NaNoWriMo prep.

In less than a week I'll start writing "In the Valley of the Tempest" for the National Novel Writing Month in November. 30 days, 50,000 words, 1 novel. Right now I'm in my last week of University for the year, and I've got assignments looming left, right and centre. Last assignment is due next Thursday or Friday (I vaguely recall someone mentioning the 6th). Two 2,000 word textual analyses, seven film journals (3 pages each), twenty tutorial journals for Literary and Cultural Studies (this one shouldn't take long) and a five minute radioplay. (The Garden).

Once they're done I'll be able to sink my teeth into this novel. In the Valley of the Tempest is set in a fictional Steampunk universe in the city of Berwick which sits atop the edge of a valley where strange occurences take place.

"The tempest stirs. The city trembles. A man dies of unnatural causes."

The novel begins with Seth and Jesse shrugging aside their mutual respect for eachother and taking to the courtyard with knuckles bared. They fight to make history. The victor of the fight will be the youngest person to join an expedition out into the valley. The mysterious death of Grahame Thompson barely out of city limits at the edge of the valley has sparked furious debate as to what goes on down in the valley. Something in the valley has caused the untimely death of Grahame, and the Board of Academics has nominated Chief Detective Casper Bernstein to head the expedition. They wait with baited breath from the moment the team departs from Berwick Airport in the bitter cold pre-dawn hours of the morning.

In the Valley of the Tempest, you will find mountains of iron ore hovering metres from the ground as they resist the magnetic forces of the world. You will find lakes so deep, swimming with mechanical fish so grand you will forget they are machines. You will find secrets so dark that the death of Grahame is only a singular raindrop in a vast, churning, chopping ocean of troubles.

Coming November 2009.