Nanowrimo Update

As of yesterday I hit seventeen thousand words on the story I'm working on for nanowrimo. Officially that means I am over a fifth of the way done (and, yes, about three thousand words behind schedule... already). I'll see if I can make that distance up in the coming days, although the 50,000-word mark isn't really as super important to me as finishing the book is.

So what is this story about? First and foremost, it's the second half of a story I've been working on for the past year, but everything I'm writing this month is new - as per the rules of the game.

Backstory
Well, this is the story of a pirate. Marik is an honorable man, despite being a thief. He is young, but his name is already legendary through the Eastern lands and even some in the West have whispered his name. When he was a child, his family, merchants by trade, bought him a commission in the Emperor's Army. Marik advanced through the ranks of the military quickly, earning the hawk pin at the unprecedented age of twenty-two.

When a Civil War broke out between two warlords, Marik's hometown was caught in the crossfire. Some of his neighbors sympathized with the rebels, and hid them from the Emperor's troops. When the Emperor found out about it, he ordered the town be razed to the ground, almost every member of Marik's family was killed in the ensuing massacre. The commanding officer who carried out the orders was Marik's older brother.

Grief stricken and filled with a vengeful anger, Marik disappeared and turned to piracy. He is a mercenary, a hired gun, a smuggler, and privateer, and he is out to hurt the Emperor any way he can.

When our story begins
When Marik is hired to do a job, the ultimate job, it is too good an opportunity for him to pass up. He is hired to commandeer a massive airship: a cargo cruiser. Despite the danger, Marik takes the job, never knowing that it will lead him on the greatest adventure of his life.

That's it in a nutshell, the story I'm working on. In the past year I've gotten most of the bits with Grayden written, this month I am pushing to write all the parts with Marik and perhaps the bits beyond that where their stories intersect - which is about where this book will end - resolving enough to make the story a good first act in a classic trilogy.

I'll post some of what I've written next week for the more curious of my fans :)