The Old Shelter

Hi everyone! So I decided to take part in NaNoWriMo this year too. Surprise! Surprise! Last year, my NaNo experience was quite disappointing. I didn't go far with my story, but honestly, I probably wasn’t in the zone enough to undertake such a challenge. I did prep it quite a bit, and I liked (I still like!) the idea, quite simply, it wasn’t going to happen. But I’m not abandoning Bones of the Titans, I will come back to it. As a matter of fact, this year didn’t actually started better. It was the busiest October at work that I had in years. My workmate had to take a leave for one week because one of her kids was in hospital. That happened to be the busiest week in the entire month, so my boss and I had to managed alone. It meant shifts of 10 hours every day, all the week long, standing from beginning to end, basically without a break (well, we did have breaks of 10 minutes at noon…) and with noise continuously in our ears from people, the street and the phone. I wish it to no one. I was a zombie in the weekends and I managed to do very little. Certainly not planning a story. But the good news (for me) is that the story had basically already been planned at the beginning of the year. If fact, I’m expanding on a short story that I wrote in January for a competition. By the way, you can download the short story here, if you are interested. You can also read a shorter version on WattPad, the one that entered the competition. The novel will be very different. I’ll just say that the short story is 6.000 words long and the synopsis for the novel is already 5.000 words. The story is set in the 1920s (another surprise, eh?) in Germany, and I’m very excited to tackle this time and place again. Bones of the Titans is also set in Germany in the 1920s, but that would be Berlin. The Frozen Maze is set in a secluded country estate, quite fictional, though I still plan to tackle as some of the subject I’m planning to use in Bones. It will be an interesting experiment. The Frozen Maze started out as a story loosely based on Snow White. I’m not sure whether that inspiration will hold (it is becoming its own story very fast), but I hope so, because I really like the themes. Some elements are bound to remain: the step-mother, the mirror, the dwarves. There are many things I still have to research and I can’t wait to have time to do that. Snow White is thought to be one of the more ancient stories we still know, and it’s fascinating in its own way. So, this is just a small update. If the story turns out good… well, I’ll be serialising it on this blog. How do you like this idea? Yes, yes! I’ve always wanted to serialise a story and this may be the right occasion. Let’s see! I’ll keep you posted!