The Ole Nano Try

November is National Novel Writing Month, and I am giving it a go yet again this year. Writing 50,000 words in a month is no small feat, especially during the busy holiday season. I have no confidence I will reach such a lofty goal, but I'm doing my best.

I've picked a fun project to work on for NaNo. A few years ago, I had the idea to write a vampire comedy. Every book featuring vampires I'd ever read seemed to take them so seriously, even those with a more lighthearted bent. There's been the funny zombie sidekick, the funny learning-to-be-a-werewolf tale, the funny kid-becomes-slayer coming of age farce, but in every single one, vampires are very serious business. They're the big bad, the broody anti-hero, the monster everyone wants to shag. But, what if they weren't?

20 to UnLife is my NaNo project. My main character, Gaspar McLean, is your average, video-game obsessed gas station attendant with social anxiety and helicopter parents. One night, he's involuntarily turned into a vampire, and his boring, average existence is suddenly a boring, average eternity. Not the way he envisioned his future.

Now, he struggles to master his new abilities, juggle vampire groupies and prejudice, and figure out what he wants to do over the next several hundred years. Tired of being invisible and disrespected, Gaspar decides to use his vampirism to be a superhero. He stalks the night fighting crime and, well, let's just say it's a good thing he's already dead.

Turns out being supernatural doesn't automatically make you a superhero. Training, skill-development, and experience is still very much a thing, and Gaspar must work hard to attain them.

Toss into the mix hot and so-very-not interested Ashlea, court-appointed permanently toasted mentor Dee, cold-as-ice sire Ielle, and horrific, vampiric serial killer Chad the Impaler, and Gaspar's life is about to get a lot more interesting.

I'm excited to be writing it, and I hope you'll be just as excited to read it. If I finish it, that is.