NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)

Nano Anne Prather

Once upon a time there was a girl who loved to tell stories. She liked to lie in bed at night and imagine worlds full of space heroes and other fools...planets full of interesting flowers...and ordinary people who did extraordinary things.

She wrote her first novel in 1980 while a sophomore at Wheaton College. But after that, she was distracted by marriage and other things. She didn't write another novel until...

...she found a copy of Chris Baty's book in a Denver bookstore. Desperate to write fiction, she began her first 30-day quest, even though everyone else was out enjoying the summer, and even though it was three months until National Novel Writing Month.

She has never looked back.

July 2008 50000 Word Badge

Rogue Sequence, July 2008

Synopsis: DaLea LeMay is a brilliant young scientist just coming into her own. She is working on breeding algae for life support systems on starships. In her spare time, she conducts extensive analysis of Radiant Empire population genetic structure. Just as she is about to receive Patronage, the highest honor a junior scientist can hope for, she is abruptly dismissed from her post. Deprived of her career, forced to learn a pauper's occupation, DaLea finds herself living in the slums and eking out a living as a street musician. But all is not as it seems, and as she seeks friends and a better life, the maneuvering of a vicious nobleman threatens to undo her.

september success badge

Flight Sequence, September 2008

Synopsis: Once Silverhawk's name was DaLea LeMay. Deprived of her career as a scientist and forced to live among the despised Minimals, DaLea is forced to join the Imperial Fleet when dinner at a spaceport restaurant reveals that she has star flight talent. Now she is being asked to undertake a mission across deep space to assess the status of the alien Gallinuls, who have the Schmidt starship drive but don't know how to manage it. But mysterious recruiting missions and a strange encounter at a resort on Radiant convince Silverhawk that war is at hand. And when she finds evidence of genetic manipulation among the Gallinuls, she begins to get an inkling of who the enemy is—and just how critical her geneticist's skills are likely to be.

October 2008 Badge

Training Sequence, October 2008

This portion of the reader copy that eventually became Flight Sequence was not quite novel length. It details Silverhawk's transition into the Fleet and her indoctrination as a Kramerite Starmaster. She struggles with the usual run of cadet chicanery and culture shock as she learns what it truly means to be the commodity that backs Galactic currencies.

The current revision plan calls for this section to expand to become Flight Sequence while the section written in September will become Fugue Sequence.