Tag: NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo – April – 2026 – Day 6

The Maple Leafs are playing, and so I thought I would juggle watching them play and work on my NaNoWriMo project at the same time.

It seemed like a good way to get in 3 hours of work and a little entertainment on the side.

But…

First period down, and the Maple Leafs are 2 goals down.

What I first thought was going to be easy is now becoming mission impossible.

After the second Philadelphia goal, Chester, my stalwart anti-everything cat, comes down to see what the commotion is.  By that I mean, almost yelling at the TV screen.

A lot of good that’s going to do when they’re 12,000 miles away on the other side of the world.

And by the look on Chester’s face, I think he thinks it’s a waste of time too.  Or maybe that’s his usual, I don’t give a $%^^%$ expression he has most of the time.

We have the Philadelphia feed, so we’re getting the joy from the intermission analysts at their team’s lead, but it does take me back to Philadelphia when we were there a few years back, when America was worth visiting, when they cut to shots of the city.

And, of course, instead of having my eyes on the story, I’m now thinking of a subplot, yes, you guessed it, in Philadelphia, which is not very far from New York, where the main action takes place.

Then…

We score.  It’s now a more respectable scoreline, but Anderson has his work cut out for him, and I’m thinking of turning off the sound because I don’t want to hear any more praise for their young stars.

The story proceeds, taking out the outline pages and looking to see where it can fit in.  Yes, I see a gap where I can fit in an interlude and scribble a few notes.

End of the second period.  Still 2 goals to 1 down.

Start of the third period.  Chester decided to jump up on the table and, seeing the pencil sitting there, started to push it around with his paw. I snatch it away, and he gives me a chastising swipe.

Blast him, while my attention was diverted, we score again, and I missed it.  Thank heavens for the replay.  Over and over.

I finish the notes for the interlude, and the game ends in a draw.  We now move to overtime.

I get the first few lines of the chapter I began working on at the start of the game, and just as the words are flowing, overtime ends with no score, and we go into a shootout.  And before you know it, the game’s over, and we’ve lost.

I swear, Chester is smirking, so I pick him up and put him on the floor with a very stern admonishment.

No, I’m not taking the loss badly, but there are a few bad guys about to die horribly.

NaNoWriMo – April – 2026 – Day 6

The Maple Leafs are playing, and so I thought I would juggle watching them play and work on my NaNoWriMo project at the same time.

It seemed like a good way to get in 3 hours of work and a little entertainment on the side.

But…

First period down, and the Maple Leafs are 2 goals down.

What I first thought was going to be easy is now becoming mission impossible.

After the second Philadelphia goal, Chester, my stalwart anti-everything cat, comes down to see what the commotion is.  By that I mean, almost yelling at the TV screen.

A lot of good that’s going to do when they’re 12,000 miles away on the other side of the world.

And by the look on Chester’s face, I think he thinks it’s a waste of time too.  Or maybe that’s his usual, I don’t give a $%^^%$ expression he has most of the time.

We have the Philadelphia feed, so we’re getting the joy from the intermission analysts at their team’s lead, but it does take me back to Philadelphia when we were there a few years back, when America was worth visiting, when they cut to shots of the city.

And, of course, instead of having my eyes on the story, I’m now thinking of a subplot, yes, you guessed it, in Philadelphia, which is not very far from New York, where the main action takes place.

Then…

We score.  It’s now a more respectable scoreline, but Anderson has his work cut out for him, and I’m thinking of turning off the sound because I don’t want to hear any more praise for their young stars.

The story proceeds, taking out the outline pages and looking to see where it can fit in.  Yes, I see a gap where I can fit in an interlude and scribble a few notes.

End of the second period.  Still 2 goals to 1 down.

Start of the third period.  Chester decided to jump up on the table and, seeing the pencil sitting there, started to push it around with his paw. I snatch it away, and he gives me a chastising swipe.

Blast him, while my attention was diverted, we score again, and I missed it.  Thank heavens for the replay.  Over and over.

I finish the notes for the interlude, and the game ends in a draw.  We now move to overtime.

I get the first few lines of the chapter I began working on at the start of the game, and just as the words are flowing, overtime ends with no score, and we go into a shootout.  And before you know it, the game’s over, and we’ve lost.

I swear, Chester is smirking, so I pick him up and put him on the floor with a very stern admonishment.

No, I’m not taking the loss badly, but there are a few bad guys about to die horribly.

NaNoWriMo – April – 2026 – Day 5

Although the main reason for its existence is to follow Friday, in some cases, it is the first day of the weekend.

Once upon a time, Saturday used to be a working day, you know, those days when we worked a 48-hour week.  Then it became a 44-hour week, and we only worked in the morning.

As time progressed, we started working 40 hour weeks and had both Saturday and Sunday off.  Sunday, of course, was always a non-starter.  The church made sure you were able to go to church on Sunday.

As time progressed, weekends started to begin on a Friday, with the day in question being granted by employers as a Rostered Day Off, provided you made up the time during the preceding two-week period.

Now it seems the standing joke is we should work weekends and have the week off.  Odd, it hasn’t quite caught on yet.

But, as usual, I digress…

After a week that got out of control, Saturday was supposed to pull it back into some sort of shape.  In a sense, it happened.  I looked at that list of things I had to do, picked one and got on with it.

PI Walthenson is now about to get a second case, as intimated at the end of his first, involving not only the search for his missing father, but also the search for those who kidnapped him.

That done, I moved onto the helicopter story, otherwise titled ‘What happens after writing an action-packed start’, and I have been researching and making notes for the third section of this story, starting at episode 31, and it looks like we’re going back to Africa, and the remoter part of the Democratic Republic of Congo to rescue the two agents he failed to the first time.

And it is NaNoWriMo time, and I have to keep the writing project going, a story that has now been tentatively renamed to Betrayal. Very spy-ish, isn’t it?

With that, there is the upkeep of the blog.  I never thought maintaining material for a blog would be so hard.

But…

Now I can say last week wasn’t a total disaster.

And, tomorrow the Maple Leafs are playing.  Can’t wait.

NaNoWriMo – April – 2026 – Day 5

Although the main reason for its existence is to follow Friday, in some cases, it is the first day of the weekend.

Once upon a time, Saturday used to be a working day, you know, those days when we worked a 48-hour week.  Then it became a 44-hour week, and we only worked in the morning.

As time progressed, we started working 40 hour weeks and had both Saturday and Sunday off.  Sunday, of course, was always a non-starter.  The church made sure you were able to go to church on Sunday.

As time progressed, weekends started to begin on a Friday, with the day in question being granted by employers as a Rostered Day Off, provided you made up the time during the preceding two-week period.

Now it seems the standing joke is we should work weekends and have the week off.  Odd, it hasn’t quite caught on yet.

But, as usual, I digress…

After a week that got out of control, Saturday was supposed to pull it back into some sort of shape.  In a sense, it happened.  I looked at that list of things I had to do, picked one and got on with it.

PI Walthenson is now about to get a second case, as intimated at the end of his first, involving not only the search for his missing father, but also the search for those who kidnapped him.

That done, I moved onto the helicopter story, otherwise titled ‘What happens after writing an action-packed start’, and I have been researching and making notes for the third section of this story, starting at episode 31, and it looks like we’re going back to Africa, and the remoter part of the Democratic Republic of Congo to rescue the two agents he failed to the first time.

And it is NaNoWriMo time, and I have to keep the writing project going, a story that has now been tentatively renamed to Betrayal. Very spy-ish, isn’t it?

With that, there is the upkeep of the blog.  I never thought maintaining material for a blog would be so hard.

But…

Now I can say last week wasn’t a total disaster.

And, tomorrow the Maple Leafs are playing.  Can’t wait.

NaNoWriMo – April – 2026 – Day 1

I’m supposed to be writing my quota of words for NaNoWriMo, but there’s a problem.

After a late night, the Maple Leafs are playing the Philadelphia Flyers at 9 am our time, Brisbane, so I’ve got to get up and put it on.

And yes, the usual problem crops up: the internet is running slowly, and connecting to the live feed is traumatic. It starts working, just in time for the national anthems, and once again, we can hear that of our adopted country, Canada.

Then we get to see the first few minutes before the internet dies. What can you expect when the government takes on a huge infrastructure project? Delays, cost overruns, and compromises are expected as it looks to rein in costs. Result: an internet that’s utter crap.

We get to see parts of the first period, none of the second. I call my daughter, who’s as invested in ice hockey as we are, and she tells us she’s using a different host. We change, and it all comes good, so much so we get to see the last period, the overtime, and then an exemplary bout of goalkeeping from Frederick Anderson, opps, sorry, he’s moved on, and it’s someone else, to win us the game in the shootout.

By that time it’s afternoon.

Time for writing? No. I have to make some meatball pasta with spaghetti for tonight.

That consumes the next couple of hours.

Perhaps it’s for the best. I’ve got a title and a few scribbled notes about a tired spy, and never being let off the hook. Getting that start, sometimes, is harder than the next 400 pages. As for words written, maybe later.

NaNoWriMo – April – 2026 – Day 1

I’m supposed to be writing my quota of words for NaNoWriMo, but there’s a problem.

After a late night, the Maple Leafs are playing the Philadelphia Flyers at 9 am our time, Brisbane, so I’ve got to get up and put it on.

And yes, the usual problem crops up: the internet is running slowly, and connecting to the live feed is traumatic. It starts working, just in time for the national anthems, and once again, we can hear that of our adopted country, Canada.

Then we get to see the first few minutes before the internet dies. What can you expect when the government takes on a huge infrastructure project? Delays, cost overruns, and compromises are expected as it looks to rein in costs. Result: an internet that’s utter crap.

We get to see parts of the first period, none of the second. I call my daughter, who’s as invested in ice hockey as we are, and she tells us she’s using a different host. We change, and it all comes good, so much so we get to see the last period, the overtime, and then an exemplary bout of goalkeeping from Frederick Anderson, opps, sorry, he’s moved on, and it’s someone else, to win us the game in the shootout.

By that time it’s afternoon.

Time for writing? No. I have to make some meatball pasta with spaghetti for tonight.

That consumes the next couple of hours.

Perhaps it’s for the best. I’ve got a title and a few scribbled notes about a tired spy, and never being let off the hook. Getting that start, sometimes, is harder than the next 400 pages. As for words written, maybe later.

NANOWRIMO – November 2025 – Day 30

…

The Third Son of a Duke

…

As is the requirement. The words had reached the target.  There are more than 50,000, but I use this as a round number.  It’s more like 60,000, and will probably be more because I’m yet to flesh out the tango that our protagonist and Louise have on the way to Port Said

Dance is so much more expressive than words, but these two have words, and at the end, a smouldering look passes between them, one that transcends words and, if truth be known, could have set the dancefloor on fire.

And yet, there is just one kiss between them the whole voyage.

It’s a story that sees the awakening of the man our protagonist is to become.

It is a story of a girl who was treated badly, wronged desperately, and left no choice but to flee.

It had my grandmother on a ship of hopeful women, wanting to change their lives for the better with a new start and better opportunities in a new land.

For some, it is heading into a storm, for others, more of the same.  Each learns that to become something different, they must change everything they know, and that is to them a lifetime of being told what to do, where to go, and what their life would consist of.

And it’s a story of wate, of human life, and the reasons when all said and done, hardly make sense to any of those who survived, those who considered themselves lucky, and then, others who don’t.

There was going to be no more wars.

It was the war to end all wars.

21 years later, they were all back at it again, having learned nothing.

NANOWRIMO – November 2025 – Day 29

…

The Third Son of a Duke

…

There will be an epilogue and a reunion of the original Oroma passengers, all back in England more by coincidence than by design.

That part of the story that involves my grandmother, she went back to England in 1954, the year after I was born.  I speculate who it might be that she visited. I suspect my brother, who went back to England many times to talk to those relatives of ours that we know about, and to the near relatives of my grandmother, who have some idea of who she talked to out in Australia.

My grandfather, who labelled himself a salesman on his record, both leaving Australia and returning, made me instantly think of him as one of those snake oil salesmen.  My grandmother put her profession as home duties.

She was much more than that, and I hope she rose above that mundanity, because she was once an adventuress. 

It is a fascinating meeting between them, after all those years.

Life for all of them has presented challenges, and it will highlight some of them.

At least when they returned home, women had finally been given the vote, but to a certain extent, nothing had really changed.  In the fifties, women were still expected to have children and run houses and look after husbands.  I suspect for a few, those husbands, if any, were in for a very bad shock.

..

2850 words, for a total of 50000 words.

NANOWRIMO – November 2025 – Day 28

…

The Third Son of a Duke

…

This is where the war becomes real.

And the whole thing is replayed in his mind, to the point where…

Yes, and no.

He wakes in a hospital tent, a shadowy figure that is one of the nurses.

It’s odd, but I had written the basis of this part of the story right after he and Louise had their parting kiss on the Orama in Melbourne.  She has to disembark, he has to go to Queensland, and when either of them could have made excuses, neither did.

It was quite simple, sometime in the future, they would find each other if they were meant to be together.

After those last few days before departing for Egypt with Margaret, he knows who is the one for him, and although he doesn’t find her, curiously, he is always two steps behind, chasing a shadow; it is that belief that keeps him going, that last parting kiss that tells him he has to survive.

The shadow, a familiar face.

But you will have to read the story to find out who…

…

1880 words, for a total of 47150 words.

NANOWRIMO – November 2025 – Day 27

…

The Third Son of a Duke

…

By now, the idea of finding Louise is but a distant memory.

A week in the second and third lines, after coordinating with the Air Corps and going on several observation runs, taking photos, ironically with a German camera, and getting shot at from the ground by the enemy, a meeting with the artillery group and a plan hatched, one that could not be guaranteed to work, everything is set in place.

It is close to Christmas of 1916, and in the two years since he parted with Penelope, his life had changed so much that he had become a totally different person.  Would that have happened if he had stayed home?  No.

Would that have happened if he had not met Rose, or Louise, or Margaret, to name a few, on the ship?  No.

Had there not been a war, well, he would still be rotting away in those musty chambers with the cobweb-covered cadavers called senior partners.

Hunched into a corner of a trench with several others, waiting for the inevitable whistle, listening to the artillery fire going over their heads, and the odd returning fire exploding nearby, it was remarkable how quickly one became accustomed to what was business as usual.

A stalemate.

Waiting for the moment when a theory would be tested.

And cheat death.

…

2155 words, for a total of 45270 words.