I don’t know whether I mentioned it, but I put the great work in for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, as I did with last year’s effort. This year I was better prepared, so I had a revised and expanded version (76,000 words) ready to go. I decided to change the title as well and [...]
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
ABNA again
Posted in Uncategorized on February 26, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Chapter Twenty-Four: Going Home
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Chapter 24, Dubitania, going home, Nanowrimo, The End on December 2, 2009 | 3 Comments »
24. Going Home
Lucia had expected that it would be easy to travel to the Palace and hard to get inside once she got there; but it proved to be the other way round. The disorder in the streets of Sescastri meant that public transport was at a standstill, and taxis were rare. In the end [...]
Chapter 23: Stilin’s advice
Posted in Uncategorized on December 1, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
There’s something a bit melancholy about working on a Nanowrimo novel on the first of December, like sitting writing in the classroom when everyone else has run off to play. But Chapter 24 is the last, so not long now. Anyway, are you sitting comfortably? Ahem.
23. Stilin’s advice
There was more, lots more sheaves of paper, [...]
Chapter Twenty-Two: The Singers of Lavordin
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Chapter 22, Dubitania, Hospital, Nanowrimo on November 30, 2009 | 1 Comment »
22. The singers of Lavordin
I think that it was at Lavordin hospital that I first realised for sure that Larvartin was insane. I had known for a long time that he was a strange, cruel man, of course, but he had conducted his affairs with such ruthless but apparently rational cunning I had not realised [...]
Victory!
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged nanowrimo 2009, nanowrimo08, novels, victory on November 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
But there’s more, there’s more…
Chapter Twenty-One: Dropping the Pilot
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Chapter 21, Dubitania, Nanowrimo, Stilin, Ursin on November 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
21. Dropping the Pilot
For a while Larvartin’s vicious instincts were held in check by a reasonable fear that if they were provoked, his many enemies would succeed in deposing and killing him. But after a couple of years had passed, he found that he was still secure; that his secret police had inspired such fear [...]
Chapter Twenty: Barley
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Agriculture, Dubitania, Nanowrimo, Revolution, Stilin on November 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
20. Barley
Official accounts speak of Larvartin being a brewery clerk in his youth; this is true except for the significant omission that at the same time his father was the proprietor of the Sestenburg brewery, which of course was and remains the largest in Dubitania. He was the heir apparent; as soon as it became [...]
Chapter Nineteen: the Battle of Sescastri
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Chapter Nineteen, Dubitania, Nanowrimo, Stilin, War on November 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
19. The Battle of Sescastri
Stilin’s manuscript was not very well organised. Instead of a connected narrative, he seemed to have written about particular episodes at different times as the mood took him. These were generally bound together with white tape, or sometimes stapled, and all put together in a general heap. Some of the sheafs [...]
Chapter Eighteen: Witnesses
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Chapter 18, Dubitania, Felicia, nanowrimo08, witnesses on November 27, 2009 | 1 Comment »
18. Witnesses
My mother found Stilin’s manuscript. I don’t know how much she read, but she was unbelievably angry.
“… and Stilin of all people!” she shouted, waving her glasses at me, always a very bad sign; “You would ask Stilin? I don’t know how you could bear to be in the same room with him. [...]
Chapter Seventeen: War
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Chapter 17, Dubitania, Nanowrimo, Stilin, War on November 26, 2009 | 1 Comment »
17. War
That was a bad time for Larvartin. I managed to make myself useful – in fact I flatter myself that I became the secretary and honest broker of the Twenty for a while, making a virtue of the fact that I had no following and no power. The Twenty were formidable people and most [...]
