Hello, and welcome to a Round of Words in 80 Days – the writing challenge that knows you have a life. If that sounds like your cup of tea, then you can find more information at the website.
First of all, a bit of pimping! Pre-order our Australian Christmas anthology! It comes out Monday! It has 8 amazing stories, including Operation: Sugarplum, my modern-day retelling of The Nutcracker.
Here’s the cover reveal!
We’re having a Twitter launch party on Monday at 7pm Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time… I have no idea what time that is for most of you. It may be small hours but join us if you can using hashtags #ChristmasAustralis and #FrighteninglyFestive.
Blogging fell by the wayside for a couple of weeks. We’re nearly a week into NaNo now. I’m already making mental notes on how to improve the story in later drafts, and I should probably actually write those notes down somewhere. I’m really hopeful about this series.
I didn’t quite finish my outlines in as much detail as I’d hoped, but I’ve got enough to work with. Some things are changing as I write, but so far it’s mostly following along.
I’m consisitently writing about a thousand words a day, which will not see me win NaNo, but will hopefully see me write my two sequels to Operation: Sugarplum.
Excerpt? Yeah, let’s have an excerpt. Why not? In this section, Max has called Clara to ask if she’d like to help him test his ability to bring VR characters out of their game and into the real world. The Veritas, his VR system, is nearly live, but he’s got a bit of downtime before the launch.
“I’ve taken the next two weeks off. There’ll be a lot of media attention when the Veritas is released, so I want to be, you know, awake for it. Means I’ve actually got some spare time to muck around. And since you already know what I can do, I thought it might be easier if you could help me. Rather than me trying to explain everything to someone else.”
“Look, I’d be happy to. Just… I mean, I don’t want another Rat King coming after me. Can we make sure of that?”
“I’ll be using a game that has no villain yet. Anything I do pull out of the game will be harmless.”
“Famous last words…”
Indeed, Clara. Indeed.
Also, if you’re doing NaNoWriMo, come be my buddy!
See you next week!
Emily Wrayburn 
I had the same thought as that last line. I’m glad the writing is going well for you.
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