It's that time of year again. . .
So we're one month away from the start of National Novel Writing Month 2009. Long-time readers of this journal are painfully aware that NaNoWriMo is one of my biggest obsessions. Starting 01 Nov, participants have 30 days to write 50,000 words. Lots of madness, caffeine poisoning, and plot bunnies ensue, and everybody drops into a coma on 01 Dec. Delicious.
I've dropped off the radar for the last few weeks because I've spent most of my time online doing research for this year's novel. I've been fascinated by plague doctors for quite some time, and I've finally met a character who is a self-described post-apocalyptic plague doctor. Remember my longing to be such a creature for Halloween last year? Well, I'm going to be her this year. Nothing will get me uber psyched to start NaNo '09 than dressing up like my main character at Drac's Ball the night before.
I'm a character writer, so I don't have much by way of plot yet. I've got an understanding of the story, and the more I learn through my research, the more I know what's going to happen and who's going to be involved. It's going to be a plague story: it's 1916, the bubonic plague has evolved to a scary new strain wherein the victims' corpses are reanimated. It's going to be something of a steampunk zombie story, but the focus is going to be more on the outbreak of the plague itself than the zombies. The zombies are just incidental. I'm way more interested in pandemics and plagues and WW1 and such. So I've spent the last few weeks devouring info on the Black Death and the 3 different forms of the plague and collecting awesomely creepy pictures of plague doctors. Now I've moved on to studing the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 so I can learn about medical technology/practice at the time as well as how governments and authorities responded to the spreading epidemic. Later I'll research the climate leading up to WW1 so I can help to reshape the Great War into the War That Really Did End All Wars as the mutated plague spreads worldwide and decimates human populations. But that's all going to be incidental. The story itself will really focus on my little steampunky plague doctor and her familial connections with the outbreak and her attempts to make things right. And just for fun, I think Rasputin's going to have something to do with it, even though he'll be dead by the time my story starts. But really, what better way to overlap the supernatural with the medical by twining the ridiculous assassination story of the Mad Monk into the origins of the new bubonic plage? (I may refer to this new strain as the Black Phoenix plague, as kind of an unoriginal play on "Black Death" and the whole unholy resurrection aspect. Meh).
Of course, it kind of sucks reading about the Spanish flu at the beginning of flu season. It's even less fun to read about when the current flu season is full of Swine Flu Panic. And to really make the experience special, I am now sick myself. THANKFULLY I'm not even remotely fluish. Just the standard sinus infection that I get every year at this time. But still, it has kind of taken the joy out of the research.
And on that note, I'm going to down some NyQuil and go back to sleep before my headache drives me past the brink of insanity.
I've dropped off the radar for the last few weeks because I've spent most of my time online doing research for this year's novel. I've been fascinated by plague doctors for quite some time, and I've finally met a character who is a self-described post-apocalyptic plague doctor. Remember my longing to be such a creature for Halloween last year? Well, I'm going to be her this year. Nothing will get me uber psyched to start NaNo '09 than dressing up like my main character at Drac's Ball the night before.
I'm a character writer, so I don't have much by way of plot yet. I've got an understanding of the story, and the more I learn through my research, the more I know what's going to happen and who's going to be involved. It's going to be a plague story: it's 1916, the bubonic plague has evolved to a scary new strain wherein the victims' corpses are reanimated. It's going to be something of a steampunk zombie story, but the focus is going to be more on the outbreak of the plague itself than the zombies. The zombies are just incidental. I'm way more interested in pandemics and plagues and WW1 and such. So I've spent the last few weeks devouring info on the Black Death and the 3 different forms of the plague and collecting awesomely creepy pictures of plague doctors. Now I've moved on to studing the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 so I can learn about medical technology/practice at the time as well as how governments and authorities responded to the spreading epidemic. Later I'll research the climate leading up to WW1 so I can help to reshape the Great War into the War That Really Did End All Wars as the mutated plague spreads worldwide and decimates human populations. But that's all going to be incidental. The story itself will really focus on my little steampunky plague doctor and her familial connections with the outbreak and her attempts to make things right. And just for fun, I think Rasputin's going to have something to do with it, even though he'll be dead by the time my story starts. But really, what better way to overlap the supernatural with the medical by twining the ridiculous assassination story of the Mad Monk into the origins of the new bubonic plage? (I may refer to this new strain as the Black Phoenix plague, as kind of an unoriginal play on "Black Death" and the whole unholy resurrection aspect. Meh).
Of course, it kind of sucks reading about the Spanish flu at the beginning of flu season. It's even less fun to read about when the current flu season is full of Swine Flu Panic. And to really make the experience special, I am now sick myself. THANKFULLY I'm not even remotely fluish. Just the standard sinus infection that I get every year at this time. But still, it has kind of taken the joy out of the research.
And on that note, I'm going to down some NyQuil and go back to sleep before my headache drives me past the brink of insanity.