As the last post said, Angi and I are participating in Camp Nanowrimo this month. It’s our first time doing so, since we normally participate in the main one in November. However, last November, we were slightly busy getting married.

Mind you, Angi still wanted to, but cooler heads prevailed. (After lots and lots of poking.) But since we still have the bug, we decided to take a stab at it this month! We’ve both participated in several. Myself, I’ve participated in four and won three. So I thought we could take a look back. Here’s a brief description of my past and current NaNo projects. Most of these will likely ever see the light of day, as they were written under the NaNo creed of “quantity over quality”.

 

First: Luna’s Quest

This was my very first nanowrimo attempt, and it’s based off a series of imaginary characters from an imaginary video game I was plotting in my head, around the time I first discovered JRPGs, in the 16-bit era. Yeah, I know, nerrrrrd. This story was … well, it was a reasonably generic fantasy Hero’s Journey, honestly, focusing on a trio of friends venturing forth to stop a nebulous evil. The story, the world and the characters are all pretty generic… but it’ll always hold a special place in my heart.

Second and Third: The Channelers

Take one part Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, one part Shin Megami Tensei: Persona, shake well, and this is what you get. A group of modern-day heroes who find mysterious trinkets and end up sharing their minds with heroes of myth and legend, fighting off monsters and villains from the same as they travel the world. I wrote two parts of this in my second and third attempt… and it still wasn’t finished. It was kind of a monster. I keep telling myself I’d like to revisit it someday, but it’ll probably never happen. Still, was fun to write. I’m kind of a casual mythology buff and it was nice to put some of the obscure facts in my head to good use.

Fourth: The Graveyard Shift

Out of all of my past projects, this is the one I’d like to revisit most. Imagine a 1980-something buddy cop show, with the two cops from different walks of life being partnered up and butting heads. Now imagine that they’re a vampire and a werewolf. And there you have the setting for The Graveyard Shift, following two officers of the 66th precinct, patrolling a district of Miami popularly known as Little Transylvania, wherein all manner of monsters – vampires, werewolves, zombies, fish people – live and work, basically just trying to get on with their lives. I really, really like this one… but sadly, I kind of lost the spark for it midway through. But someday I want to give it another go, because I’ve got some great ideas for it.

 

Current: On the Edge of the World

Post-apocalyptic story, populated by serial-numbers-filed-off versions of characters of other works that me and Angi want to produced. Not much to say about this one yet, as I’m still working on it. Will I finish this one? Too early to say. I’ll certainly give it my best. But the nice thing about Nanowrimo is that even if you don’t finish, it feels good to have tried.

 

Tune in next Wednesday for a similar post from Angi!

 

-John