NaNoWriMo’s over and I DID NOT SUCCEED in hitting fifty thousand words by the end of November. I am deeply disappointed, but I did not spend this much time and money on therapy and disgusting introspection in order to immediately fall at the feet of Team Beat Yourself Up At Anything Less Than Perfection, or worship at the temple of Hanging Entirely Too Much Of Your Wellbeing On Your Ego And The Arbitrary Markers It Imprints On (at least, not any more than I already have).
SO. I wrote thirty-two thousand words of the Official First Draft of THE VAMPIRE SHIFT in November 2023. I have to say, I am actually quite happy now. Sure, this is the first time I’ve attempted NaNoWriMo for anything longer than a week or so and still failed, sure I won it three times previously and so this failure TASTES BAD but. BUT!! This is also the first time doing NaNo that’s involved me having AN OUTLINE for this novel that I actually feel pretty good about AND I’ve actually discussed it with some people (while sobbing retching bleeding with mortification etc) so like it’s been vaguely tested as a concept with audiences outside of my own brain! AND SURVIVED! AND BEEN IMPROVED! FUCK YEAH
Okay so in the course of trying to talk myself down from a huge Gloom(tm) over not writing fifty thousand words and only hitting a measly paltry pathetic thirty-two thousand (please put down the harpoon, I am making fun of myself here and this is NOT more than like, um 6-80% serious #cool), I thought, hey — what if I took, say, the first line of every page I wrote during this challenge, and shared it? That’d be cool!
So that’s what we’re doing.
Except then I realised that I wrote 92 pages, which seems like a lot so instead I’m gonna do the first line/sentence/Chunk of each chapter instead. Here we go!
Note: These are ostensibly in chronological order, but include things like. Alternate ways of writing the same scene. They also switch between three first-person perspectives (Sasha, Rae, Killian).
Note (2): I got this idea from one of my favourite authors of all time, Scott Westerfeld, specifically this blog post which features the opening lines of each chapter of The Last Days — a science fiction vampire story set in New York City, featuring five teenagers (including a vampire lead singer) forming a band while the end of the world draws ever nearer. It is, to state the blindingly, fatally, obvious, one of the big inspirations behind my book.
Anyway, [I HOPE YOU] ENJOY these mysterious largely contextless vignettes:
I should have kept my mouth shut.
They kept Ramona in a holding cell lined with walls that were hooked up to the Engine’s gravity, routed through the Rift in such a way that what it did to Earth — draw in everyone’s magic — was also happening here, in this one room.
I found out I’d been accepted into the law degree I’d applied to, and immediately felt sick to my stomach.
I followed Carly’s pointing hand across the bar.
‘So, I worked some things out about how magic works here,’ said Rae.
It felt like a star had exploded inside me.
They could not have gotten a clearer view.
I wasn’t very steady on my feet, but there is a nice thing about having your vampire pianist attack you [CENSORED FOR SPOILERS].
The problem with Sasha being the nearest living human was that she was actually — as far as we knew, at least — the nearest living vampire.
Too much had happened for one day.
The roar of the crowd as we’d finished our encore was still ringing in my ears when Killian and Rae fell into step either side of me on the way to our dressing room.
‘This is getting a little Jesus-y, man,’ said Sasha.
Have you ever mainlined a nuclear reactor?
I saw Sasha stumble a moment before it happened, saw the flash of white in her eyes and knew then something was going to happen.
And there we have it! As always, thanks for reading and I hope you all have as excellent a December as possible 💗