out (touch-free) treat bags that way and sending puffs of fog out to drift eerily around the circle in the still cool night; we may turn it into a permanent tradition. I have to admit some disappointment that more people in our neighbourhood didn’t hand out candy — granted, my hubby and I have a lot of props on hand from various parties we’ve thrown over the years (in fact, he suggested we could probably have decorated our entire circle) — but this seemed like such a cute and fairly safe tradition to hold up this year, a much-needed breath of lightness into a dismal year.

No one has any idea so far regarding what the December holidays may bring, but in the meantime, this year I’m participating in the annual National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) event this month. If you haven’t heard of it, you can find out much more about it here. Each year thousands of writers attempt to pull a novel out of their heads and put it onto paper (real or electronic, whatever suits their style) with at least 50,000 words. The idea is to just get it written, a first draft unencumbered by worries about making it the perfect book of our dreams. As someone who’s been researching, jotting ideas down and drafting the odd orphan paragraph for years, I can attest to how freeing this process is.

We earn badges along the way for things like updating our word count each day, and we can connect to other writers through different groups with a specific focus, or during “write-ins” (short dedicated marathon writing sessions that encourage us to put more words down).

Personally I’m finding it rather liberating to just let ideas flow wherever my mind’s eye takes me and worry at a later date about which ones I want to keep for the final product, and so far, just sitting down with my fingers on my keyboard seems to bring all kinds of interesting ideas to mind. Maybe at some point I’ll run into writer’s block, but I’m content to enjoy the journey.

If you’re wondering what I’m writing about, for now I’ll just say that it’s an urban fantasy with some touches of sci-fi, about a woman who discovers that, far back in her ancestry, she is descended from a race on another planet, and that her progenitor was placed here for a specific purpose because of certain abilities inherent in her bloodline. The concept sprang from my family’s annual road trips to northern Ontario when I was a child — every time we passed an exit ramp leading away into the mysterious unknown, I’d imagine what it would be like to one day explore those other roads. From there my imagination, inspired heavily by Roger Zelazny’s Amber series, extrapolated to roads that led to other dimensions or other planes of existence.

For now I’ll continue sending my heroine on her warrior/hero journey. I know where she’s going and how she’ll end up by the close of the third and final book, but I’m having a blast getting her there and I hope that one day in the near future you’ll be able to read her story yourself. Today it stands at 6467 words, more than 10% of the ultimate goal. Stay tuned for more, and if you feel so inspired yourself, it doesn’t cost anything to sign up for NaNoWriMo.