I'm not dead yet!

Thanksgiving weekend was long and thoroughly tiring. It left my belly full of turkey, pumpkin pie, and other wonderful foods. I had a great deal of fun and was very glad that I could formally introduce Liz and Kestrel to my family. However it proved very bad for my regular updates and novel preparation - luckily for me November doesn’t have any of these pesky family events that I must attend so hopefully this sort of distraction won’t kill my word count.

Yesterday was also quite good, before my ballroom dance class I zipped over to a nearby cafe where Ed Magazine was doing a photo shoot of a bunch of us Nanowrimo folk. It was pretty nifty to meet some of the faces behind the screen names and I’m glad I went even though it almost made us a couple minutes late. Having met other Nano folk I think that my odds of success this year will do much better as they are a very friendly and funny bunch. Part of my problem last year was that I lacked any real support to keep me motivated - I pumpkined rather than go to gatherings and my ‘motivator’ didn’t actually ever do anything. It left me feeling like I was writing in a vacuum and while I probably couldn’t have done the full 50,000 after getting pneumonia and quitting my job, if I had a ‘cheering squad’ I likely would have kept writing and come out with a respectable number. Oh well - live and learn I guess. This year I plan on having plenty of people to harass...err motivate...me and I will likely make several of the social gatherings but think I'll probably skip the write-ins.

On the front of good news, I think I may be succeeding in conning Liz into joining my rampaging insanity. Before she was just cackling madly about ‘incentive plans’, but after listening to me babble on and coming out and watching the photo shoot I think she may be coming around. She’s still making pesky claims that she couldn’t possibly find the time with work and moving into Star and Eric’s but given that she has a plot and a title I think that she’s just in denial. I figure that once I finish copying all the files from my desktop computer to my laptop and send the computer over to her place I figure her last objections will vanish like inhibitions at the bottom of a bottle of Tequila. Though she insists that when I sell the computer to her that I leave all my porn on it - I’m not entirely sure how one is meant to respond to a request like this, maybe I should hide it and only tell her where the folder is after she has 15,000 words...

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On another note I’m having trouble working out precisely what name I want to use for my main character. Any other brains out there that want to give it some thought on my behalf? Here’s my problem - the protagonist is female but spends the vast majority of the novel disguised as a boy so I need a feminine name that I can shorten, lengthen, or modify into a masculine name that sounds similar without creating confusion. The other main requirement is that it be an Italian name or at least follow Italian naming conventions.

Tata for now.