National Novel Writing Month on Rickey TV

I participated in National Novel Writing Month 4 years ago. Unfortunately, I started but never finished my novel: a science-fiction thing titled T360. (An excerpt is at the end of this post).

For some reason, I had a brilliant idea to try this again and have writing sessions at Rickey TV on days we are not watching TV -- you know, so the 9 and 14 year-olds can do their homework while I try to work on my next great novel. Looking at our schedule for November however, the daily writing sessions are not possible. Mondays and Tuesdays are out because of Dancing with the Stars -- knowing how excitable I am, I don't think I'll be able to concentrate on writing. Thursdays are for Survivor and Ugly Betty. And Fridays I've reserved for some personal stuff in the evening.

So that leaves a couple Wednesdays and the weekend. I think we'll have Saturday "novel nerd" marathon nights or afternoons, plus some Wednesday evenings. I don't think I will finish again this year, but it should be fun. I need to exercise my imagination again after years of Reality TV stagnation.

If you plan to join NaNoWriMo this year, our writing kick-off party starts this Saturday November 1, 2008 on Rickey TV -- leading up to David Cook's appearance on Saturday Night Live. See you there!

Here's an excerpt from my first efforts 4 years ago:

Tego (formerly, Forgive the prose, I'm a newbie!)

The sensor screamed like a startled choirboy. Tego opened his eyes and looked up at the ceiling in a calm gaze. For a second, he was unsure whether he had just been transported to his mothership's decontaminating chamber -- the moment in his epic dreamscape of his battle with the Andorakian Army when he manages teleport himself from the clutches of Chief Onu's deathclaw -- until he started to wheeze uncontrollably at the invisible miasma that had filled his room.

"Please," he thought, "don't let me die."

The three hours of sleep he allowed himself that evening did not help his reflexes, but already breathless and lungs in pain, he made a break for the north window, lit by a sparkle of lights from the outside.

He pressed the brisk portal activator button, and prepared to jump. The second level at the famed Miranda Quarter Towers didn't provide a view of the Eastside river, but it was at most a break a leg distance from the ground, instead of a break a neck. I'll still be alive no matter, he thought. But after a split second, the portal did not open.

"Goddam."

Another tap, but still nothing.

"Com-puter! O-pen win-dow!" he screamed into the dead chamber.

Nothing.

He pressed his shoulders against the screen, and pushed. The effect turned out to be more of leaning, and deperately, he wished that he now wakes up into his mothership to be decontaminated.

Eyes closed, he waited.

In the next few seconds, Tego found himself floating. The transition between dream-state and wake state (and vice versa), can be at best, a smooth experience, like a opening a card face up. At worst, it can be heart-pounding, like a glass crashing into cement. But for this transition however, Tego, merely found it to be long.

Already, he should be hearing the beeps from his mothership, or if it was in another chapter of the epic, the grunts and steady marching beats of the Andorakian horde coming in. Certainly something had taken place, for he had begun to breath freely now and the sensor had stopped.

It was only when he opened his eyes that the situation became clear.

Right smack in front of him was Miranda Tower 1, his home for the past 17 years, burning from five floors up. The embers rained harmlessly all around, and on the ground beneath his feet, the remnants of his room's north window.

"Did I do it?" he thought, feeling his limbs to check for a broken leg.

A familiar voice however, gave him the answer: "Tego..."

The voice came from the humanoid figure behind him, a KB 9000 Model X2, the flagship product and sales leader of the Howard Robot Corporation.

"Kenny Boy?"

"Master Tego! We must leave this facility. I have orders to take you to a safe place. The visitors have taken your father."