Brenda Kezar

Blog posts might be slightly delayed this month: I'm trying my hand at NaNoWriMo again. NaNoWriMo is short for "National Novel Writing Month" and the purpose is to write 50,000 words in the month of November (which calculates out to 1667 words per day). You can visit the website at NaNoWriMo. If it's slow to load, be patient; there are 148,892 signed up for the site (I think they're slowing down Twitter, too, lol).

Since fifty-thousand words doesn't really make a novel (most are 75-100K), I've actually set a goal of 3000 words per day so that I'll have a novel at the end of the month (albeit one in dire need of editing and revision). If I don't make it, that's okay. I'll just have to have a DecemberWriMo to finish it off.

The novel I'm working on this year is called "Witch's Brew" (working title). It's about a cryptozoologist who travels to the badlands of North Dakota in search of a mysterious creature that's been killing cattle. Once he arrives, however, he discovers the desolate hills hold even more dangerous secrets, and his fight for legitimacy as a scientist becomes a fight for his life. I'm hoping (fingers crossed) to do at least three volumes with this character and his adventures.

On the "already contracted for publication" side of things, I contacted the editor of the anthology Zombiday: Festivities of the Flesheaters. The anthology is currently undergoing cover work and should be released sometime in December. My comic short story, "Inhuman Resources," is in the anthology: Black Friday gets a whole new twist when the world's largest retailer has to scrape the bottom of the work-force barrel and hire their first zombie employee.

The really funny part is that parts of the story are true (except for the zombie, of course). I worked through a two-year writer's block by working for this un-named retailer. Maybe I should have added that as a sub-title: "Inhuman Resources: a (mostly) true story."

Then again, we did work the night shift . . . so maybe . . . well, at the very least the zombie part qualifies as an allegory.