More NaNo stuff

Friday, November 5, 2010

If there is a coming explosion of sci-fi to the literary word, I blame the short title for this month's festivities. It puts nanites on the brain. (And anyone familiar with the concept of nanites knows that on your brain is the last place you want the little buggers to be.)

Now, on to the supposedly lucid post of questionable intent and value...

I'm trying to be a good little NaNo- blogger (I'm keeping my NaNo / NaNo, Mork from Ork jokes to a minimum, I swear... what's the emoticon code for fingers crossed behind your back?). To that end, I'll point out the little butterfly on an ivy string in my sidebar. That's my NaNoWriMo word ticker, which so far, I've remembered to update every day.

As it sits now, I'm at about 8,000 words (3K of which are most likely tripe, but, that's the fun of NaNo. This month we make messes. Next, we clean them up.)

Also, in a lull, I made an attempt at a longish query-type summary of Draconis:

Being helpful is not supposed to be this big of a deal.

Tanner only wants an excuse to talk to Keira Beckett so that maybe she'll forget about his too curly hair and his too skinny arms. Seriously, it's just a friggin' band-aid on a cut that's barely bleeding. It isn't supposed to lead to civil war... but that's exactly what happens when the blood from Keira's hand mixes with that from Tanner's.

Keira Beckett isn't the sweet, if somewhat aloof, teenager with an overprotective family that she appears to be. She's dragon-kind, and the last of her line, daughter of their ruler. In an attempt to make sure she remains the last, the head of a rival pride killed Keira's mother, and her father's second mate, ensuring that there will never be another heir born to that family.

But when Tanner's little act of kindness mingles her blood with his own, he's jerked out of the normal world and placed on the front lines of a war he didn't even know was being waged.

Now that blood from the royal line is in his body, he begins changing. Suddenly the vegetarian craves meat and his night blindness evaporates; he discovers that he's fireproof and has an endoskeleton of dragon scales beneath his skin. He'll have to trust Keira's father to teach him how to survive those who want him dead, because if he can't learn how to harness his new power and control the dragon that's been born in him, neither he nor his mother will live long enough to regret it.

It may not make much sense yet, it may be a bit redundant in places, and by the time I'm done, the story may actually change, but this is Draconis as it sits now.

2 Chiming In:

Michelle said...

Josin, nice summary of Draconis. I like the human/dragon concept. A similar concept is in a new book called Firelight by Sophie Jordan, so I know that you have something that could really sell!

Josin L. McQuein said...

I think that's the way it goes most times. No sooner does someone come up with an idea than they discover something similar has just been sold and / or published.

:-(

At least, now that I've checked out Firelight, the plots don't sound close. No dragon hunters in mine. Yay!

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