I am going a little bit outside my normal blog routine to talk about the new year of National Novel Writing Month.

I realized today that this is the fourteenth year I will be participating in Nano. Sometimes I completed the 50,000 word goal, sometimes other life priorities got in the way. But every year I tried. I had an idea and I committed to paper.

This year is a bit of a different feeling. This is a story idea I’ve been playing around with all year. The characters have come to me over time, developing their personalities a little bit at a time. The plot is clearly formed in my mind from beginning to end. And it’s an entirely different genre than I have ever written before, romance!

Compared to other years, I have planned this book to death. I have character outlines, relationship outlines, and chapter outlines. I have always been a fly by the seat of my pants writer and gone into a book with a vague plot idea and just let the inspiration flow. So this will be an entirely new experience for me. I can’t say yet if it will work for me, but I’ll keep you updated for sure.

And romance, my gods that scares me. I am a blood and guts type writer. I have played around in the playgrounds of suspense, thriller, horror, paranormal, urban fantasy, high fantasy. And naturally sometimes a romantic storyline develops in those stories. But I am very intimidated by the idea of playing in the romance playground.

Wish me luck!