On Writing: National Novel Writing Month

For as long as I can remember, I've loved to write stories. English has always been my favourite subject and my love of reading definitely has something to do with that. I want to write books like the ones I read and review on this blog. I want to write books that someone else will read over and over again and, for the past few years, I've taken part in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). This post will be the first in a series of posts about my writing process, how I write and, how NaNoWriMo 2015 ends up going.

For those of you who don't know, NaNoWriMo is a yearly event where writers all over the world, attempt to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of Novemeber. Which is a crazy thing to do, but it's something that I look forward to every single year. Now, 50,000 words is not a complete novel - a completed novel is usually between 80,000-100,000 words but, by the end of November, you'll have at least part of your novel completed, which is a lot more than you have at the start of the month!

Now, if writing a novel in 30 days isn't your thing, then there is something called National Blog Posting Month I think - where you write a blog post every day for 30 days. I don't know too much about this actually - it's a relatively new discovery for me, but if you do run a blog and fancy a challenge, then maybe this is for you!

National Novel Writing Month isn't just for adults. There's also a Young Writers Programme (which for the last four years is the programme that I've done - 2015 is the first year I've progressed to the adult version!) and, as the name suggests, this is where young people write a novel. Unlike the adult programme, the word count can be changed to suit ability and, I know in the US a lot of schools make NaNoWriMo a part of the curriculum and students really enjoy it.

If you're interested in joining up for 2015 (there's still a little time left!) then go to the NaNoWriMo website to sign up and create your novel. If you're interested in the Young Writers Programme, then head to the Young Writers Programme website where there's information for both young people and educators.

I hope you enjoy this series - if there's something you want to know about writing then ask away and I'll try to answer it!

Image from NaNoWriMo - no Copyright Intended

Halloween Book Recommendations

I'm such a bad blogger - I know, I know, I'm sorry! To make it up to you, here is a list of Halloween, spooky, creepy book recommendations I have gathered from the lovely people of the internet and a new list of books for me to pick up and try myself (because I obviously have so much time on my hands!) are there any that I've missed?

• The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey - Melanie is a very special girl. Dr. Caldwell calls her "our little genius." Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite, but they don't laugh.
  
  Melanie loves school. She loves learning about spelling and sums and the world outside the classroom and the children's cells. She tells her favorite teacher all the things she'll do when she grows up. Melanie doesn't know why this makes Miss Justineau look sad.

• Echo Boy by Matt Heig - Audrey's father taught her that to stay human in the modern world, she had to build a moat around herself; a moat of books and music, philosophy and dreams. A moat that makes Audrey different from the echoes: sophisticated, emotionless machines, built to resemble humans and to work for human masters. Daniel is an echo - but he's not like the others. He feels a connection with Audrey; a feeling Daniel knows he was never designed to have, and cannot explain. And when Audrey is placed in terrible danger, he's determined to save her. The Echo Boy is a powerful story about love, loss and what makes us truly human.

• Dancing Jax by Robin Jarvis - At the end of a track, on the outskirts of an ordinary coastal town, lies a dilapidated house. Once, a group of amateur ghost hunters spent the night there. Two of them don’t like to speak about the experience. The third can’t speak about it. He went into the basement, you see, and afterwards he screamed so hard and so long he tore his vocal cords.
  
  Now, a group of teenagers have decided to hang out in the old haunted house. Dismissing the fears of the others, their leader Jezza goes down into the basement… and comes back up with a children’s book, full of strange and colourful tales of a playing-card world, a fairytale world, full of Jacks, Queens and Kings, unicorns and wolves.
  
  But the book is no fairytale. Written by Austerly Fellows, a mysterious turn-of-the-century occultist, it just might be the gateway to something terrifying…and awfully final. As the children and teenagers of the town are swept up by its terrible power, swept into its seductive world, something has begun that could usher in hell on earth. Soon, the only people standing in its way are a young boy with a sci-fi obsession, and his dad – an unassuming maths teacher called Martin…

• Say her name by James Dawson - Roberta 'Bobbie' Rowe is not the kind of person who believes in ghosts. A Halloween dare at her ridiculously spooky boarding school is no big deal, especially when her best friend Naya and cute local boy Caine agree to join in too. They are ordered to summon the legendary ghost of 'Bloody Mary': say her name five times in front of a candlelit mirror, and she shall appear... But, surprise surprise, nothing happens. Or does it?
  
  Next morning, Bobbie finds a message on her bathroom mirror... five days... but what does it mean? And who left it there? Things get increasingly weird and more terrifying for Bobbie and Naya, until it becomes all too clear that Bloody Mary was indeed called from the afterlife that night, and she is definitely not a friendly ghost. Bobbie, Naya and Caine are now in a race against time before their five days are up and Mary comes for them, as she has come for countless others before... A truly spine-chilling yet witty horror from shortlisted 'Queen of Teen' author James Dawson

• Zom-b by Darren Shans - Zom-B is a radical new series about a zombie apocalypse, told in the first person by one of its victims. The series combines classic Shan action with a fiendishly twisting plot and hard-hitting and thought-provoking moral questions dealing with racism, abuse of power and more. This is challenging material, which will captivate existing Shan fans and bring in many new ones. As Darren says, "It's a big, sprawling, vicious tale...a grisly piece of escapism, and a barbed look at the world in which we live. Each book in the series is short, fast-paced and bloody. A high body-count is guaranteed!"

• The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman - After the grisly murder of his entire family, a toddler wanders into a graveyard where the ghosts and other supernatural residents agree to raise him as one of their own.
  
  Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead. There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod's family...

• Daughters unto Devils by Amy Lukavics - When sixteen-year-old Amanda Verner's family decides to move from their small mountain cabin to the vast prairie, she hopes it is her chance for a fresh start. She can leave behind the memory of the past winter; of her sickly Ma giving birth to a baby sister who cries endlessly; of the terrifying visions she saw as her sanity began to slip, the victim of cabin fever; and most of all, the memories of the boy she has been secretly meeting with as a distraction from her pain. The boy whose baby she now carries.
  
  When the Verners arrive at their new home, a large cabin abandoned by its previous owners, they discover the inside covered in blood. And as the days pass, it is obvious to Amanda that something isn't right on the prairie. She's heard stories of lands being tainted by evil, of men losing their minds and killing their families, and there is something strange about the doctor and his son who live in the woods on the edge of the prairie. But with the guilt and shame of her sins weighing on her, Amanda can't be sure if the true evil lies in the land, or deep within her soul.

• Ravens Gate by Anthony Horowitz - When Matt Freeman gets into trouble with the police, he's sent to be fostered in Yorkshire. It's not long before he senses there's something wrong with his guardian: with the whole village. Then Matt learns about the Old Ones and begins to understand just how he is different. But no one will believe him; no one can help.

• The Diviners by Libba Bray - Evie O’Neill has been exiled from her boring old hometown and shipped off to the bustling streets of New York City—and she is pos-i-tute-ly ecstatic. It’s 1926, and New York is filled with speakeasies, Ziegfeld girls, and rakish pickpockets. The only catch is that she has to live with her uncle Will and his unhealthy obsession with the occult.
  
  Evie worries he’ll discover her darkest secret: a supernatural power that has only brought her trouble so far. But when the police find a murdered girl branded with a cryptic symbol and Will is called to the scene, Evie realizes her gift could help catch a serial killer.
  
  As Evie jumps headlong into a dance with a murderer, other stories unfold in the city that never sleeps. A young man named Memphis is caught between two worlds. A chorus girl named Theta is running from her past. A student named Jericho hides a shocking secret. And unknown to all, something dark and evil has awakened.

• The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman - Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.
  
  Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.

• The Dead House by Dawn Kurtagich - Part-psychological thriller, part-urban legend, this is an unsettling narrative made up of diary entries, interview transcripts, film footage transcripts and medical notes. Twenty-five years ago, Elmbridge High burned down. Three people were killed and one pupil, Carly Johnson, disappeared. Now a diary has been found in the ruins of the school. The diary belongs to Kaitlyn Johnson, Carly’s identical twin sister. But Carly didn’t have a twin . . .
  
  Re-opened police records, psychiatric reports, transcripts of video footage and fragments of diary reveal a web of deceit and intrigue, violence and murder, raising a whole lot more questions than it answers.
  
  Who was Kaitlyn and why did she only appear at night? Did she really exist or was she a figment of a disturbed mind? What were the illicit rituals taking place at the school? And just what did happen at Elmbridge in the events leading up to ‘the Johnson Incident’?

• Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake - Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.
  
  So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father's mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. They follow legends and local lore, destroy the murderous dead, and keep pesky things like the future and friends at bay.
  
  Searching for a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas expects the usual: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he's never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, now stained red and dripping with blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.
  
  Yet she spares Cas's life.

Now, I can only vouch for the Anna Dressed in Blood being amazing but all the others sound really intriguing to me and I hope you've found something to suit the Halloween season. Thank you to everyone who recommended these books to me and there should be (hopefully) another post up soon.

All blurbs from Goodreads - no Copyright Intended