Monday, November 2, 2009

Day Two: No time for writing!

Wordcount: 3456

Today's wordcount is just barely above the bare minimum of 3448. AJ and I are packing to go to Berkeley for two weeks, and there is much to do. My captains have just had their first uncanny encounter, but they don't yet realize how deep in trouble they are about to get.

I've settled on a name for the book, at least as a working title. It's called The Nymean Corps (rhymes with Crimean War, I suppose). I usually don't title anything I've written until it's complete, but there are certain incentives in this case. A New York design firm called Fwis will be selecting 30 NaNo novels over the course of the month to have cover art designed for them. The books are selected based on their titles and synopses, so I figured I had better get these fields filled in if I wanted to be considered. My original working title was The Journals of Farrowell and Pitt, which I like for its clear parallel with The Journals of Lewis and Clark, but I don't think it's really catchy enough. The phrase "Nymean Corps" was inspired by the name "Corps of Discovery" which was applied to the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Here's the synopsis I'm using right now (from my first draft of the prologue of the novel):

As the reader is no doubt aware, the ill-fated expedition of Farrowell and Pitt is today considered one of the greatest debacles of Kortland's colonial period. Communications from the expedition slowed, then ceased over a period of just a few months. The two captains never returned from their harrowing adventure, and those few members of the expedition that did reappear remembered nothing of the experience, or were incapable of coherent speech until their deaths. Recently, thanks to better equipped expeditions via lighter-than-air craft, a significant expanse of the area now known as the Nymean Wilds has been explored, and the records of the original expedition have been recovered.

What follows is an account of the expedition gleaned from these records, including a collection of excerpts from the personal journals of Captains Farrowell and Pitt. For the complete journals, as well as other records of the expedition, the interested reader is directed to the collection of the Colonial Museum, High Street, Wallingsgate.

What do you think? Do you prefer this version of the synopsis, or do you like the summary in my last blog post better?

I'm also adding a link to my NaNo author info in the sidebar.

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