Yes, that time of the year is definitely coming once again.  A month sometimes isn't long enough to prepare, or it's an agonizing wait.  Sometimes it's both.

It's almost kind of strange how much it's a part of my life now.  I can't imagine not doing it even though I no longer am an ML for my region.  That's still kind of strange to me as well.  I've been doing this for twelve years now and I was ML for a good majority of those years.  I'm used to it now but there's a little part of me that still misses commiserating with fellow MLs about things, sharing ideas, going through that frantic-but-fun planning stage of trying to organize events AND my own NaNo.  I have happy memories though, and that's enough for me.

This year's novel is fantasy, as usual.  I just can't deviate from the genre - and really, why should I?  I love the genre, I read the genre, my imagination spends about 95% of its time in the genre.  I don't really have the mind for something like sci-fi or mystery or anything like that, and that doesn't bother me at all.  Although I've contemplatedy YA a few times.  I may try that one day, we'll have to see.  This year's story had a bit of influence from the movie Thor, the newer one with Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston that everyone's fawning over.  At least a couple of the characters.  And the idea of different realms/worlds, which also kind of reminded me a bit of the realm idea Dennis L. McKiernan used in his series.  Traveling between them won't be as complicated or even similar to either story though.  I'm still ironing out the details, this story is proving to be tricky - took me three days just to pin down the general arc and where to start the story alone.  I like where this one's going through.  The main character starts out in the realm her mother comes from with some of her memories surrounding an event back home purposefully hidden away.  The only problem is the only other person there who knew what she had hidden away and helped her do it is now gone, and with the same dream haunting her every night for the past ten years she decides to head home.  What will follow is a whole number of truths from all sides of the debate, no one's completely innocent in this story but the severity of those choices will vary from one character to the next.  No one knows the whole scenario but it will be discovered.  The main character will also get her full memory back in the midst of all this.  I've never done the whole grand discovery angle before.  Perhaps it's all the Murder, She Wrote re-runs I've been watching, haha!  That show is amazing.

You can find me here, if you're on the site as well.  Shoot me a NaNomail sometime.