First off — Happy Halloween!!!

Second — the short story grown into a novella DESERTER is now available! Get it on Amazon here. This one won’t be available in print (unless it matters to a bunch of people) because it’s fairly short! ~18,000 words and 99¢.

What do you guys think of the cover? A little bit different.

Third — why am I so into numbered lists today? Weird. But the REAL third item is, if you haven’t read Dagger of Bone yet, it’s on sale this weekend — 99¢ in the US and £ 0.99 in the UK!

Mostly I just wanted to share the news of that with those who have been waiting for those things, but a friend of mine asked me for my advice on doing NaNoWriMo, so I though I’d share some quick tips here. =D

NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. It’s basically like a big fun get together club where everyone tries to write 50,000 words in a month. That’s about 1600 words a day, which is hard, but not insane. And if you’ve ever wanted to try writing a novel, it’s a great time to give it a try! The main website has forums and will email you pep talks and stuff. My first novel Mage Slave was a NaNoNovel! At least the first 33k were.

So here’s my tips.

1. Have fun. Don’t critique or rewrite or edit ANYTHING. Only new words. Being able to turn off the critical voice in your head might be the most valuable skill you ever develop as a writer.
2. Pick an ending or a clear direction you’re headed. You might not know how you get there or exactly how it will go down, but pick something. It will give you focus and help you think of ideas.
3. Don’t be afraid to be inspired by the greats and try to mimic ideas (while putting your personal spin on them of course.)
4. YMMV. No writing rule is universal. Be thoughtful in your process, but don’t be afraid to jettison advice that doesn’t work for you.
5. Have somewhere to capture words or ideas while you’re on the go. Whether you write in Google Docs or use the Scrivener App (my personal fave) or carry a notebook. If you’re writing every day, most likely you will have these ideas in the Starbucks drive-thru, and you will need to put it in park and jot that awesome dialogue down.
6. If you’re feeling down… In case of emergency and you’re thinking of giving up, break this glass: Your characters literally can’t exist without you. So if you don’t write, you’re basically killing them. Yep. I went there. -_- This idea always gets me to the keyboard right quick.

Who’s doing NaNo this month? Or will you be reading instead?