This afternoon was the Chicago TGIO Party for NaNoWriMo and unlike the kickoff party, there are no pictures. The turnout was notably smaller than the half-a-million that we seemed to have at the start of November, but it was still a pretty impressive 20 or so.
Sam from the WrimoRadio podcast was there (as like I've said before, he's our resident celebrity for Illinois::Chicago) and unlike the last two times, I did not escape an interview this time. So if you hear someone babbling about NaNoFiMo on the wrapup podcast in a little under a week, we'll pretend like it's not me. :)
Chances are if I do have a quote make the podcast it will instead be about the philosophy of returning to the competition for a second (or third or sixth) year in a row. I stated that my objective for this year now that I proved in the first year that I could write 50,000 was that this year I would write 50,000 better words.
Though he asked me my comparative feelings about my two novels and after thinking really hard I said, "your first one is always special."
I don't think that one's going to make the podcast since the last thing Chris Baty and company are going to want is people thinking after the first it doesn't mean the same.
Thankfully rosemilk was there to correct me that "each novel is special because they're different. So, expect to hear her instead.
I'm not cynical about NaNoWriMo by any means, I'm just not eloquent and so I went for the one-liner. ;)
It wouldn't be a TGIO party unless I offended at least two people though, right? The first person was this Brit living in Chicago who was one of our great members of Team Chicago 2005. theakson is the name he goes by on the nanowrimo.org boards. Anyhow, Sam was interviewing me and asked what my novel was about. I told him the whole plot, but I think all that the other writer heard was anti-British.
Yeah it didn't go right from there. Especially after I told him that I was going to Manchester in April. Being a former Londoner, he compared Manchester to being south of the Mason-Dixon line and said that it was pretty much a crap city (my words paraphrased, not his). Later he accused me of "barely being able to speak English" and being "a serial killer." The only thing missing was him punching me in the face.
Though I swear I'm never going to get a crush on him. ;)
The second person I offended was someone who is a big poster of the Character and Plot Realism Q&A boards on the NaNo site. I said that some of the people on there scared me because you can ask, "how do you properly dispose of a dismembered body?" and people will answer.
He let me know, right then and there that he was one of the people who answered that question when it was proposed. He later went on to explain to us how to sneak a pocket knife onto a plane (I won't repeat it here since, you know, I am writing a novel about government surveilance).
And yet I'm the axe murderer. :)
You know the day is not going your way when the ML accuses you of being a cradle robber.
Anyhow, there was some positive conversation during the course of the day too as I reconnected with some of my writing buddies who aren't on LiveJournal like mjmiguelito (and I learned that he's actually a Fire fan, who knew) and had conversation with my little clique.
I swear, however, that cute girls grow on trees in the Chicago writing community as there were more than a few again this year. But that's not why I go to these things, I swear.
But the most important development was that snowowl (who I found out today actually has a LiveJournal account) and reliantfc3 verified the final results of the Chicago/St. Louis Word Count War.
And, as I reported back on the 30th, Chicago romped by approximately 750,000 words. About the end of the party, I got a wireless signal so rosemilk, squirrelgirl22, myself, and the few people who were left posted the following message on the St. Louis boards (this time under my name and not rosemilk's) called "We Own You St. Louis":
"Greetings from the Chicago TGIO party!
You are now officially our bitches. We beat you by over 750,000 words. Yes that is almost a million.
We regret to inform you that we may have to challenge someone of our own statures next year. We are considering London. If you do not bring your "a" game next year you are gone.
No longer our peers. :(
Well, better luck next year when you challenge Cleveland. They may be a little more your speed.
And we did outdrink you.
So there."So far no angry e-mails like rosemilk got at the kickoff party. So far. So there's the big news. Snowowl and I kicked around the London idea for next year and we'll see how it flies. We'll probably still challenge St. Louis because no one seemed to object to multiple challenges this year, we just started small.
And finally I got into an argument with some Chelsea fans (stupid Chelsea/Middlesbrough match was on at Fado) because this one girl didn't even know who Fulham was. I mean, here's this girl wearing a Chelsea jersey saying that Manchester United is the Yankees and not Chelsea and she can't even acknowledge there's another team less than two miles from their own ground that are in the same division.
That and when I said, "there's another club in West London," she started naming off all the East London clubs.
So I guess I don't feel too bad because she's an idiot at both geography and footcer. ;)
Today when I got home I watched "
2009: Lost Memories." This is an alternate history movie where Japan is still in control of Korea because Japan and the United States were allies in WWII (there's a lot more to the alternate history than that, but this is the cementing event).
Anyhow, as most of the commenters on IMDB have already posted, "nice idea, shame about the movie."
See, the problem with it is that the alternate history is corrected through time travel. So they set up this alternate history and then go back in time to correct it. It was basically switching genres from alternate historical fiction to fantasy mid-stream (and as rosemilk and I were discussing, the two can get pretty close at times with only real world physics and zoological constraints separating the two).
But the idea was great and pretty close to my novel. The Korean terrorist group trying to get the time traveling device even meets behind a bar. Looks like I'm not the first to think that a logical location for secret meetings is the back room of bars. :)
When they first go into the room, I actually said, "crap, there goes my story right down the tubes, it's already been done."
But I'd like to think mine is a lot different since mine focuses on the terrorist group and not the police (like the movie did) and actually is a little more character driven. Not that "2009: Lost Memories" didn't have some amazing characters (it's a Korean police officer and a Japanese police office going head to head even though they start out on the same side and each has their own motivations) but there ended up being a lot of explosions.
Still, while the movie was only slightly above average (and a lot of people don't even give it that much credit), I appreciated it because I haven't delved into other people's alternate historical fiction since I began to write mine.
It's good to see that I uphold some of the conventions and shatter others. That's what I try to do in each genre I write in.
Speaking of which, I think rosemilk and I dared each other on the train (though I was pretty drunk at the time) to write in each other's genres next year. So I have to write fantasy and she has to write historical fiction, literary fiction, or romance.
That should be a hoot!
I think we'll just do that in April for NaNoFools (since I guarantee our novels in the other genre will be unintentionally funny anyhow) and call it a day. :)
