November 30, 2010. It's almost official, `NaNoWriMo2010 nears its conclusion. As of this writing, I have 58,011 words, of the 50,000 required to complete. Mondennio sits inside a complex with a small team of Ne'er do wells about to enter a man's house without permission. In the span of four weeks, I have watched this poor lad not rise to the challenges I put at him. I'm looking forward to watching him man up in the latter half of the book.

I'm rather pleased with my showing this time. I did some self-editing, shuffling of material. I avoided writing for the sake of writing, trying to keep the narrative as lean as a guy who uses 'fortnight' in everyday conversation. Having done well with the 1,667 daily word count goal, I shifted to 2,000. That immediately put me behind and gave me the incentive to march on. Mondennio's upset enough of the story lines of the other three viewpoint characters that I expect some revision to get the continuity back.

What's next? I still have 40,000 words to write to finish this draft. I have 18,964 for Mondennio right now, which is almost on track for where he needs to be to finish. I was light on some of his earlier scenes and bypassed one because I wanted to get to this second disaster before midnight tonight. Last night was a bad night, and I have to get some sleep tonight. So, early tomorrow I will try to finish this scene. At 2,000 words per day, I won't finish until 20 December. I'd like to finish by 10 December, but that's asking a lot.

Once I finish this draft, I need to let it cool a bit. I have a small group of fools who are looking forward to being my first readers; and they'll read the draft before I do. Hopefully the draft will be back from the printers.

I need to get back to the predecessor novel Imbroglio. I'll probably have Scintilla done before Imbroglio is complete, and I'm not sure if I should release it first. Imbroglio is not a prequel, so it should actually be published first.

Because I'm self-publishing, I hope to get Scintilla “in the can” no later than May. Preferably sooner. Being my first novel, I expect everything to take longer than I expected, and require significant more effort. I know how to self-publish, though marketing is not my strong suit.