November had been a busy month of writer stuff so far. Not least because its NaNoWriMo and I have been determined form the start to make a fist of it this year. Hence I have been too busy writing to spend time writing various post of the blog. So this is by way of an update on everything.

Last months October Indie fest of guest blogs was an amazing success, and everyone who took part have my thanks. I’ve had lots of great feedback on the weird and wonderful collection of posts from a whole range of writers. If you missed any of them I can’t recommend enough that you scroll back through Octobers posts and indulge yourself.

Also last month saw the release of not one but two books with which I have been involved. My own novel, From Russia With Tassels‘ the second in the Hannibal Smyth series came out to a modicum of acclaim. And the third of the Harvey Duckman Anthologies  was also release, featuring a bonus story from myself.

I’ve also written stories for the Christmas special and Harvey Duckman 4 and 5 which will be coming out in fairly quick succession. But I am sure I will mention them closer to there release…

Meanwhile in my NaNoWriMo  festival of scribbling I decided to try and finish off a novel with the working title of Maybes Daughter. Maybe is a first draft that has been sitting at 35k words for about three years. As I was writing it between the final draft of Passing Place and the first full draft of ‘A Spider In the Eye‘ the first Hannibal novel. I’ve always loved the characters and setting of Maybe, but the time has never been right to pick it back up and finish what i started. This year, as I need a short break from Hannibal before I pile into book 3, and NaNoWriMo to think of a project for, the timing seemed right, and I after a short, not quite a redraft, read through and edit at the end of October I have picked up where I left off with the hopes that come November 30th I will have a completed first draft, because chasing my NaNoWriMo word count target will be just the motivation I need to finally finish this fun little novel.

Eight days in and its going better than I could ever have expected. The word count that started at 35k is now just over 50k and that puts me a couple of days ahead schedule (hence I could take time out to write this blog post). In short, I am sailing it so far and if I keep this up I will hopefully have that first draft done by the end of November.

As a taster, because I can, here is a short excerpt of Maybe’s Daughter from a couple of days ago (remember this is a first draft, so it has rough edges…)

Well that’s everyone brought nicely up to date, good luck to any fellow NaNoWriMo writers out there and happy word counts to all