NaNoWriMo Revisited - First chapter and release date

If you are a long time reader of this blog, you may remember that way back, I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). This adventure is chronicled here, here and here. All of the links and widgets are now broken, but you can visit the NaNoWriMo site to get an idea of the process. Today is the right time to start if you want to try it yourself.

I've written more explanation in the foreword of the book, but the brief-ish (brie-fish? mmm) story is this: I wrote the book in November 2009, saved it, and closed it. I meant to go back and edit it or at least read it, because I quite enjoyed the writing process, but it wasn't until this year that I read it in its entirety for the first time. I've decided I don't want to spend the time on a really deep edit and reworking, because other projects are more pressing and relevant to my career goals, but I do want people to get a chance to check it out. So I've just been doing some basic formatting, typo correction, few tweaks, grammar, that sort of thing.

I'm announcing that I will be releasing my debut novel "Severing a Dendrite" via Kindle Direct Publishing on November 30th! The minimum allowed price for that platform (with 70% royalty) is $2.99, so that's what it'll be. But just to pique your interest and hopefully get you to throw the three dollars at Amazon so they can throw two dollars at me, I'll be sharing the first chapter now and another several chapters on the release day for free right here on this blog.

Here is the link to download the first chapter in pdf format: http://goo.gl/tBx9Jd
You may have to right click and "save link as..." if just clicking on it doesn't prompt a download.
And if you like clicking on pictures, here's one with the same result, i.e. pdf downloaded.

The text on the pages should be large enough that reading on a mobile device or e-reader will be possible. For reading in Adobe Reader, I would recommend View > Page Display > Two Page View for a more book-like experience. For the final release, I will be sharing a more substantial section of the book (the first five chapters!) for free in kindle and epub formats so you don't have to bother with pdfs, although I think for full compatibility and ease of reading, I will post a pdf of that too.

Hope you enjoy it!
Later,
Stuart

Fin

Yeahhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Edit for reuploading winner badge:

Severing a Dendrite

Well... I guess I could wait until it's all over, but I felt like quickly posting this. I'm almost there!! Just passed the 43,000 mark, and I'm feeling good about how the climax of the novel is shaping up. Barring an unfortunate unforeseeable event, I'm certainly expecting to pass the 50,000 goal before my deadline of Saturday evening. Cheer me across the line :)

I don't think I'll share the manuscript with anyone really until I've had a chance to edit it (I haven't really read any of it in fact... :S) but I may post an exerpt when this is all over. Then it's back at Maya! Whoo! Been a while since I did some of that on my own (the directed study is still going and is keeping my toes in Maya, but I want to do a lot lot more come December and into the new year).

Later,
Stuart

nanowrimo

Alright, so this'll probably be the last post for a while. I'm still doing some tutorials until the end of october, but once halloween's over, I'ma gonna write me some book! (Yes, the quality of that sentence will likely be indicative of the overall novel).


I'll try to embed a little widget here so you can see my progress too... It'll be good to be kept accountable so you can cheer me on when I hit a rough patch. Or it might be terrifically embarrassing if I finish the month with a few thousand words complete.



My Nanowrimo Page
Might not work here, but I'll see if I can get it going before November...

EDIT: Ok, it's working now... still writing strong! We'll see how week 2 shapes up.

Later,
Stuart