Fright night – or was that fright month?

I do love October 31. Some of that is due to the prevalence of tiny candy bars. The rest is thematic. After all, Halloween and paranormal romance go together like, well, chocolate and peanut butter. Trick and treat. Vampires and haemoglobin. I seem to be building up a backlog of Vampire Diaries episodes on my PVR – maybe that will be my Halloween fun. I can snuggle with the cats, who need a bit of comfort with all the firecracker action outside.

Speaking of scary, the other thing about October 31 is that it is the day before November 1, which is the start of NaNoWriMo a/k/a National Novel Writing Month. For those that don’t know, this event is a kind of authorial Iron Man, in which folks try to write their novels in a month. Or just about. Actually, the aim is not to create a finished, polished book, but a good chunk o’ draft manuscript which can then grow up to be a novel. People join in whether they’re beginners or professionals—this is a totally level playing field. The only person you’re competing with is yourself, but it’s a lot more fun when you’re doing it with friends.

There is a web site where participants go register, and there are bulletin boards, support, tips, tricks, coffee mugs and everything else to help get you through those 30 days of writing madness.

Since I seem to have a very full writing schedule at the moment, I’ve signed up in hopes a burst of furious activity will get me through the first leg of my writing journey. I’ll be working on the first of my Nocturne books. I’ve started it, so my goal is to get it as close to the finish as possible. I’ll give weekly updates to let you know how it’s going!

Is anyone else doing NaNoWriMo? If you are, let me know and we can cheer each other on!