NaNo Ongoing

Okay, so I’ve been plugging along on my NaNo novel. I’ve not even broken 10k, and this late in the game I’m sure that I won’t make 50k by the end of the month, but I’ve decided I’m okay with that.

I am actually liking my story, and liking where I think its going to go.

I say where I THINK its going to go, because I’m only 5 chapters into it, and it is not what I thought it was going to be about.

My original idea was that my MC was going to be turned into a werewolf (by accidently scratching herself on the tooth of a werewolf’s skull). Her sister was going to be a werewolf hunter.

Now there is suddenly a young girl in the mix, a deserted town I didn’t plan on, and I think that both sisters might already be werewolves.

The title of my novel is “Moon Time” Here is a bit from it.


Chapter Two
Welcome to Teffton Community

The place was a ghost town. The buildings had all been boarded up and abandoned. All it lacked was a squeaky swinging tavern door, and a lonely tumbleweed blowing down Main Street.

Amanda wondered how places like this came to be. It was not a real ghost town, left behind by gold prospectors or coal miners when the mines went dry.

There never had been any mining around here. There had been some lumber camps, but that was deeper in the woods. Besides, a lumber camp did not even come close to resembling the forgotten town she was in.

So, what would make a small town build up, then dry up and blow away?

WELCOME TO TEFFTON COMMUNITY

The large sign at the beginning of the town looked newer than anything else. Had it been built at the end, a last ditch effort to make people come in.

Welcome to Teffton Community, please stop here and shop here. We have a shoe store and a farmers market. We have a gas station with competitive prices. Please don’t drive through without stopping or our town might blow away on the draft your car leaves behind.

She did not know what she had been expecting of Teffton Community, but she had not been expecting a dead down. People did not call her in to rid dead towns of their ghosts.

Surely Teffton Community had its share of ghosts, but there ws no one around to be haunted by them.

She had parked her car by a gas station at the head of Main Street. The place called itself Kuntry Joe’s Git ‘n’ Go. She’d thought she might ask for directions there.

Sure, she thought, I was just going to waltz right in, introduce myself as Amanda Embry, the ghost hunter, and ask if they knew where the haunts were.

Laughable.

It had all been a joke, of course. She didn’t advertise herself, but somewhere down the line some prankster had heard of her. Someone who found it laughable to send her on a wild goose chase to a deserted town.

“Hello!” She called out. “Mr. E. Are you here?”

Mr. E? Why hadn’t she realized that before. Surely no other proof was needed that this was somebody’s idea of a joke.

“Jackass,” she muttered under her breath as she turned around to walk back to her car.

Night had falledn solidly and she could no longer see her car parked at Kuntry Joe’s Git ‘n’ Go (home of the competitive gas prices) but she knew it would still be there.

After all, who was there to steal it? Mr. E’s ghost maybe?

How could I have been so stupid, she mentally chastened herself again.

She must have been half crazy with excitement, desperate for the job. Things were slower with her job than they were at her sister’s gallery.

“We should move here,” she told the town. “The Embry sisters could move in and revitalize Teffton Community.”

She laughed, and her laugh echoed back at her from a dozen different directions.

The emptiness of the town was so pure that when the streetlights suddenly came on, revealing a person sitting on the hood of her car down at Kuntry Joe’s Git ‘n’ Go, she squeaked with supirse.

Like her laugh, her squeak echoed back at her from a dozen different directions.

Whoever was sitting on her car lifted a hand and waved jauntily toward her.

She waved back, then jobbed to the car.

The person on her car was a man. The lighting of the gas station wasn’t very good, so she couldn’t tell much more than that about him.

“I thought this place was deserted,” she said. “I was just about to leave.”

“Of course you were,” he said, then held out his hand. “I’m Eric. Eric Edison.”

“Mr. E I presume.”

He smiled, she thought she could see a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, which was impossible in the dark.

“That would be me. And that would make you Amanda Embry, ghost hunter, dispatcher of demons, and all around good sport.”

“So, Mr. E. Mr. Edison I mean. Did you call me here for a real reason, of just to get your jollys watching me wander empty streets calling out for nobody? Maybe you wanted to see what kind of deranged person not only believes in ghosts, but believes in them enough that they call themselves a ghost hunter?”

“Oh no, Amanda, I called you here for a real reason. We have a valid boogie man here in Teffton Community. Though I will admit that I’m doubtful of your ability to help us.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means, Amanda, that you are one woman. One, lonely, petite, little woman.”:

“Excuse me!”

“Now, don’t get like that. You ARE just one woman, and you ARE a tiny little thing. We knew you were a woman, but we were expecting a whole team of people. Equipment. Weapons. Something a little more grand. We’re not sure that you, alone, will be able to handle it.”

“Us? We? Mr. Edison, I don’t know if you noticed or not, but the only we our us anywhere around her is you plus me, and I’m not any part of you’re we. Do you hear voices? Multiple personalties in that head of yours? Where are you getting your we from?”

He slid off the car then, and came to stand in front of her. She was shocked to see how tall he was. She had to tilt her head up to look at his face.

For a moment she was a little afraid of this crazy man in this empty town.

“We are a town, Amanda. Not you and I we, but WE are a town.”

He spread out his arms and turned a quick circle, looking rather silly.

“Then were is the rest of your we, Mr. Edison?”

“That’s why I called you. How long do you think Teffton Community has been empty?”

“I don’t know. A while. Not too long. The vandals haven’t discovered its empty yet. Maybe the last people left a couple fo months ago?”

“Try a week.”

“A week?”

“I left a week ago, and when I left everyone was still here.”

“Maybe they all moved?”

“Ion a week?”

“Its possible. I mean, they could move a whole town in a week if they wanted to get away from you bad enough.”

She smirked up at him.

She didn’t like this man. Eric Edison, also known as Mr. E. She didn’t like him because he had gotten her to come out to Teffton Community using such a horribly fake name. She didn’t like that he wanted her to believe that Teffton Community had been a busting burg only a week ago.

She also didn’t like that he called her Amanda, not Ms. Embry, just Amanda. As if he knew her. As if they were friends.

“Come with me, Amanda,” He stressed her name as if he had read her thoughts. “Come here and let me show you something.”

He walked away, not turning around to see if she came with him or not.

He moved like most tall and lanky men. His stride wasn’t clumsy, but wasn’t even remotely graceful.

Why was she watching the way he walked anyway?

He went to the glass door of the gas station and stopped there, fumbling at the handle. She assumed he had a key. For all she knew he was Kuntry Joe himself, owner of Teffton Community’s Git ‘n’ Go, home of the competitive gas prices.

Owner or not, he got the door open and disappeared inside.

Amanda pulled her own keys out of her pocket, meaning to get in her car and leave. Meaning to make like the locals and get ‘n’ go out of the town and away from Mr. Eric Edison.

Then the lights of the station came on and she stood frozen again as he came out, holding up a large rin of keys like a trophy.

“I’ve got a key to Joe’s. Joe has a key to every business in Teffton Community.”

“Is that smart?”

“Smart? Joe OWNS every business in Teffton Community. I guess he’s got a right to have keys to the places.”

“No, I meant was it smart of him to let you have a key to his place.”

“Listen, Amanda, if you’re not going to take me seriously, then you should just get in that tidy little car of yours and leave. I need HELP here, not some smarmy bitch who comes in and starts taking cracks at me. You don’t even KNOW me, and you’ve not even stopped to LOOK at this place.

“I just want to know where my friends went. Where my family is. I want to know what HAPPENED to this place.”

He stalked away then, huge ring of keys hanging from his right hand, clinking and clanging in the dark. For a second she felt bad, started to go after him, but changed her mind.

Something about Mr. Eric Edison, sometimes known as Mr. E, rubbed her the wrong way.

She was miles out of Teffton Community before she noticed she’d been left a gift on her back seat.

2 comments:

Dave said...

Hi Nona:

How did the NaNoWriMo turn out?

My attempt a year ago was a bust, but I am now incorporating elements of that story into my newest novel ideas.

I hope things are well with you

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