Castle in the Clouds

Divorce, Death & the Holidays So, I'm driving in the slow lane on the NaNo expressway and along comes this eighteen-wheeler pulling not one trailer but three. The first trailer has "Divorce" spray painted across the gleaming silver surface. The trailer sways a little and I swerve. I slow as I swerve and lose a few days and nights of word counts. It seems no matter my intentions, I cannot escape its proximity. I speed up, it speeds up. I slow, it slows. So Divorce may not have ran me off the road but it has certainly created a great deal of worry in my life. When I finally become comfortable with Divorce and I'm once again staying between the white lines and moving slowly but steadily forward, another trailer creeps up beside me. It's black and shiny. In a beautiful script hand is a single word: Death. It sways and I swerve. It strays into my lane and I pull of the road. Tears pour down my cheeks and my heart aches with memory and loss. T

NaNo Progress Report Word Count: 5150 words total Story Tidbits: I just started Chapter Three and entered the hero's POV. So far it's been an easy and fun chapter to write...all 361 words of it. Unfortunately, even with all my preplanning for NaNo, I've managed to write myself into the land of uncertainties. I've known all along that Makenna's "research paper" and Cade's academic specialty would be key elements used to draw the two of them together. I had been thinking in rather abstract terms about the paper, though, and hadn't given much thought as to what it would say. Silly of me. It needs to contradict his considerable research on the subject...enough so that he's inclined to meet one-on-one with her. So...now I need to do some vampire legend research and write a faux paper on the topic. Then, once I have a firm grasp on what he would be able to find & what theories he would support, I'll need to purposel

NaNo Progress Report Word Count Data Over the last five days I have managed to write 3868 words. Not bad. I'm hoping to add 2K to the tally by day's end. I'll keep you posted. Story Tidbits As you may or may not know, beginnings are the worst for me. Just writing one and forcing myself to accept it has been a bit of a challenge. A rule of thumb in romance is to have your hero and heroine meet ASAP. Chapter Two is going to have to be soon enough. Although, I did have my heroine think of him once or twice in Chapter One--nothing mushy at that point, just random general thoughts. Chapter Two is about a quarter completed and they're just about ready to speak to each other. Page 16. Although they have had a strange shared experience. Here's a little snippet of the experience: ~Begin snippet~ She lifted her head and looked toward the bottom of the room. The guest speaker seemed not to have noticed the lagging enthusiasm in the back row