A.J. Pendlbolt - Questioning Counselor Hargrove

“Madam Counselor,” A.J. began, leaning forward in his seat with his tea cup still hovering over its saucer, “can you tell us where you were shortly before the night bell two nights prior?”

“Naturally,” the woman answered, taking a long sip of her tea.  Her eyes remained unwaveringly pinned to the gnome with an eagerness that Dede continued to find unsettling.  “I was here in my study, poring over the last of the day’s affairs before taking my evening rest.”

“Can anyone verify that?” Dede asked at once, catching a warning glance from A.J.  Despite generally being the more courteous of the pair, she had little interest in ingratiating herself with the likes of Counselor Hargrove; a woman who made the term ‘noble’ appear anything but.

“Only my manservant, Gerald,” the counselor explained, not batting an eye at the question as she sat her tea on the small octagonal table beside her chair.

“That’s hardly a reliable witness,” Dede said flatly, adding:  “not meaning any offense,” when she saw the look her partner was giving her.  It was a phrase A.J. himself had often used when catching similar glances from her, and with about as much sincerity.

“Of course he isn’t,” the counselor added without missing a beat, “but as an unmarried councilwoman, I’m not in the habit of inviting strangers into my study after the night bell.”  She smiled as she gathered up her saucer for another drink.  “I have a reputation to maintain.”

“About that reputation…” Dede began, cutting herself short when A.J.’s hand went up in a sign of caution.

“Do you know who it is that’s been murdered?” he asked, his tone just as gentle as before.

“Counselor Harrows, of course,” the councilwoman answered, the smile not leaving her face.

“Mind telling us how you know?” Dede asked, her temper clear at the sharp edges of her voice.

“It has to be,” the counselor explained.  “Why else would they cancel session on the day of ratification for one of the most wide-reaching proposals in council history?”  She enjoyed another drink of her tea, shutting her eyes to savor the flavor.  “Even if it was hopelessly misguided.”

Dede swallowed her objection with some effort as A.J. sat forward on the settee, returning his saucer to the serving tray.  “Can you explain?” he asked, continuing with some hesitation as he watched Dede's expression out of the corner of his eye.  “What about the late counselor’s proposal did you find to be...misguided?”

Hargrove laughed, setting her tea aside and tapping the side of her cup with her fingernail.  The porcelain rang into the air like a bell, calling Gerald back to the room in an instant.  The gnome gathered up the tea pot and stepped behind the counselor’s chair to refill her cup.  If it weren’t for the sound of the tea itself, A.J. might not have believed he were still in the room.

“Despite the love lavished upon Counselor Harrows of late,” the counselor began, snaking her fingers around her tea cup, “she retained her critics on the council.”  Her eyes narrowed at the woman just as her wry smile was twisting its way upward into a sickening grin.  “And her enemies.”

“Like yourself?” Dede offered, sipping her tea loudly.

“And others,” the counselor was quick to counter, waving her servant off without taking her hand away from her cup.  The gnome and the tea pot vanished behind the chair again, reappearing only seconds before both exited the room, still bowed.  “For one, the woman had no formal training in market finance.  Her ideals about the myths of foreign trade were only further proof that any such proposal was doomed to fail from its inception.   If it hadn’t been for our dear king-to-be, it would have died on the council floor and been swept up with the morning trash.”

The counselor took another long sip from her tea, watching Dede carefully over the lip of her cup.  The other dwarf maintained her composure, if only just.  “What myths?” A.J. asked, drawing both of their attentions.  “About foreign trade,” he clarified, cleaning his spectacles on a corner of his vest.

The counselor’s smile grew all the more sinister as she sat forward in her seat, leaning over the small table between them.  “Our dear counselor believed that our desert neighbors would rake us dryer than an iron floor,” she explained, eyeing Nathaniel in the corner, “that the humans would fall victim to their bitter urges and continue buying up our precious gemstone stock until the very mines collapsed, and our royal reserves along with them.”

“I was led to understand the counselor had a fondness for the people of Nijhum,” A.J. interjected, keeping his tone soft and even.  Dede shot him a curious look, knowing her partner had never taken the slightest interest in politics.  Gnomes were so woefully underprivileged in Stenwahl that it would have merely served to upset him with little hope of anything changing; a sentiment A.J. himself had voiced to her more than once, which led her to realize that his statement to the counselor was based solely on the evidence gathered on their brief visit to the late councilwoman’s lower terrace residence.  “Was that not the case?”

“Oh, she most certainly did,” Hargrove lilted, letting the innuendo linger on the pointed tip of her words, “but that isn’t to say she was ignorant of their tendencies.”  Her eyes darting to the corner again, searching for a reaction, but the guardsman merely nodded in acknowledgement.  She was delighted in part at the stiffness of the bow and the way in which the man never took his eyes off her in the course of it.  “I think it only added to her ‘fondness’ for them.”

Snippet: A.J. Pendlebolt - The Signmaker

“We’re investigating a murder,” Dede explained, giving the stacked planks only a passing glance to ensure none of them were ready to topple over before following her partner up to the counter.  “Constable Thaddock said that you found a singed bit of dyed parchment outside your stop yesterday morning, is that right?”

“That’s right,” the signmaker replied, a bright smile shining through his mottle gray beard.  “Spotted ‘em out in the street, all circled about.  Knew something was amiss, so I gave one of her boys the parchment.  Only,” he added, the smile fading from his face, “the constable didn’t seem to think it was related…”

“The constable was wrong,” A.J. told him, stooping to inspect one of the signs jutting out from the bottom of a nearby pile.  He could barely make out the letters H-A-M-O-N before he realized that it was meant to hang over a portion of Hammond’s Walk.  The absent ‘m’ remained a mystery, as did the missing apostrophe near the end of ‘Hammond’s.’  “Where did you find the menu?”

“The parchment?” the signmaker asked, lifting up a portion of the counter to slip out into the shop, wiping his large hands on a stained rag that already bore several different shades of paint, as did his hands and much of the arms to which they were attached.  “It was in the street just there,” he said, gesturing towards the door, “right by the curb.  I spotted it when I went to sweep the stoop.”

“Was it already singed when you found it?” Dede asked, ignoring the click of disapproval from A.J.  What she didn’t realize was that the gnome’s disappointment was actual in finding another typo in a sign at the top of a shorter stack on the opposite side of the narrow corridor:  “Legal Liaisons” spelled without the second ‘i,’ a mistake he might have been willing to ignore were it not for the superfluous apostrophe at the end of ‘liaisons,’ clearing an immigrant from the miswritten Hammond’s Walk sign.

“Oh, very much so,” the signmaker answered, “though the fire had gone out of it by then.  There was just the one little trail of smoke coming off the corner, and I stomped that out but good when I found it.”

“Were there any other pages with it?” Dede pressed him, hoping for a clue to the whereabouts of the proposal at last.  The menu and even the murder itself were largely supplemental to the greater issue of a law that might never come to pass.  Even if they managed to catch the murderers, if the proposal bearing the late councilwoman’s last signature were to be destroyed, the proposal might never see its way into law.

The signmaker paused to consider the question, running over the previous morning in his mind.  He started to pace in the office a bit, trying to retrace his steps before finally shaking his head to the woman.  “No, mum,” he explained, staring at the floor with his palms open.  “Least, not as far as I can remember.”

“Unconscionable,” A.J. muttered, shaking his head in disapproval.

“I am sorry, gov,” the signmaker said dejectedly.

“As well you should be,” the gnome intoned, largely speaking to himself.

“Oh, come now, A.J.,” Dede objected.  “It isn’t his fault the proposal wasn’t there.  The thieves would have been much more invested in its destruction than some dinner menu.”

“Hm?” A.J. said, looking up from his latest discovery:  a smithy’s sign that bore little resemblance to proper language at all.  “Oh, that,” he added a moment later, realizing at last what she had meant.  He pointed to the sign at his feet.  “I was talking about the ‘Blokesmith’s Sloppe,’” he explained, “which really does bring to mind all manner of terrible imagery.  A man who fashions blokes is one thing, but to sell the slop was wares?”  He shook his head at the thought, returning his attention to the sign.  “It positively boggles the mind.”

NaNoWriMo: Success!!

You are looking at the proud winner of NaNoWriMo 2011; a funny contest, in that it can have infinite winners, since there is no finite limit on words that can be put to our collective and individual imaginations.

A fact for which I am very grateful.

In honor of the event, I will be posting one last scene from the new novel, A.J. Pendlebolt: Gnomish Detective this Friday.  Since the novel is barely half-finished, I may continue to post snippets over the course of the next few months.  With any luck, a manuscript will be going out to publishers in March 2012.

Thank you to all my friends who humbly agreed to be told to buzz off over the course of the past month, to my cats for keeping the sitting-on-keyboard antics to a minimum, and to my girlfriend for perhaps being the most understanding soul of all (given that we also closed on our first house this month).

To all my fellow WriMo's, whether you hit the mark or not, thank you for sharing with us the little crazy things rattling around in your beautiful brains so that they might spark something equally crazy in ours.

NaNoWriMo Preview: Meeting the Constable

Author's Note:  I'm often amazed but just how few words 50,000 actually is; not just in the time it takes to write it, but in how little of a story can be told.  Watch your average film and count the minutes before things really kick into high gear and onward towards climax.  I would bet an average of them hit the halfway point before you truly see the plot develop toward its eventual close.  

I say this knowing that the scene I'm about to post here is past the 30,000 word mark, past the 56th page in an 8.5x11 layout; a not-insignificant body of work.  Yet our hero and his partners are still in the process of gathering information on the initial pair of murders (which they have only recently discovered are linked).  

To think I may only be a third of the way into this work and still deeply mired in what I hope is at least cleverly worded exposition is a little daunting when one considers just how much this is the small house salad to the enticing entree yet to come.  I hope you enjoy.

- andy

* * *

Satisfied at the retelling, A.J. squinted up into the high light from the mirror mesh that was forever focused on this particular haven of commerce as if more light might actually lend purity to the vendors or their seedy patrons.  The woven network of high, angled mirrors managed to catch even the last slivers of light from the desert valley outside without even so much as a drop of magic to feed them.  He might have taken more pride in the feat, were it not for the mirrors’ irritating habit of perpetually guiding the light directly into his eyes.

Squinting through the sun spots, he tried to refocus his eyes and his mind on the scene, somewhere between the thousand scuffling feet of the marketplace.  Somewhere nearby, only two nights prior, a young human boy struggling to earn a day’s wage had been stabbed multiple times and left for dead alongside his bulging purse.  Though both the body and the silver were long gone, there had to be clues left that might lead back to the killer, or killers, who had seen fit to carve into the boy like a stalkermeat pie .

His focus was interrupted by a familiar voice calling out over top of the constant din.  “Well, if it isn’t old Quarterstock himself,” said the constable, making her way up the row to where the trio now stood.  The golden sash of her station shimmered in the bright light of the afternoon, standing out sharply against her otherwise haggard appearance.  The two dwarven officers following behind her could easily have passed for twins, right down to the cut of their beards.  Otherwise, they looked every bit as provincial as the woman who led them, their silver sashes seemingly the only thing of any luster they owned in a city full of metal and gemstones.

The constable herself was squat of figure, even for a dwarf, with long gray hair that trailed almost to her ankles, even when bound in its thick braid.  “And only two days late,” she added, stopping short to glance down at the gnome.  “That’s a new record for you, isn’t it?”

“Breaking new ground every day,” A.J. answered, making an overelaborate gesture of bowing to the constable.  Nathaniel echoed with it far more genuine intent.  Dede remained rigid, not taking her eyes off the woman or the leather cudgel at her hip.

“Constable,” she said stiffly.  “I see you got my message.  Your man said you couldn’t make it.”

“Well, I can always make time for the good people of this city,” the constable said to no one in particular, turning to gaze out into the busy street.  “Or to watch Quarterstock trip all over his little legs trying to figure out what happened here.”

“We know what happened here,” A.J. told her, adjusting his spectacles pointedly as he watched the patrons milling about on the same clustered street.  “What I mean to uncover is why and how.”

“How?” the constable laughed, holding her not-insubstantial belly.  “I think maybe you’ve been standing in the mirrorlight too long, boy.  That courier had more holes in him than the highway road.”  With a long glance up at the tall Terrace guardsman accompanying them, she added:  “Or do you think maybe he drowned?”

“Of course he was stabbed,” A.J. admitted, squatting next to the curb and running his fingers along a handful of white scuff marks where the stone had been stuck by something hard enough to leave a mark.  The constable just chuckled, but before she could state the obvious, the gnome rose to his feet again.  “The question is, how did someone get close enough to a runner, a human runner, to stab him not once but three times?”  To the constable’s befuddled expression, he added:  “Your man was kind enough to forward us your initial report.  At least, I assume it was only an initial report.  Certainly, someone with your depth of experience didn’t think the case closed after just a preliminary inspection with no formal examination—“

“A courier was mugged,” the woman interrupted, “a shifter with no house papers on him.  There was nothing left to do but wait till the noble who sent him contacted us wondering why his shipment never arrived.”

“Yes, brilliant,” A.J. replied, still distracted by the scuff marks at his feet, “unless of course that selfsame noble had just been served a toxic supper and was too busy spitting up blood to file the proper paperwork.”  His eyes followed the line of the scuff marks back out into the street, trying to gauge the angle of approach.  “Not that you should have needed to wait for an invitation to know something was amiss.”

“What are you talking about?” the constable grunted, following his eyes out into the street.  “It looked every bit like a typical robbery.  I bet pennies to platinum you would have come to the same conclusion, if you weren’t too bored to even bother listening to the details.”

Dede did her best to keep the smile on her face to a dull roar.  The constable wasn’t known for her keen insights, which made it all the more precious to hear her nail A.J. squarely on the nose.  The gnome, to his credit, didn’t miss a beat.  “It didn’t strike you as odd that his purse full of coin was still heavy on his belt when you found him, or that on the most crowded street in Stenwahl, no one heard a courier’s cry for help?”

“It was the middle of the night,” the constable explained.  “Everyone would have been in bed.”

“Exactly!” A.J. countered.  “Not a soul on the streets.  So how did his attackers get close enough to him to stab him three times?  Surely, he would have known he was being followed.”

“They?” Dede echoed, raising an eyebrow at her partner.  “Now who’s jumping to conclusions?”

“Runners,” A.J. explained, “are trained to be the fastest men and women in Stenwahl.  Human runners,” he added, glancing up at Nathaniel, “are especially coveted for their long stride.  That same height affords them a vantage point few others can boast.  Assuming they aren’t too busy bowing to everyone in so much as an inch of imitation silk…”

Nathaniel opened his mouth to explain, but thought better of it, simply bowing his head to hide the sudden color rushing to his cheeks.  Had A.J. not been so hell-bent on laying out the scene for the constable, he might have noticed the death glare from his partner behind him.  “For a human runner walking alone on an empty street at night to be stabbed means he is either blind, drunk, or set upon by more than one assailant.”

He pointed to the intersection, tracing an invisible line with his finger up toward the base of Hammond’s Gate.  “Miners call it a ‘pot trap,’” he explained, “on account of the men who go deep into the tunnels to try and drive nests of cavestalkers out into the open.  They beat on pots and pans and generally make as much noise as possible, scaring the stalkers up the tunnel and into the waiting cages.  The poor beasts are so busy running from their harmless pursuers that they never see the real danger right in front of them.”

The constable just laughed, shaking her head at the gnome.  “Boy, you do love to hear yourself talk,” she said.  “Hammond’s Walk is the only road up to the Terrace.  It wouldn’t take much for someone to lie in wait just to jump messengers on their way up to the council seat.  The right bit of paper goes a lot farther than coin in this city.  Just means you’re dealing with a smarter thief than most.  Oh, and for your information,” she added, taking particular pride in the words, “there was a highway breeze two nights ago, thicker than soup and twice as messy.  No one standing could’ve so much as seen the shoes on his feet, no matter how tall he was.”

To her surprise, the gnome started to grin.  “Then why was he running?”

“Running?” the constable scoffed.  “They’re called ‘runners,’ ya daft halfer .  What did you think it meant?”

Dede’s eyes flashed to A.J. at once, watching the gnome carefully.  Not many people could get away with calling a gnome ‘halfer’ in polite company, let alone to one’s face.  It was all she could do not to lay into the constable herself, but the look on A.J.’s face held her rooted to the spot.

“Runners,” the gnome said with a smile, “typically walk, on account of the long distances they have to travel, and the many steps twixt here and the Terrace, where this one was heading.  A sprained ankle may as well be a broken neck to someone whose income relays on his feet, doubly so a shifter who is likely down on coin as it is.  In the throes of a thick highway fog, I would argue that anyone so worried about his next meal and dependent on a working pair of legs to earn it is the least likely person to be found running at, pardon, ‘break neck’ speed up the Walk.”

The gnome paused to enjoy the color coming to the constable’s face.  She rather reminded him of Nathaniel’s captain for a moment, minus the beard and plus several dozen pounds.  “And for your information,” he continued, “the term ‘runner’ is really more of a metaphor, since ‘walker’ doesn’t inspire anyone with terribly much confidence in expedient delivery.

“Runners generally only run when a message is of a particularly urgent nature,” he explained, “or else when they’re in immediate threat of being intercepted.  ‘Mugged,’ as you called it.  Since Counselor Harrows’ proposal was not going to be seen till the morning, it was anything but urgent, so we have to assume the latter, unless you think it likely our messenger fancied a heart-pounding jog at half-past the night bell in the middle of a blinding fog.”

A.J. paused to adjust his spectacles, pointing to the white marks at his feet.  “These marks were made by something small but strong, like the bronze cap of a runner’s case.  You can still see some of the color in the marks there,” he added, squatting low to draw the woman’s attention to the particular mark in question, “meaning they were struck at some considerable speed, especially for something as light as a scroll case to have left so noticeable a mark.  My guess is that the runner landed on top of it.”

“What makes you say that?” the constable asked, trying to sound like she had already guessed ahead at the answer.  A.J. simply gestured to the small, dark stain a few feet further into the street, where a handful of flies had gathered to inspect the dried patch of blood.

“Strange for someone paid to walk the streets night and day to trip on his own feet,” he said, watching the constable’s reaction closely, “least of all with enough force to draw blood.  Unless, of course, he was too busy looking behind him to see where he was going.”  He glanced back down the street again, imagining the poor courier dashing out of the fog, harried by unseen figures hiding in the soupy mist.  “Pot trap.”

NaNoWriMo Preview: Blacksmith's Hands

The captain cleared his throat in a warning gesture, taking another step toward the gnome as A.J. finished approaching the portrait on the wall.  He brushed his finger along the frame again, showing the advancing dwarf his bare fingertip.  “Nothing!” he exclaimed.  “Positively extraordinary.  The woman deserves a medal, if maids were given such things.”  He paused a moment later, glancing up at Nathaniel.  “Pardon, no offense intended.”

“Oh, no,” Nathaniel stammered, waving a hand dismissively at the mention.  “None taken.”

“Splendid,” A.J. lilted, turning back to the portrait and again working to mock its pose.  “So, why was the councilwoman murdered?”

“Perhaps we should finish collecting the facts before we start pinning down motive,” Dede offered, again stepping vaguely into the captain’s path to slow his advance.  “Just to be sure we haven’t missed anything.”

A.J. ignored her, still shifting his pose to match the painted dwarf.  The captain stopped short, too puzzled by the gnome’s behavior and too daunted by his partner’s efforts to continue on his intended course.  “What are you doing?” he demanded, his face again burning a ripe crimson.

“His hands,” A.J. said, turning his own over in front of him.  “Don’t you see?”

Unable to fight their curiosity, the two dwarves took another step closer to the painting and stared at the man depicted there.  His hands were the heavy make of most dwarves his age, with fat, round fingers that bore clear signs of the strength they contained.  Nothing seemed unusual in their shape save for the one missing digit on his left hand, long since healed over in his younger days.

What stood out more sharply was the strange, mottled color that that tainted his palms, largely obscured by the position of his hands.  The one resting on his forward knee showed few signs of it, though the one further back, set atop an inornate walking cane, made it clear that it was not just some error in the mixing of colors on the part of the artist.

“Ah,” Nathaniel said over their heads, craning about to peer at the same, “blacksmith’s hands.”

“Silversmith, I would guess,” A.J. corrected, pointing to the various pieces of silver in the background of the piece, as well as dotted about his person.  “But, yes.  Her father was a silversmith.  Not a well-known fact, of course, else she wouldn’t have been nearly so influential in the council, least of all when pushing a measure which would have given greater power to the purveyors of precious ore as the gem trade dwindled under its new restrictions.”

“That’s not what the proposal was about!” Dede snapped, causing even the captain to start at the sudden shift in tone.  “Capping the gem trade was meant to keep Stenwahl’s working class from starving!  It’s not some sort of plot just to create a new monopoly.”

“Really?” A.J. asked, seemingly more puzzled by Dede’s insistence than with the content of her objections.  “Perhaps you’re right,” he admitted, crossing the room to the bookshelf on the opposite wall and plucking the treatise from its resting place.  “She was well read, not just in foreign affairs but in ‘the onus of government,’” he explained, quoting the work in hand.  “Perhaps being the daughter of a smithy who would now be on the brink of poverty despite once being one of Stenwahl’s wealthiest trades was more than enough to make a noblewoman deeply sympathetic to the notions of the poor.”

“How do you know he was her father?” the captain asked, now earnestly curious at the gnome’s quick conjectures.

“It’s obvious,” A.J. replied, pointing at Nathaniel.  The latter looked thoroughly confused at the seeming accusation.  “Ms. Harrows, as Mr. Foster keenly pointed out earlier, never married and has no siblings--”

“Lieutenant Foster,” Dede corrected, glancing up at the man in question.

“--which rules out husbands or brothers,” A.J. continued uninterrupted, “and if she had had any children, that man is much too old to be one of them.”

“So an ancestor, perhaps,” the captain intoned, stroking the front of his beard.  “Someone far enough back in her line not to be remembered.”

“No,” A.J. said with a quick shake of his head, “not possible.”

The captain stiffened somewhat, wondering if the gnome were merely being contrary for the sack of getting his gander up again.  His amusement at the captain’s earlier irritation had been obvious.  “Why not?” the dwarf asked, forcing himself to remain calm and deny the insolent inspector his entertainment.

“The ring,” A.J. answered, walking back to the painting.  To the captain’s surprise, he didn’t seem to be reveling in their confusion anymore.  On the contrary, it only seemed to irritate him, like a schoolmarm coaching her most dimwitted students.  His eyes going to the ring in question, the captain soon saw what had made the gnome so certain.  “The Moltair Sapphire,” he said distantly, staring at the gemstone resting on the dwarf’s left hand.

“The Moltair Signature Cut,” A.J. corrected, pointing at it for the remaining two pairs of eyes in the room, “developed only in the last twenty years, which, given the relative age of the man depicted, rules out anyone more than two generations old, and makes even the possibility that this could be her grandfather remote at best.  More than likely, it is her father.  How she kept his line of work a secret from the council’s many prying eyes is beyond me, but I must say, well done.”

“And what does that tell us about our the councilwoman’s murder?” the captain asked eagerly.

“Oh, absolutely nothing,” A.J. answered brightly, snapping the treatise shut not far from the captain’s face.  “But it is fascinating, isn’t it?”

NaNoWriMo Preview: Paperwork

Splashing some of the clear water on his face in an effort to jar himself into wakefulness, A.J. saw about the business of getting dressed.  Standing on tip-toes to pour the water from the tub back into the overhanging vessel, he wound the spigot tight to avoid any leaks and set the cork and string back in the empty tub on the floor.  Placing the silver ball bearing back at the top of the spiraling copper chute, he dusted his hands and at last headed downstairs to start the day.

“About time,” Dede chided as he neared the bottom step.  No sooner had he set foot on the office floor than his arms were suddenly overflowing with papers stacked so high he couldn’t see over the top of them.  The only evidence that Dede was still standing in front of him were the tips of the dark stalkerskin boots staring up at him from the floor.  “You’re six weeks behind on field reports and lab invoices,” she told him.  “Again.  The city isn’t going to let you keep your license if you can’t keep up with the paperwork.”

Shuffling blindly toward his desk, A.J. deposited the stack of parchment, only just catching the top few pieces from tilting off balance and making a break for the floor.  “I’ve said it before, Cordelia,” the gnome muttered, reaching up to adjust his spectacles, “you can’t die properly in Stenwahl without written notice--”

“--at least three days in advance,” Dede chimed in for the chorus, knowing the refrain all too well.  One finger still raised in the gesture of making his final point, A.J. looked rather taken aback at hearing his own words repeated.  Letting his hand drop defeated to his side, he made a gesture of clearing his throat and took a seat behind the desk, hesitating a moment before shoving the stack of papers to one side so that he might be able to see the dwarven woman seated at the opposite desk, diligently rifling through a far smaller collection of files with military precision.  The triangular placard with “Legal Chaperone” emblazoned in well-polished brass sat proudly on the front edge of her desk, angled toward the door to present itself to any potential clients .

As she set her first stack of papers aside, pausing to ensure that the edges lined up pristinely, A.J. couldn’t help but admire her persistence.  Two years of working in a forgotten corner of Lower Stenwahl as the legal liaison for the city’s only quarterstock detective hadn’t broken her of the illusion that this was some illustrious post, worthy of dutiful service.  Having grown up a gnome under the shadow of Hammond’s Gate, A.J. knew all too well that she was the only reason he was allowed to act as an investigator at all.  Gnomes were prohibited from performing any duties of, for or concerning the law, the church or foreign relations; the last of which always made A.J. chuckle.  Under the mountain, where blood was thicker than brains, gnomes were about as foreign as one could be.

“Word came back from the town chairman on the public works committee,” she explained, not bothering to look up.  “Your request was denied.  Again.”

“Did he say why?” A.J. asked, staring woefully at the tall stack of his to-do pile.  

Dede plucked one of the papers she had just finished signing out of her outbox and peered at the formal script.  “Says they don’t have the necessary funding for a public renovation project , even if they were to get it approved by the Royal Beautification Commission.”

“Public renovation project?” A.J. echoed, his expression souring at once.  “All I asked was that someone replace that stupid sign!”

Dede set the paper down in a huff.  “Does it honestly bother you that much?”

“‘Welcome to the Magnificant Stenwahl Public Gardens ?’” A.J. answered, adding particular emphasis on the misspelled word.  “It’s an absolute eyesore!”

“That’s the truth,” Dede admitted, dismissing his concern.  “The whole garden is a-shambles now anyway.  Hardly anyone goes there anymore unless they’re up to no good.  Shame,” she added, gazing out through the slats in the blinds.  “It used to be really lovely.”  Catching the same foul expression on her partner’s face, Dede scoffed and rolled her eyes.  “Oh, for goodness sake, it’s just a sign!  Can’t you just ignore it?”

“No,” A.J. said sternly, “I magnifi-can’t.”

“Well, you’ll have to learn, then,” Dede told him, returning her focus to her stack of papers and pointing A.J. at his.  “Unless you can come up with one hundred signatures  to convince the Royal Beautification Commission.” 

“Only a hundred?” A.J. remarked, resting his chin in one hand.

Dede’s writing brush stopped mid-stroke as she glared across the desk at him.  Knowing the look all too well, A.J. decided to drop the subject for now.  With a heavy sigh, he got to his feet and stretched a hand up to pluck the first handful of files off the top of the stack and begin seeing about the business of filing his reports.  He yawned as he shuffled through them, looking over the familiar case numbers.  Number 271, the case of the curious cummerbund.  Number 219, in which he rescued an ailing cat.  Number 224, the elf with the troublesome wink…

Setting the papers down in a heap, he rubbed his eyes again and reached for a second set, hoping to find something that might better excite his groggy mind into action.  “Did you say someone would be stopping by?” he asked, squinting at the heading on the parchment in his hands to try and make out the clumsy writing of the deputy police chief.

“Yes,” Dede answered simply, not bothering to look up.

“Any minute now?” he prompted.

“Yes,” Dede intoned again, a hint of irritation creeping into her voice.

A.J. set the second stack of case files aside on top of the first, leaning back in his chair and stretching his arms high overhead.  “Well,” he said, pausing to wring out a knot in his shoulder, “then there’s hardly any point in getting started on these reports until they get here, isn’t there?”

Rolling up the last piece of parchment in her pile and stamping her seal on the edge, Dede placed it in the messenger box with a deliberate motion, setting it neatly atop the pile of similar scrolls all awaiting delivery.  Folding her hands into a steeple on the desk in front of her, the dwarf stared pointedly at A.J.  She didn’t say a word.

After several half-hearted attempts to ply her sympathies, A.J. rolled his eyes and reached for the next piece of parchment atop his pile, peering over his glasses and squinting at the page.  Number 282, in which an elderly dwarf misplaced her home.  Number 247…

A knock at the door filled his spirits with relief.  Dropping the parchment haphazardly to his desk, the gnome hopped down from his chair and hurried over to the door, only to find Dede with her hand already on the knob, shooing him away.  With a deep breath, she straightened up and pulled the door to, trying not to squint in the sudden rush of light coming off the white cobblestones.  Standing on the stoop out front was the vague outline of a tall, thin woman dressed in trader’s leathers.  

“Welcome to Quarterstock Associates,” Dede said proudly, welcoming the woman into the office.  “Legal investigators and authorized notary public.  Cordelia Cadwell, investigative liaison, at your--”

Before she could finish, the woman stormed past her and into the office, looking about with a frenzied expression.  “Where is he?” she demanded.  “Where is that bastard Pendlebolt?”

NaNoWriMo Preview: A.J.'s Alarm Clock

A snippet from this year's NaNoWriMo project: "A.J. Pendlebolt, Gnomish Detective."  To track the current word count, check out the project's profile on nanowrimo.org. Further updates will be posted each week, typically on Fridays (including this one) or as interesting scenes get finished.

---

The warm light from the tilting symphony of the mirrormesh crept up to the window of the small, second-floor apartment sitting atop the building marked “Quarterstock Associates.”  The small man depicted on the sign out front, with bald pate and round spectacles , very closely resembled the young gnome snoring loudly underneath the tangle of patchwork blankets in the small, floor-level bed in the center of the tiny apartment, paying absolutely no heed to the signs of the coming day.

As the thin strands of light snuck into the room uninvited, they tickled the many interwoven lines of the strange contraption erected around the sleeping gnome.  Thin strings and wooden struts outlined the edges of the device and held it in place, leaving any who might enter to wonder at its purpose.  A long and winding course constructed out of a reddish metal spiraled down one wall, passing several rows of tall, brass bells along the way.  Tiny droplets of water fell single-file from the spigot of an overhanging vessel into a broad bucket on the floor, slowly counting out the seconds before daybreak.

The steady drip also kept time with the resonant breathing of the gnome as the sunlight from the room’s only window danced its way across the floor.  It tiptoed over the gnome’s chest and darted onward toward the tub resting on the floor, leaving the room’s only inhabitant still blissfully asleep.  Dipping its toes in the clear, clean water of the tub, the light sparkled about the room, dotting the walls with faeries and phantoms alike in a brilliant display which went sadly unseen, as the only eyes in attendance were rather defiantly shut and leastwise without their glasses, anyway.

On the lip of the tub, a fat, round cork floated on a track, rising up with the slow, steady pace of the water filling the space beneath it.  A thin line of thread ran from the center of the plank up the wall of the room and through a pair of small, iron pulleys mounted on hooks driven into the ceiling.  Between the pulleys on the same thread hung a small weight now sagging low with the slack provided by the rising cork.  The far end of the thread attached to a thin, metal plank rigged vertically at the top of the long, spiraling track of reddish tubing, working to hold back a wide, silver ball bearing awaiting its release the moment the tiny door was pulled free.

With a snort, the gnome rolled onto his side, tugging the mass of blankets with him as he turned his face away from the flickering reflections in the nearly-full tub.  The drops from the spigot above marched on at their same slow pace, unaware of the eager ball bearing nearing its triumph as the water level continued to rise in the tub below.  As the gnome reached a hand back to scratch himself ungracefully, the ball bearing continued to inch its way forward as the tiny door continued to draw away at its steady, indiscernible pace.

When at last the cork reached its apex, the ball bearing torn its way free and cascaded down the track of copper tubing with incredible speed.  As it skirted under the first row of hanging bells, it nicked the rim of each as it roared unhindered down the track, sending up a pleasant chorus of rapidly ascending notes.  The gnome stirred beneath his heap of blankets, muttering something untoward into the empty air as the ball bearing rounded the next bend.
Picking up speed as it reached the second row of bells, the bearing again sent up a ringing phrase, this time in a descending pattern that paired neatly with the first.  The gnome flung an arm wildly into the air, swaying it violently in the general direction of the track, searching for the switch that would halt the ball’s raging course and buy him a few more minutes’ sleep.

Before his flailing hand could strike true, however, the ball bearing skirted under the last row of bells; an extended chorus of up and down signaling the coming of the bottom of the chute.  Sensing the sudden urgency of his condition, the gnome turned to lash out with both hands blindly, still searching for the kill switch when the ball bearing started its final revolution.  The silver sheen twinkled with the light streaking in from the window, scattering it around the room and into the eyes of the gnome still desperately clawing about on the floor to no avail.

Reaching the end of its run at last, the ball bearing flew through the open air and struck, dead center, the dented face of a small gong set suspended just above the floor .  The sudden splash of sound sent jagged shivers through the gnome’s small form, annihilating any hope of going back to sleep.  His objective changed from searching for the now pointless kill switch to grabbing for the gong itself, hoping to clamp it into silence before his burgeoning headache became completely insurmountable.  Leaping and leaving the blanket heap behind, he clasped its edges at once as the ball bearing sped unheeded across the floor toward the door, bumping harmlessly into the tow of the dark red stalkerskin boot  that housed the foot of the dwarven chaperone now standing in the entrance to the room, rolling her eyes at the display.

“Fanny McCree, A.J.,” she chided, reaching down to scoop up the silver ball bearing as the gnome forced open one eye, staring blindly in her general direction.  “It’s half past ten already.”  The gnome spotted the vague outline of the ball bearing hurtling toward him just in time to catch it awkwardly in his arms.  “Quit playing with your toys and get dressed,” the woman told him, turning on the spot.  The creak of the stairs was the only clue A.J. had that she had headed downstairs to the office proper.  “We’re gonna have company,” she called over her shoulder.  “The runner said to expect someone any minute now, so be quick about it!”

My Little Yellow Friend

Light a lot of writers (and maybe all of them), I hate editing.  I do it, because copy-editing is expensive (and rightly so), but I would much rather sunbathe naked on a bed of hot coals.

For those who aren't writers themselves, editing a novel is like a long string of four-hour meetings with yourself during with your boss drones on and on, but keeps a watchful eye so that no one can fall asleep.  You play with your Blackberry under the table or start folding your meeting agendas into paper footballs to pass the time, but every time you miss a bullet point, another meeting gets scheduled to review the same section of the budget.

Imagine doing this every day for a month.  Now ask me why I never complain about the rates for copy-editing, which by my estimate are well shy of where their truth worth should by all rights be valued.

For one, it should be measured in gold and precious gems, not humble dollars.

But, editing is a necessary part of getting any novel from your own eyes to the viewing public.  Well, 'necessary' is perhaps not the word.  After all, I understand Dan Brown has been very successful--

I apologize, that was low.  Let us refocus:

Copy-editing aside, plot editing, especially in the full-speed-ahead environment of NaNoWriMo, becomes a more tangled and messy process.  And it's the precursor to copy-editing.  It involves endless hunt-and-peck each time you change something late in the story to ensure that all the points, clues and pieces leading up to that seemingly innocuous change still make sense.

Much like the proverbial butterfly, a little wingbeat sends ripples out for miles in every direction.  Your job is to get the unsuspecting islanders out of the way before the hurricane roars through.

That's why, this year, I plan on getting ahead of the collapse and leaving myself a veritable breadcrump trail with the confidence that I will be walking these lines again when I change something major halfway between here and Thanksgiving.

Normally, in editing, I read the story through once as a reader and simply highlight or comment on the different key elements.  Character descriptions.  Clues to the overall plot.  Turning points.  Unsung side characters who may house hidden potential.  I try to circle all the little holes I willfully leave myself in case I have to come back through and fill them with something later.

This year, I'm going to so as I go.  While writing the story, I will annotate the different character description points, key turning points, clues and the like as I write them, before the story itself is even vaguely finished.  With luck, it will make it easier to traipse back through the work later and find the pieces that the wings of my later butterflies will have cast astray.

I'm using MS Word this year, as I often do, though OpenOffice Writer has the same potential:  virtual highlights.  In this case, I'll likely use comments instead, as they make for an easy margin with markers at each key point, much like those little thing Post-it strips in a virtual sense.

My hope, however premature, is that these little notes won't just help with the editing process to come.  My hope is that they will help with the development of the story.  They will be mile markers on the road map of the plot as it translates from outline to manuscript, making it easy to see if any have fallen astray, and to get a feel for the pacing on the work as a whole, like the bars between measures in a musical score.

All that remains now is to see whether I have time enough to pay any attention to them as I fly past in a hurried rush to finish the scene.

I don't expect copy-editing to get any easier.  Reverse line-editing (reading sentences start to finish, but reading them in the reverse order relative to each other) remains the best, if still agonizingly tedious way to do that.

If I can at least cut the time it takes to finish the plot and story edits, however, I can get the copy-editing done sooner, and may, in the end, complete and entirely different feat from the 30-day draft.

The 90-day completed manuscript.

"Bellringers" - Aisha's Private Symphony

The rum bottle rattled as it settled to a stop on the corner of the baby grand, a single drop of the sweet, dark liquor still tracing the curve of the glass and lingering on the label.  Popping the cover up and brushing a hand across the keys, Aisha poured herself onto the bench as the scratch of the record player behind her heralded the coming of the steady beat of a drummer recorded decades ago in a room without much more light than she had now.  The starless night outside lay heavy on a bed of twinkling orange streetlights; a stirring reminder that her world had been turned upside-down.

She set to playing before her mind dared intervene.  The rum had bought her time against the coming crash, if only by getting her out ahead of it in the vain hope of outrunning the tidal wave of her despair.  Lydia was miles over Denver by now and soaring west, never looking back, leaving Aisha alone in the biggest room in this small town with the richest nothing she had ever known.  The thick, black night outside only strengthened her fear that the sun had no intention of rising tomorrow, no matter what promises it had made today.

The slow twang of the guitar tickled her ears as the piece slipped out of the intro into the first verse.  Sumner had the same quick, measured pluck; never too rough when he played.  He was always careful with the strings, not wanting to hurt the instrument, nor offend it by playing it too delicately and robbing it of the chance to play with bold abandon.

As the static on the record mingled with the buzz of the strings, she forced down the illness in her stomach at the thought of never hearing him play again.  His were the last kind words she had heard with any sense of sincerity, and she had thrown them back in his face.

The weathered keys of the baby grand sent wave after wave of memory coursing up through her fingertips and spiraling down her arms as the chorus ratcheted up the pace.  The smooth ivory was dotted by rough patches where the enamel had started to wear through, tickling her skin as she slipped into the quickened pace of the second verse.

Her body began to sway, at first to the motion of her hands crossing one over the other to manage the complex chorus and soon entirely of its own accord, swimming in an ocean of feeling that had been welling up inside of her for months until tonight, when it came crashing through the levees of her more metered appearance and washed away any hope of going back on the things she had said.

Her right hand danced along the raised keys, her fingers sliding nearly the full length of the key with each touch, savoring the cool sensation as her body began to heat up, in part from the playing and then again from the half-empty bottle of rum resting on one corner of the piano with Jessica's note still tied on a silver cord around the neck.  "Congratulations!" it said, in a script more careful and refined than the woman who had written it, "You've made it!"

Alone with her liquor and the wild echoes of the notes rebounding off of every corner of the room, bombarding her from every angle with the shapes of the unspoken words she had never had the guts to sing aloud, Aisha felt truly unmade.

As the chorus wound down to the bridge, her feverish fingers began to hammer the keys with all the precision of a rifleman aiming for the kill.  The low notes resonated through the dark wood of the piano frame and sent small ricochets rocketing up her flank until her head went weak from the swirling cocktail of booze, reverb and the sheer exertion of playing with such a reckless will.

Each note was a bell struck in prayer that it might drive away the demons lurking in the shadows of her more sober mind.  The city lights spreading out in all directions below the wide windowed wall of the studio lined the stage of her private performance and granted the faceless thousands living below a clear view of a woman desperately pounding on the door of her own prison with every note.

As the climb to the final chorus began, Aisha leaned in close to the keys, her long hair rippling forward and shading her face.  As the music began to rise toward its peak, so, too, did she, her neck straightening before her back, leaving her staring with eyes closed into the guts of the piano as the hammers danced with unforgiving force across its strings.

Her feet stomped against the pedals, the toes of her new boots grinding against the wooden slats that led deeper into the guarded underbelly of the beast her hands were unleashing above.  Awash in a thousand thoughts all distant and surreal, Aisha leaned back and welcomed the last breathless rush of the song's final notes, trailing off into the light epilogue at its close.

And then, with the last, deep chord still grumbling in the distance, Aisha rolled her foot off the pedal and closed the door on the song at last, still feeling the vibrations in her fingers tingling all the way up her arms.  Her body suddenly felt heavy as the dizziness in her head turned to a sharp pounding at her temples only scantly muted by the richness of the drink.

The record behind her started to skip, its rhythmic stutter reminding her to keep breathing as she stared at the bottle on the corner of the piano with all the hatred and longing of a lover wronged.  It was over.  There were no more notes to play.  All she could do now was bundle up her heart and use the broken pieces to write something new.

With a last willful urge, she reached for the bottle to drain what remained, only to spot a second, slender hand already gripping the neck.  She watched as the bottle lifted into the air and came to rest on a pair of familiar lips as Kennedy swallowed down the last of her rum, her eyes never leaving Aisha's face.  "You're so predictable," the woman chided, setting the bottle back on the corner of the piano without taking her fingers off the neck.  "Still using our old alarm code after all these years?  I'm almost touched..."

The piano bench landed with a loud clap against the floor as Aisha leapt to her feet, backing away from the woman with an accusing finger already pointed roughly in her direction.  "Dammit, Kennedy!" she shouted, the sudden volume startling her, although Kennedy remained unfazed.  "You can't just come waltzing in whenever you like!"

"No?" Kennedy lilted, shifting to rest her hip against the side of the baby grand.  She made no secret of drinking in the sight of Aisha so near the brink, eyes still red with tears, hair a wild, wavy mass of chaos.  "Seems like I waltzed in just in time."

"Letters to Marisa" - The Whole of My Confession

My Dearest Marisa,

Deepest winter knows no chill like the absence of your company, and history no fool like a man who dies with precious words unspoken.  I, as you know, would never suffer being remembered a fool, and so I have taken to ink to convey what soft, sweet things I have kept hidden like a knife in my cloak all these years, fearful of ever venturing afar without them close to my heart.

To my great disappointment, you already know that I have never been a man of clean morals.  My efforts to keep such from you were successful on their own merit, were it not for the near-limitless resources and single-minded will of your husband-to-be.  My compliments to John, really.  When it comes to doing so little with so much, few men can be as boastful as he.

But I digress.  I do not write these things to you so that you may know the true nature of your fiance's secret endeavors.  Rather, that is not their primary aim.  I write these things to you so that you may never doubt again the words I spoke to you that night in the garden.  I will forever love you, and death itself cannot mar that simple and powerful truth.  If I ever doubted those words myself, I feel assured I have my answer now.

I write these letters to you most of all, Marisa, because I am sure that I am dead.

It is with great regret that I realize you will no doubt have heard the news before these letters reach your hands.  I wish more than anything that I could have delivered the news myself, though of course that is impossible.

A close second was to have these letters delivered by softer and cleaner hands than mine, which is of course why I selected your servant, Renardo.  Would that his English were better, I might have asked him to read them.  My words ferried by so dulcet a tenor as his might have somehow lessened the inevitable impact to your comfort, not to credit myself too greatly with my own importance.

It was unavoidable, I'm afraid, to have them so delayed.  Your fiance's agents are especially talented in keeping the truth from you, especially where it regards my private endeavors.  They would have you think me the villain and John the perennial hero, a fabrication the latter has no doubt delighted in, not knowing the face I have shown you when his arrogance leads his attentions elsewhere.

But enough.  I cannot do you the disservice of wasting so long in my own ingratiation while you no doubt stare with furrowed brow at these sheets of oil-stained parchment and the carefully inked words of my confessions.  I promised you truth, and so you shall have it:  every moment of it unaltered, much as it pains me to lay bare the efforts I have made in darkness; shameful, if necessary, acts I had hoped in vain to hide you from.

All men, I suppose, know the feeling of an inescapable, hopeless desire.  All men suffer under the weight of their own ambitions and the dreams that drive us ever onward into madness.  I have never counted myself among the ranks of ordinary men, as you well know.  It was that very hubris that you so deftly shattered at our every meeting.  I trust that those same ever-fetching qualities, your effortless cleverness and undeniable curiosity, will now lead you to continue in spite of all misgivings.

And I am certain you will have them.

Despite the temptation to begin with your fiance's blood-filled past, I feel the part of being the better man, even in death, is to begin by placing my own life in the stocks, as it were.  In truth, I feel the part of being the better man would be not to let the authorities, a mere auxiliary partner to our common duel, bring a heavy-handed and no doubt very public end to my adversary's life, but again, I digress.

I will not excuse myself with my upbringing, unpleasant though it was.  You asked once of my mother, and to my credit I did not lie, but neither did I tell you the whole of the truth.  My mother aided evil men in the doing of evil things, that much you know.  That I did not correct you when you kindly assumed it was out of some overbearing financial pressure and the motherly desire to provide for her ailing son is only because I very much preferred your fiction to my own, unkind memories.

My mother took to the work with an acumen and an eagerness I rarely encountered in my own dealings years later.  Would that there were more like her, I might have won out against our dear John, or at least been bested by a more worthy opponent.  I firmly believe her willingness to act as the pleasant, legal face for the smugglers of Alverston Port was out of a personal curiosity at how long she could keep up the facade.  Her little game with the port authority might have ended in her favor, had one of the local smugglers not gotten greedy.  Greed, as your soon-to-be husband well knows, only ever ends with someone dead.

My father is of no consequence; a sailor with ungentlemanly notions of a proper romance spurned on by drink and the opportunity of an empty alley behind my mother's tavern.  Let us discuss him no further.

In my youth, I knew a brief, idyllic existence as the apple of my mother's eye.  When her affections were lost to the long string of lovers that swarmed her later years, I was beloved instead by the seldom sober patrons of the Eve's End.  I relished the attention, as most children do.  I suppose that early fame left its own impression on my future self, an influence you perhaps suffered under most of all.

Truthfully, I never wanted for their interest even a fraction so much as I did yours, nor had to fight for it so passionately.  Drunken sailors are an easy mark for a child with deft hands and a curious mind. Neither served me well when it came to garnering your affections.  There, to my great surprise, it was the clumsiest of confessions that met with the most success.  I remain uncertain even now whether that describes a weakness on your part, or on mine.

To return to the point, in the months and years after my mother's murder, I quickly discovered just how much of my mother's unintentional tutelage had seeped into my mind and made itself my own.  My education, however, was incomplete.  Thankfully, the streets of Alverton proved an able and eager tutor; one with a ready hand always on the ruler, as it were.

I will spare you the details of my ill-spent youth; I assure you, it is not worth retelling.  Every troupers' play features the delinquent urchin, the fool of a thief spared by the misplaced kindness of older, more gullible men.  What the performers seldom display are the violent beatings by up-and-coming constables venting their juvenile rage on a malnourished youth of the streets caught thieving a noble's son worthy of neither his title nor his bulging purse.  Perhaps because so many of their fathers would be in the audience, enjoying the show.

No, the story I wish to tell you begins long after my teenage years, during which my cleverness so often saw me into and out of troublesome situations of a life-threatening nature; a far cry from my later years, to be sure.  It begins instead the day that we met, so unassumingly one fine August afternoon under a sudden and unseasonable storm that chased all others from the streets of Ottsburg proper, leaving you and I alone to brave the winds and rain; a day when we both went in search of a way back from the brink our respective lives had drawn us to and instead found each other so appropriately on the apex of the precarious bridge over Fulton Creek.

It was on that day that, for the first and best time, I fell in love.  Had I known then that I had only just signed my death warrant, I would not for a moment have thought better of walking up and introducing myself.  On the contrary, I think I might have been all the bolder.  I would apologize for keeping the coward's way for so many years at your side, never telling you in so many words how I felt, but I know too well the ends that await those men who chase their hopeless desires down dark streets in the rain.  It was a life I could not suffer myself to bring to you until now, when I have at last, in my dying, made it safe.

This is the truth I have kept from you out of love, with a dedication heretofore unknown to me.  This is the truth of your fiance, my friend and adversary, and of the world that I suspect you always knew was there, waiting in the shadows around my every word.  I will draw back the curtain on the veil of lies John and I have told you all these years, and let you judge us both in full light of the sun.

I only hope, in the end, that whatever part of your heart remains unbroken in the reading of these letters may yet have some room for a kinder memory of me than I by all rights deserve.  But then, as I have said:  I know too well the hopeless desires that afflict all men.

Number Munching

For whatever reason, in the last weeks leading up to November, nothing comforts me more than math.

More accurately, breaking down word counts and my per diem diet of writing helps me to bring the great and nebulous concept of "write a novel in a month" down to concrete, bite-sized, predictable and manageable terms.  Much like pulling the mask off the Ghost of Coldwater Marsh, it helps dispel the fear associated with the daunting task ahead.

So far, my November looks about like this:

• Lunch hour writing:  450 words (time: 1 hour)
• Weekday night writing:  1,200 words (time: 2-3 hours)
• Weekend writing: 3,350 words (time: 5-6 hours)

The above are daily estimates based on past years and past writing samples.  My minimum average writing speed is about 450 words an hour, so I plan to calculate everything on a realistic worst-case scenario.  With luck, I'll only gain ground against these estimates.

To further break that down, I have to start with what I can count on not having.  My Thursday nights are taken up by the one regular social engagement I'm not going to pass on this November, dropping four days from my 30-day total.  In addition, I can't count on being undistracted enough during family times at Thanksgiving to write on either of those days, marking two more off the list.  Lastly, I have a short conference at the very start of the month, during which I'm certain at least one night will be occupied.

All told, I'm losing 7 of my weekday nights and 3 lunchtime periods to the various engagements I can foresee.  That comes to a grand total of 9,750 words I will have to make up.  Thankfully, my word counts listed above are actually above and beyond my 50,000 word limit.

There are 22 weekdays in November, plus 8 weekend days.  Totaling that up with the above estimates (bear in mind, every weekday carries a lunchtime with it), we get over 63,000 words for the month.  Subtract the days we're losing, and I'm left with 53,350 words, meaning I can miss one weekend day and still be on target.

In addition, I've decided to take the Wednesday before Thanksgiving off to relax and to play catch-up near the end of the month.  Since it technically counts as a weekend, we subtract the normal weekday total (1200 + 450 = 1650) from the normal weekend total (3350) to get the additional buffer (1700).  I now have both a free weekend day and a free weekday in my buffer for the month, not counting the days I can already guess I won't be writing.

With any luck, that will be more than enough to account for the days that go off sideways and surprise me halfway through the month (as I'm sure some will).  Considering I am also well under my total available hours for both weeknights and weekends and have assumed I'll constantly be at my lowest average pace, I feel fairly good about leaping forward with confidence.

Now to finish this stupid outline...

Atkins, Eat Your Heart Out

I may have picked a bad time to go on a diet.

With NaNoWriMo coming, it's normally hard to think about anything else.  Between the excitement that comes with breaking ground on a new story and the anxiety that comes with making daily wordcounts, there really isn't much room left.

That is, of course, unless you've just started a new job and are working towards buying your first house.

So I decided that now would be a good time to go on a diet.  You know, just to keep things interesting.

Setting aside for a moment the rapid eroding effect stress has on gustatory discipline, now is really not the time to be splitting my focus yet one more way.  If I were a Pokemon, I would have had to lose at least one basic ability by now.

I'm guessing "Rest."

Honestly, the stress of house-buying alone is enough to make anyone consider surfing face-first down the buffet line at a Golden Corral.  Thankfully, our move-in date isn't until December, or I'd be bowing out of NaNo this year entirely.  As it is, we just have to do little things like coordinate inspections and pack up the entire house and everything we own.

And how hard can that be?

I'm actually somewhat glad for the house-buying timing:  all the minor fix-ups and prep work we have to undertake this month and next should make for ideal small, offline distractions that I will hate just enough to be chased back to writing before long.  It should allow me to take a break, still do something productive, and then want to return to writing just to take a break.

At least, that's the theory.


So why on earth would I choose now to try and lose weight?  Some would suggest a recent head injury or some form of genetic mental disorder, and they'd be close, but the truth is that NaNoWriMo involves all sort of dieting already, adding food to the list seemed like the next natural step.

Writing 50,000 words in a month with what little time you have already means setting aside other things you would much, much rather be doing.  Some of these are important (seeing your friends, being romantic with a partner or spouse, petting your suddenly overly-insistent cats) while others seem to materialize just to throw temptation in your path (video games, TV reruns, an endless chain of linked Wikipedia entries, the entire archives of a webcomic you only just discovered this month, and so forth).

You're dieting from all these things already, cutting down on amount and frequency without necessarily cutting them out altogether.  You have to content yourself with small portion sizes for your non-writing activities, big or small, to make the best use of the hours you have (which never seem to be quite as many as you thought you would).

So cutting back on fatty and sugar-heavy foods isn't that far out of the way for my personal discipline.  There are also additional gains, at least in theory:  not being over-full means avoiding the sleepy after-meal coma that is only worsened by the steady blink of a cursor at the tail end of your last written sentence.  Not going out for meals means time saved in transit as well as quicker meals and the excuse to get up and so something on your feet (instead of sitting in front of a computer some more).

There is something to be said for change of venue and the break that food provides, which is all the more reason to pick November to diet in.  Several small meals throughout the day have been shown to be healthier three large ones (or, as it is for many of us, two large ones).  Several small meals not only spread out the energy boost from the calories involved, they provide more brief breaks to the routine.

Best of all, toward the end of the month, Americans at least can enjoy Thanksgiving and glut themselves on food galore as a sort of late-game reward for all their dedication thus far, in both their writing and their waistline.  It makes an excellent target to aim for with enough time left before the end of the month for the sort of tidying up we can all expect to need.

That said, there are some things that should never be included in the dieting.  Work, for instance, doesn't take a break for November.  Romance, as well, should not be cut out entirely for risk of ending the month with half a novel and half an empty apartment (unless you're lucky and your partner is also taking on the NaNoWriMo challenge).

It's good to be a lucky man :)

Pets are another exception, but not because a month of reduced affection would risk severing their relationship with something that you feed and clean up after.  Pets, science has shown, are walking, swimming, squirming stress relief.  Cats especially seem enthralled with the writing process, and will not be denied their primal duty to interrupt it whenever possible.

Let them.  Few animals are as calming, as inspiring or as entertaining as a cat; doubly so when invested in making their presence felt (driven by the impetus of being ignored in favor of blinking text on a screen).
Besides, many writers already know that cats are a warm and fuzzy reminder of a hard and chilling truth:

If you can't type from under the purring lump of a sleeping cat, it might be time to consider another hobby.

"Shinigami Blues II" - Rob visits Mona

With a sound like a muffler popping, Jack landed on the couch, deflating in time with the cushions beneath him as he deftly turned on the TV without taking the remote off the coffee table.  "Hurry up, babe," he called, shooing their old, grey cat off the armrest as he stretched out longways and let out the sigh of a man who had supped of his girlfriend's grandmother's secret-recipe pumpkin pie.  "The game's about to start!"

"Coming!" Mona shouted back, putting the last of the dishes in to soak with a triumphant smile on her face.  Her grandmother's pumpkin pie recipe had gone off without a hitch; a kindness, given how badly Jack's attempt at chicken kiev had turned out.

She wiped her hands on the towel by the sink and turned off the light, pausing by the window as something caught her eye.  There, for a moment, behind the fog that had sprung up when the heat of the kitchen air met the chill winter evening outside the window, she could have sworn she saw a boy's face.  Looking closer now, she knew it was nothing, but for that one moment, she would have guessed-- no, she was sure.  It had looked just like Rob.

Her smile returned as she headed into the living room where Jack lay already cursing at the game on TV, no longer a triumphant grin but the calm, contented look of a happy woman.  "Who's winning?" she asked as Jack sat up to give her a seat beside him.  The old, grey cat hopped up onto the armrest as she sat, giggling as Jack leaned over to kiss her cheek before she was distracted by the TV.  "Oh come on!" she shouted, sending the cat flying with the sound of it.  "There's no way that was 'holding'..."

Outside. in the stillness of the winter air, Rob sighed to himself, watching through the living room window at the two lovers enjoying the game, or at least delighting in barking at the officiating crew.  He no longer felt the cold on his skin, but he could still sense it in the air, the way a deaf man might imagine a symphony sounds.

The whole world looked like winter, from the empty branches of the trees outside their two-bedroom apartment to the high, wispy clouds soaring silently by overhead.  The quiet street sang of winter and coming snow.  Inside, all the couple could think about was the warmth of each other and the glow of the TV screen.  They could hardly be expected to notice the faithful spirit lingering outside, blending into the cold silence like a corpse.

It was his first Thanksgiving without her, Rob knew, though he never expected it would hurt like this.  It was his favorite holiday in the way most children revere Halloween.  It wasn't out of any misguided sense of patriotism but rather a love of sitting around with family, stuffed to the gills, playing Trivial Pursuit while the Lions lost again.

More than that, it was the day they had first met.  Rob and Jack had been on their way home from a party on campus, bucking tradition with a dozen other friends that night in favor of good, old-fashioned college debauchery when they ran into Mona trying to push her old Geo down Cates Avenue, alone.

Rob could still remember the effort she'd gone to to convince them she didn't need any help, all scraped up with no jacket on a cold November night, trying to negotiate the pedestrian speed bumps of the long campus drive.  She hadn't wanted to admit she had run out of gas because she couldn't afford it until her next paycheck cleared.  Nevermind that the two half-sober boys offering to help had barely two cents to clap together themselves.

They had barely gotten it up the long hill to East campus when the snow had started falling. Rob could still hear the crunch beneath their feet as the winter stillness had set in around them.  He could still feel the churning in his gut, as much from trying to push a car uphill after a night's worth of drinking as from the looks he kept getting from the girl working to steer the vehicle.

Inside, the two lovers cheered, Jack nearly falling off the couch as he threw his hands into the air in twin fists of celebration.  The ghost outside couldn't help but smile, remembering the soft talk with Mona afterwards, offering to drive her to class the next day, narrowly avoiding the offer to put her up that night, purely for the convenience.

He vividly remembered the feel of the snowball slamming into his head from behind, hurled by his less-than-sober friend.  The mere memory of the chill sent a tickle up the back of his neck.  But more than that first salvo in the fight that would ensue, he remembered Mona's laugh, her cheeks red from the cold and flush from the effort of getting her car home.  The sound of it seemed distant now, teasing the edges of his senses like the sight of someone ducking around a corner just as you were starting to catch up.

Another tickle grazed his neck as Mona settled into Rob's arms, her eyes trailing again to the window.  For a moment, she was looking right at him, and the ghost felt the memory of his heart start to swell.  He almost forgot he was in the Slip, in the space between worlds.  For however brief a moment, he forgot he was dead.  But then her eyes trailed back to the glow from the TV as she tucked her legs up beneath her and leaned against the warm body of the boy sitting beside her.  Feeling all altogether new kind of chill, Rob turned to go.

He stopped at his first step, staring down at the form of the small boy glaring up at him from beneath the dusty black hoodie with the faded skull print on the front.  "What are you doing here?" Rob asked before he could stop himself.  He knew already Shin wouldn't be here if he hadn't screwed up.  He was only waiting to learn what it was he had done this time.

"Same as you," Shin answered, not taking his hands out of his pockets, "doing something stupid."

Rob could feel his temper start to flare at the boy's softly-spoken words.  To his surprise, the world seemed to echo his sentiment.  An unseasonal heat moved swiftly into the yard, carried on a sudden and eerie wind.  "You're going to bust me over this?" Rob asked, not bothering to mask his irritation.  "I figured you, of all people, would understand."

"Don't," Shin said firmly, turning to go.  "Besides, I'm here as a friend.  If Finnegan caught you coming out here off-duty..."  The boy went silent, staring at Rob's empty hands with a look of horror on his face.  "...Where the hell is your scythe?"

Rob looked down at himself, pulling open the sides of his red and white letter jack as if the object might come falling out by surprise.  "I dunno," he answered earnestly, "I guess I left it in my locker."

"Idiot!" Shin shouted, his hands coming free from his pockets immediately.  The sudden heat that had started to gather in the slip vanished like a scared kitten, leaving a heavy darkness in its place.  The boy grabbed Rob's much larger hand and forced his own small, black, gnarled baton into the other boy's fist.  "Do you try to be this stupid, or does it just come naturally to you?"

"Hey!" Rob shouted back, stirring a new spark into the air around them.  "You went blazing across hell to get your boyfriend back--" he started, ignoring the warning look on the smaller boy's hooded face.  "Where do you get off telling me what to do with my time??"

"What to do with your--" Shin repeated, his brow furrowing in a pained look of confusion.  He grabbed Rob's arm at the wrist and held it up under much protest from his partner.  Rob stared through his hand at the boy, trying to wrench it free without any success.  It was then that he realized he wasn't looking past his hand at Shin, but through it.  There was only the barest outline of a hand left, thickest at the edges like the lines around a sandbox.

His point made, Shin let go the boy's wrist and tucked his hands back into his pockets with a forceful shove.  "You can't come out here into the Slip without your scythe," he said as the boy stared unblinkingly at his own translucent palm, "how many times do I have to remind you, these things are for our protection out here!  Do you want to become an un-tet and get hunted from here till Doomsday?"

Shin rolled his eyes, swearing something under his breath that Rob couldn't quite make out.  "Souls fray in the Slip, Rob.  That means us, too."  His tone softening to clear concern, Shin turned and took his first few steps back toward the still-open portal behind him, sticking out of the side of an old Volkswagen van.  "Forgive me to trying to save what passes for your life, jackass," he muttered, trudging across the parking lot toward the yellow glow and soft hum of the elevator back to the Central Office.

Rob couldn't stop staring at his hand, watching as it slowly began to solidify, the color pulsing like blood coursing into his veins again until his hand was back to its old self.  He lifted his other hand, still clenched tightly around Shin's scythe in its collapsed form.  He shut his eyes just as tight, swearing under his breath and marching off after Shin, well aware of the risk he had taken.  He could only think of how made Mona would be if she knew the risk he had taken.  With broad steps, he walked into the elevator after Shin, breathing out a heavy sigh rife with frustration.

"Sorry," he said curtly, offering Shin his scythe back.  He was too angry with himself to bother making the apology sound more heartfelt.

"S'ahright," Shin answered, staring straight ahead as the doors swung shut and the feeling of movement rocketed up beneath them.  "You were right, by the way," he added, chancing a glance up at the boy's face.  Rob seemed earnestly confused at the statement, so Shin explained:  "I do understand."


With a deep breath, Rob nodded, resting his head back against the wall of the elevator.  Their shift would be starting soon, and he hadn't slept a wink.  It was shaping up to being another long day in Purgatory.

"Dawnwatcher" - Sisters Reunited

A crisp and welcome wind skated down across the empty street and greeted the lone traveler making her way up the mountain.  The steep climb up Mon Shara to the tiny village of Havenbrook under the stiff afternoon sun had left her feeling dusty and warm well out of season.  The chill air from high on the mountainside made her feel a welcome guest.  She worried her reception from the more human occupants might not be quite so refreshing.

Glancing up at the tall and weathered archway marking the first steps into town, the traveler half hoped it might all be as abandoned as it looked; empty streets, shuttered windows, not a whiff of chimney smoke to be seen.  But the small handful of dilapidated homes all bore fresh evidence of repair, and the road leading onward up the mountain toward the few scattered homesteads nestled higher on its flank showed the familiar ruts of recent use.

Resting a hand on the pommel of her sword to keep it from slapping the side of her leg, the traveler swallowed the dry air at the back of her throat and stepped into the peaceful village square.

"Ruth?" Kestrid's voice called from somewhere in the basement.

"What?" the young girl minding the store called back, privately cursing at the uneven leg in the stool she was standing on.  It rocked dangerously back and forth as she stretched for the latch on the shutters on the high, round window to let out the foul odor echoing up from the basement below where Kes was no doubt whipping up something that could probably kill them all.

"Could you bring me that bottle of lola root and some thallus paste?" Kes called again, her words somewhat obscured by the rising sound of something popping.  "...Quickly, please," she added with some urgency.

Ruth swore somewhat less privately, rolling her eyes and giving up on the quest to get the shutters open.  "Coming!" she shouted back, mocking Kes' ever-pleasant tone with clear indignation.  Carefully, she dismounted the stool and swiped the thallus paste from behind the shop counter, tucking it under one arm before looking about the store for the lola root.

The bright orange bulbs smiled back at her from their home in a small glass jar sitting high atop a shelf above the door.  With a string of utterances not fit for any ears but her own, Ruth set the thallus paste firmly on the counter, snatched up the stool with the uneven leg and propped it in front of the door, grumbling all the while.

"'I was the top-ranked rune-caster before the golden city was destroyed,'" she said to herself, striking a pose with her fingers pointed at her chest, mocking Kes' typical pomp and poise.  "'I weave the very fabric of reality like strands of thread," she continued as she climbed up the stool again and began reaching for the lola root.  "'Yet I simply cannot be bothered to pen a single spell that fetches my materials down from high shelves, or fixes my poor assistant's wobbly-legged stool, or the busted chimney vent..."

Ruth's fingertips could only vainly paw at the lip of the jar, causing it to teeter and spin until it sat even further back on the shelf.  Hearing another call from downstairs, the girl stepped onto the seat of the stool, bracing against the rickety shelf with one hand while reaching for the lola root with the other.  "'Oh no,'" she added to the pantomime, feigning a look of distaste that wasn't far removed from her current mood, "'such pursuits are beneath a master arcanist.'"

Outside, the traveler continued her search of the many houses, walking up to each in hopes the name across the doorway might be the one she was looking for.  To her dismay, none of the names seemed familiar.  Worse still, many of them had been entirely scratched out or removed, leaving her to wonder if any of them were still accurate at all.

She was nearly to the point of starting up the hill toward the scattered, outlying homesteads when she caught whiff of a familiar scent.  A thin trail of smoke was ushering up from a small vent beside the last house in the row.  A faded apothecary's sign still hung on a rusted hook out front.  The smell was one she knew by heart:  the tickle of copper tinged with a fragrant oil compound and a note of old scrivener's ink.  The scent of her uncle's workshop.  She had found Kestrid at last.

The jar of lola root rocked again, but this time spun full circle until its lip was finally close enough for Ruth to grasp with the tips of her longest fingers.  "Gotcha!" she said, smiling in triumph and dragging the jar toward her as the popping sound continued with renewed fervor from the basement door behind her.

"Ruth, I don't mean to rush you..." Kes' voice had gained the slightest hints of concern, "but if I could trouble you for that thallus paste--"  Another rapid series of pops drowned out the remainder of her request as the lola root jar neared the edge of the shelf.  Ruth brought her other hand over to cup the bottom of it for stability as she finally drew it free and kicked one leg back to begin her descent.

It was then that she heard the squeak of the door hinge below her.

"Kestrid?" the traveler called, peering into the dark shop as her eyes adjusted from the sunlit street.  The smell of ink was all but overbearing inside, and the sound of popping told her Kes was still hard at work.  "Kes?" she called louder, swinging the door wide and stepping into the room.

The door caught something unexpectedly in its arc, knocking it aside with some force, so eager had the traveler been to be reunited with her sister.  The woman turned in time to see something falling as if from a high shelf.  At once, her arms went out to catch it and ferry it to the ground, surprised to find that it had all the warmth and give of a human form.

Ruth stared back at the stranger with equal surprise, catching mostly her outline shadowed against the bright sun from outside.  Strands of wavy yellow hair were tucked behind slightly pointed ears, but the wide shoulders of her armor made the rest of her form little more than a bulky specter.  She hardly noticed as the jar of lola root landed squarely in her lap, cradled instinctively by her hands while the rest of her mind struggled with what to think of the intruder.

"Ruth, I really cannot understand why it is so difficult to--" Kes started to say as she stormed up the stairs from the basement, covered from hip to head in a rich, violent ink from the backs of her thick leather gloves to the forward-flung locks of her wavy brown hair; what little strands had tugged their way free from the pin binding the rest of it back into a bun.

She paused at once when she saw the scene at the door:  Ruth cradling the jar of lola root next to the tipped-over stool as light flooded into the room through the open door, highlighting the symbol on the armor of the woman crouching on the floor.  The woman slowly set Ruth down and got to her feet, meeting Kes' puzzled gaze with one of worry, unsure of the reception she was about to receive, and rather wishing the only thing on her mind to say was something more cordial than "oops."

"...to--" Kes stammered, trying to finish her original admonishment, but the sight of the woman standing in the doorway had completely disrupted her train of thought.  She reached up a hand to tuck some of the stray strands of hair behind one of her pointed ears, smearing a line of dark purple ink across it as she did so.  Her face moved quickly through a series of emotions, the kindest being puzzlement and the least kind being one of great anger; all of them forming a wordless monologue of Kestrid's internal struggle over how to feel at seeing her half-sister again.

The traveler, by contrast, shifted slowly to a bashful smile as her eyes finished adjusting to the dark interior of the shop.  She smoothed down the front of her armor out of habit and cleared her throat quickly, saying only:  "Hi, Kes."

A pop from the workshop below caused Kes to twitch noticeably, though the sound also seemed to startle her into action.  She turned and clutched the thallus paste from the counter, pointing to the jar of lola root still cradled in Ruth's lap.  Her young assistant hadn't moved since her fall, too busy staring up at the two women and waiting for someone to explain to her what on earth was going on.

The traveler reached down to pick up the jar and offer it to Kestrid, closing the space between them at last. It was only then that Ruth realized just how much taller the other woman was.  The traveler smiled as Kes gripped the jar of lola root and turned toward the doorway to the basement again.  "You've picked a bad time to come and visit me, Sydney," Kes told the woman.  "Can't you see I'm busy?"

"It's good to see you, too," the traveler said softly, watching Kes take the first step down toward the basement.  Kes then paused, shifting the jar to the crook of her arm and tossing a glance back at the traveler standing in her shop.

"Why are you here?" she asked, as if the question had been discussed before, only moments ago.

"I just wanted to see my sister," the traveler said.  "My tour was up, and I--" she hesitated, breathing out a long sigh.  "I didn't have anywhere else to go."

"Whoa whoa whoa," Ruth interjected, finally getting back to her feet.  She stepped into the space between them, looking quickly from Sydney to Kes and back again.  "...You're her sister?"

"Half-sister," Kestrid corrected, continuing her descent without another word.  Ruth spun at once, one finger raised in a gesture of admonishment, only to find its target already out of sight.  She felt a strong hand rest on her shoulder as Sydney stepped further into the shop.

"Don't worry about it," she told the girl.  In the short space while Ruth wasn't looking, a more confident smile had appeared in place of the troubled look the woman had borne earlier.  "It's just like old times."

Ruth was about to ask, but found her question cut short by a rather substantial pop from the basement below, one loud enough to shake the floor beneath them.  It was followed at once by a symphony of glass shattering and one oddly calm "oh, bother," from the resident arcanist.  Ruth and Sydney exchanged a look, each looking as fearful as the other, and then hurried down the stairs to the basement together.

Prep Work - Part 0

Any great novel (and most of the bad ones) starts with a great deal of planning, plotting (har har) and, where possible, scheming in order to lay the proper framework into which one may pour the soulful imaginings that pass for content these days.  But before planning can begin, there is one other important step the average author must undertake.

Planning.

Before one can recklessly dive into the world of outlining, storyboarding and otherwise sculpting the bare skeleton of one's designs, one must first plan the plan that is to come.  That's right:  meta-planning.

To call this a "must" is a bit of a misnomer, but the truth is that most of us do it already, or might strongly benefit from it if we do not.  Meta-planning largely involves both aligning ones particular assault vector for approaching the work as a whole, as well as carving out the overall workflow of the writing/editing/sleeping process.

It starts (or at least, mine starts) with scheduling.  NaNoWriMo centers around a set constant ratio:  50,000 words in 30 days.  November will always have 30 days (at least until the Romans realize someone came along and snuck two new months in), but the set number of those days that will be usable for writing varies from year to year and from person to person.

In America at least, there is at least one holiday late in the month to interrupt the normal flow of work.  Writing or typing with hands slick with turkey gravy is generally ill-advised, to say nothing of the effects of tryptophan on the will to continue working in any form.  Beyond that, there will no doubt be days (or parts of days) that are denied the writer in terms of workable hours.

Work, for many of us, is the biggest consideration.  Sticking out an 8+ hour shift without access to our materials or the quiet, interrupt-free environment that is so often a prerequisite to the writing process puts a serious onus on the remaining hours of the day.  Given that another 6-8 hours (if you're lucky) are also dedicated to sleep, we've stranded our writing time on a surprisingly small 8-hour island with interruptions like traffic, dinner and any semblance of a social life all warring for time.

So, scheduling becomes a must.

Figure out all the times you know you won't be writing.  Trips out of town, special occasions, regular after-hours meetings that can't be skipped; mark them all off so that you know how many actual workable nights you have available.

Divide 50,000 by that to get your actual per diem word count.

If your workplace allows you to get away for an hour or so for lunch, mark each workday down with an hour for lunch to add to your total.  Once you figure out your hourly pace (wait till November, it's bound to change), you'll know how much less you have to do in the evenings if you can spare yourself 30-45 minutes each day at lunch.

Worried you won't have time on your lunch break?  Start packing a lunch.  Eat at your desk or near the office if you can to minimize time lost due to travel.  You'll thank yourself later.

The next part of scheduling is the one you're going to hate later, but for most of us, it does prove a time-saver and a fire-lighter-underer.  Let's pretend, for the moment, that that's a word.

Mark out milestones on a regular (preferably weekly) basis.  The day is up to you, whichever day starts your writing week (or ends it, if you prefer), mark the number of words you should have by that point.  Use your per diem count from earlier to get a realistic estimate, in case you wind up temporarily ahead of (or behind) the curve.

The running totals will give you not only a goal to shoot for (and save you constantly breaking out the calculator), they will offer a measuring stick throughout so that you know full well how far ahead or behind you are.  Doing daily estimates can be crippling, and tends to make us fixate on the numbers.  Weekly estimates allow for the much-needed wiggle room without letting us get too far off the mark for too long.

Any time you have a holiday or a string of unavailable days approaching, make a mark immediately after the gap so that you immediately know what the wordcount needs to be when you return.  It should save you time (and human error) recalculating and also put you swiftly back into the writing mindset.

Once you have an idea of what you're real November looks like, it's time to break ground on the easy part:  actually putting together a story.