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For those of you playing along at home, you may have noticed a lack of NaNo updates. This is because I have been frantically working on the novel in a last ditch effort to meet the 50,000 word goal. The most exciting development of the past few days has been the transition of the status bar from red to orange, indicating that, with only three days to go, I am finally catching up. I’ve already written about 2500 words today, and plan on writing at least another 2500. More, if I can. It’s down to the wire, but I think – nay, know – that I can make it.

Lots of twos. Hey, I haven’t given up yet! I’m bridging the gap as we speak, having written well over 3,000 words today alone! I still have about an hour more of writing to do which will hopefully bring me up to 4,000 for the day. Then tomorrow, I hope to clear 6,000 words! Though that seems unlikely. If the timer in OpenOffice is accurate, I have been working on this novel for just around 65 hours and have saved it 564 times! Amazing!

I am once again just barely staying ahead of the dreaded red bar. I’ve written almost 3,000 words since I last posted, and if I had been on schedule before that would mean something. As it is, I may have hit a special point where I can finally write the required 1667 words a day. Except now I have to write 2030 words a day to keep up. ALACK. Here is a picture of kittens to help me feel better.

The collective writing forces of all NaNoWriMo particpants have hammered out 92,014,712 words as of right now, an ever increasing number. So then, what’s my problem? Probably posting things here or playing GTA: San Andreas instead of writing. I’ll get to work now.

I’m posting this as I write my novel, so that word count won’t last long. Still, I am very much in the orange “danger” zone. If that bar turns red than I will be “critical” and in danger of not being able to complete the novel. However, in a flash of insight I didn’t even realize I had, it can only turn red if I am 50% behind with less than half of the month to go. At least, I think. I had originally programmed it to turn red if I had written less than half of the target words by that day, but I am currently in that situation and the bar is still orange. I guess I just messed up the code. While I mull over the currently foriegn concept of “catching up,” you can read another exciting and utterly random excerpt from Megalomania!

“We have reports of planetary seizures from Aldeberan IIB, Kumari Ni, and Eiger’s Rock.”

The last planet in the list caused Samantha Bates to do a double-take.

“Eiger’s Rock isn’t a planet, sir” she said, looking up at the main communication screen.

Her commander, an admiral in the Centauran Fleet, simply shrugged. “You say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to.”

That may have been, except this was more a case of “you say po-tay-to, I say julienne fries.” Even though the definition of what constituted a planet was pretty solid, some people just wouldn’t accept the fact that a fragment of a previously whole planet was not a planet itself. Further, the fragment of a fragment was even less of a planet. Eiger’s Rock was just that.

Dr Jerome Eiger, a brilliant scientist with a bit too much free time, believed he had developed a way of blowing up an entire planet. The Integrated Association of Planets, a group of like minded planetary governments spanning the better part of the known galaxy, was not all that thrilled with the idea. Their main task was to make sure that everybody got along as well as humanly possible, but they also existed to ensure that the bare minimum of planets exploded, zero being the target number. Eiger was very adamant that they let him test his method. Threats were made, Eiger was arrested, tried, and jailed, and everybody thought the whole ordeal was over. A few months later, Eiger escaped. A few weeks after that, Solo, the only planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B, exploded into a dozen pieces. Mere days followed, and the pieces suddenly shattered into millions of tiny fragments. Eiger was blamed for the explosion, though he was never found, presumed to be killed in the destruction of Solo. The fragments continued to crumble, until a single large chunk reamined. This piece was roughly as large as Earth’s moon and horribly mishapen. It came to be know as Eiger’s Rock, and was not by any means a planet. It seemed, however, that it was a target for megalomaniacs.

I enjoy being over 3000 words behind. No really, it’s quite fun. You should try it.

Today, instead of doing something predictable like posting another excerpt or butchering the conventions of the English language, I will post some quick character bios. This will actually be a mini-writing exercise, which is sort of like a mini-game, but less annoying.

• Roger Plotnik – The main character by virtue that he is mentioned first. He is a middle-aged man who spent his life squandering his genius learning skills he’d never use. Without a clear goal, his life spiraled downward until he found that he was not that bad at taking over planets. The planets he took over were generally terrible and no one would have wanted them anyway, which led to the near breakdown and sudden epiphany he has at the beginning of the novel.
• Victor Segue – A master of planetary domination, Segue has become so adept at his job that he is able to take over planets via telepresence. He is a ruthless and cruel ruler, when he can be bothered to show up. The rest of the time he delegates control of his worlds to his top lieutenants. Segue is slightly older than Plotnik, and these two will cross paths in a big way later on.
• Samantha Bates – Captain Bates is part of the Anti-domination Task Force and commands her own vessel yet-to-be named. She and her crew have taken down more global dictators than any other, and she maintains a somewhat special position in the Centauran Space Fleet because of it. I’m currently writing her chapter and don’t know much more about her yet. Longtime fans should note that Samantha is an early member of the Bates line, and began the family’s trend of pursuing justice and truth.

There are also some minor characters like the planet destroying Dr Eiger and Segue’s right hand man Nelson, but they’re hardly worth mentioning at this juncture.

We’re already three days and I’m only, what, 3135 words behind? Stellar! I’m actually not that far behind, but I’m too lazy to plug in my thumb drive, open the novel, check the word count, and update the site. I have added a plot excerpt to my NaNo profile which I will duplicate here because you have no idea how much I love putting things in quoted boxes. Is that weird?

Roger Plotnik opened his eyes to the unpleasant yet expected fact that he had a hangover.

“Auggh,” he groaned.

The hangover was a direct result of a party the previous night, as many hangovers are. An unfortunate point about this party was that Plotnik had been alone, making it less of a party and more of a solitary drinking binge. It was supposed to have been an amazing event, celebrating the successful takeover of the entire planet on which he now stood, or more accurately, laid in pain. The entire population of Plotnikant (former designation HD 61248 IV) had been invited to pay homage to their new supreme ruler. It didn’t help that the party was held on such short notice any more than it helped that Plotnikant had no inhabitants, which further fueled his drinking.

He got up from the bed and walked over to the window, realizing once he got there that this had merely been a nice idea and that he was still laying in bed. He glanced at a nearby clock which far-too-brightly informed him that it was eleventy-six in the morning. A moment passed during which he tried to comprehend this information, swore unintelligibly at the clock to make sense, then decided that he wouldn’t get up until the clock showed a proper time just to spite it.