If you read no other blog post this year...

So I don't update this thing nearly enough.

Then again, I'm not real sure people are reading this except to look at pretty Gambit pictures.

Which reminds me that I never did review #4. And technically I didn't review #3 either but I figured since they were the end of the first arc I'd wait to do them together...

But I scrapped that because of Akicon. I did not have the will power to write a full review. Suffice to say that the comics are good! Even newcomers to comics this is a good place to start. Because you honestly don't need to know a thing about Gambit! The writer is good enough to spell it out on the first page: he's a thief that plays at being a super hero/teacher and has been stuck in the friend zone by his ex-girlfriend. Done. From that moment on it doesn't matter who Gambit is necessarily but what he's doing. There's no overwhelming amount of characters, just Gambit and a few minor characters introduced solely for this plot arc.

So comic reviews aside... I've been working on National Novel Writing Month.

For those that don't know, National Novel Writing Month (also known as NaNoWriMo and often shortened to NaNo) is the goal of writing 50,000 words in one month. That's roughly 1,667 words each day. As it is day four I should be at about 6,668 by tonight.

I'm at about 4,180 words right now so, for those of you not following along at home with your own math, means I need to write about 2,500 today to catch up. An actually very doable goal for me. If I ever stop writing silly blog posts long enough to add to my word count... I'm still waking up. I'm going to blame that.

Anyways, I've been making posts and updates on facebook since the first and realized that I haven't posted anything about what my story's about. So this blog post is here to fix that!

Helen is an army scientist that was ordered to look into creating a super soldier serum by General Stover. She comes up with a possible serum but chickens out, trying to run and hide with the serum so the army can't use it. This plan fails and Stover captures her and decides to test the serum on her younger brother, William, which transforms him into a lycanthrope-like beast. While both Helen and William escape from Stover, he is still after them as well as a vampire named Izzy. She is one of the few blood suckers not to lose her mind after being turned and Stover is hopeful that her blood contains the key to perfecting the serum 'work out the kinks' to what happened to William. So not only does Helen intend to keep Izzy away from Stover, she's also hopeful that Izzy's blood contains the key to curing her brother. And, hey, Izzy's not picky because she'd like a cure for her fanged problem so that she can go home! But it turns out that William may not want to be cured. He may actually like his new body... And now Helen must struggle to get her brother back in more ways than one.

And that is a much longer summary that I would normally do. But I haven't quite boiled this one to his essence yet. I've only had this idea for five days now. So I'm surprised I have this much!

In other news, this is also a lesbian romance. Izzy and Helen hook up.

Mostly because at first Helen was supposed to be a man named Leon. But as I got started imagining scenes, Leona kept acting... female. Not girly or feminine, which is perfectly acceptable behavior for men. But he acted very positively female... So instead of forcing him to be something he wasn't, I gender swapped him into Helen. Which worked because I originally wrote Izzy to be bisexual.

And that is basically it at the moment. I've got a subplot going on as well with another villain which deals more with William possibly wanting to keep his super powers... But it's a subplot. Same as the romance honestly... even if it does take center stage for a long stretch...

But otherwise that's basically it! Off to writing land!

Writing Woe's: What we normally call 'Writer's Block''

Writing is one of those funny hobbies... because you love doing it (you kind of have to. It's not that rewarding) but you make every possible excuse not to.

I need to clean the house first

I need to do a little more research first

I should plot out the entire book first

It always seems to come up that there's something you ought to be doing first. Either that or you're not in the mood, everything you write is coming out awful, you're sick, you have a headache, it's too noisy in here! When do the list of excuses end?

Well, they don't really. Because being a writer is about imagination so of course we can imagine all sorts of reasons not to be doing that thing that we love to do... And there seems to be no reason for it!

I'm the worst at this. Right now I'm sitting here with this marvelous headache and two animals that just won't settle down. I've written all of 600 words all day and it's already 6pm. Day wasted it feels.

And if you're waiting for the part where I philosophically turn this all around you're going to be disappointed. Because I'm just complaining. It's another in a long line of imaginative things I do not to write. I think I enjoy complaining.

But, no, I just realized I hadn't updated my blog in quite a few days and I'm determined to keep up on at least one project. It's a bad habit of mine to start something and then drop it. Constantly quoting that excuse of "I don't feel like it" or "I'm not inspired" or "I'd rather do this instead anyways..." So it's really good for me to push myself when it feels like the steam has turned off.

Plus I want to keep myself honest about my WIP. Maybe if I talk about it a little bit somewhere, I'll keep up on it. I've been playing with this idea for over a year now. Keep sort of starting it and then changing an idea here or there... and starting over. And all this time it had been meant to be the immortal empath's (Leona's) story.

After all... she was my character. I created her. Or she came to me and I started writing her... It's sometimes hard to tell. And I absolutely love her, probably because she's a lot like me in many ways. She's my alter ego so to speak.

But her counter part, Remi, has become the easiest to write. And 'they' usually say that if they're easier to write, they're probably meant to be the main character.

So I've rather accepted this turn around. It just seems interesting because I love Leona and I think she's a fascinating character... and she's mine... but there's something rather difficult in writing her. Or, more importantly, in trying to plan and write a novel around her. I guess in a way she's too complex and has too many factors that get introduced too early on, it feels forced.

Remi wasn't my character.

He was based off an interpretation of another character. And in that way at first he was rather forced as well. He was mostly there because I needed him to be there for the plot... But where was the fun in that?

Plus he felt too copied. Too much like the original. And as much as I don't mind the comparisons to the original or people to see the parallels in their stories, I wanted him to be mine. So I refused to write anything until I had him figured out.

I'm still not quite sure where it came from, what made me able to flip everything around and make him a background and personality that matched the original character but was almost entirely mine as well... But it happened. And I'm quite proud of it.

I just wish I could write more for my novel in a day than I could for my blog -sigh-