Nichols and Ashcroft Newsletter Nov 2019

Hello!

October slipped away and November rolled it. Since it’s November that means it’s time for NaNoWriMo.  What is NaNoWriMo?  It’s an online writing challenge with participants all around the globe. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write 50,000 words during the month of November. It boils down to 1667 words per day. It doesn’t seem like much, but when you factor in work, Thanksgiving, and life in general, it becomes harder than it sounds. Chasing Destiny was the result of two NaNoWriMos. One to write it and one to edit it.

I have been participating in NaNo since 2004. I haven’t won every year because of life, but I’ve won more than lost. Two years ago I became an Municipal Liaison for Southern Maine. MLs schedule write-ins (where we gather together in one place to  write) and act as a cheerleader for writers. I love being an ML and love meeting all the different people in my area of the state.

My NaNo project this year is a superhero romance. It’s been a blast to write and three days into November I’m at 11,000 words. I’m scheduled to finish by Nov 14th, but I know life will throw some curve balls and I’ll barely finish like I did last year.

I have something to admit. I suck at writing these newsletters on a regular basis. I would swear that I sent one out in October and it turns out I didn’t. So my bad. I will try to make these a little more regular, but not enough to spam you wonderful people.

Our next book is coming along. It’s called Immortal Secrets and features Akantha and Damianos, but they’re secondary characters. We’re introducing quite a few new characters in it.

Speaking of immortals, a few people have asked why we write about immortals. Here’s the low down. We wanted to write about characters who were immortals, but weren’t vampires. I know books about non-vampire immortals are out there, but they’re the unicorns of the book world.  Our characters started out as role-play characters. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the game we were playing them in didn’t get off the ground. Akantha stuck around and bugged the heck of out me and practically demanded attention. So instead of a RP character, she morphed into a book character. Due to their long history, Damianos and Akantha provided a plethora of material to work with.  History nerd that I am, had an extremely difficult time narrowing down to a few time periods to show in Chasing Destiny. I was talking to a friend of mine who had recently read Chasing Destiny and wants to see more of Akantha and Damianos. I have nothing planned for them right now, but maybe something will come up. There are quite a few new immortals that we want to introduce in new books. Though I’m sure they will demand some attention and will give me a clue to what to do with them.

I have a few craft-fair appearances coming up this month. I’ll be in Sanford, ME at the Operation Ray of Light on Nov 16th. I’ll be at the Carl J Lamb school in Springvale, ME on Nov 23rd. I’ll be selling books along with some D&D accessories I’ve made.

That’s all the news I have right now. If you have any questions about Chasing Destiny or our writing process, please feel free to drop us an email or find us on social media.

Have a great November.

– Sydney