I haven't really given you guys a lot of information over the next few days. I've made a decision. I'm not going to do NaNoWriMo, instead I am going to take my time with Secrets of Serodor. Why? The reason is I believe quality is better than quantity.


Sincerely,

George Moyle

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5,000 words! Actually 5,105 words at this time of writing. Since I've posted excerpts from every chapter I'll post two excerpts here. The first one will be from Chapter III and the next from Chapter IV which isnt' finished yet. Here you are:

"With that I left, embracing the cool night's breeze with full force. Slowly I made my way home, watching out for any dangers that might wish to encounter me during my journey, pausing at every sound, and running through the moon's glow until I was again safely snuggled in the shadows. These were dark times for Serodor, and I was taking no chances with my life. If anyone in the group took a chance, it could cost us all.

Finally I made my way through the convoluted paths of the inner city, and was on the dirt path leading to the cluster of dwellings in which my house was contained. A twig snapped. I spun about, looking to see what had made the sound. Below me a brown rat scurried off into town.

“It's just your imagination,” I thought. It was better safe then sorry in this risky game of life.

As I made my way up to my house I heard something else. It was just the wind blowing through the grass. Just as my routine, I took care of my business before withdrawing my key from my robe. Placing the key in the lock I twisted and opened the door. Stepping inside I couldn't believe my eyes. There standing in front of me was a man. Well, at least I thought it was a man. I couldn't see the front of him. He was rummaging through my things and apparently hadn't yet noticed me. How could he have gotten in? I glanced towards my window. My window was a large square that usually had a cross propped in to give it the appearance of a window. The wood lay splintered on floor. Though a professor in the town, I wasn't paid much. Despite the appearance of being fairly well-to-do, we weren't. At one point our town had been rich, but for the past few decades we had been going through a tough time. Though we kept the large city that was once a symbol of riches, we were just about as poor as any other village. We kept a few luxuries, such as the university (run by the Church), but they weren't anywhere as near as nice as before. Low enrollment and low priority for education (because we were poor no one cared about education, just working to get by) meant low pay.

The man hadn't noticed me yet and I withdrawing my sword I called out, “Who goes there?”

He turned with sword in hand, the quick motion caused some of the papers that he had knocked to the floor to be tossed about. The sword he held was curved. I couldn't see his face fore he had on a black coat and had painted his face black with tar to conceal his identity. This man was the killer and he was afraid I knew something.

Not being the best swordsman (after all I was a professor) I made an awkward slash at my opponent. Combating it with his own sword resulted in a large clang. The metal of our blades continued to pierce through the air before touching and resulting in recoil. The recoil was heavy and we both stopped for a small period of time after it, it was heavy on stamina."

That's from Chapter III which is a long chapter so I posted a longer excerpt. Right now Chapter III makes up most of my book. It gives some nice background info I think. Here's a small part of Chapter IV:

"“Don't thank me,” Eartha said, “Thank this young man over here. I'm sorry what's your name again young man?”

“Uh, it's uh J-john,” said the young man nervously.

I turned my head towards him, groaning in the process. It was who I thought it was. John, from Serodor. A few questions arose in my mind. Why was he at my house? Maybe he had come to kill me and changed his mind when he saw someone else had tried to do it, seen how horrible it was. Or was it a setup, maybe he had killed White. Maybe he wanted to look uninvolved while walking in and “saving me”. Could he have sent a friend in to cause trouble and then thrown no suspicion upon himself by scaring the intruder. Or was he just coming to talk to me and walked in at the right time? All were possible. John was definitely not stupid and he could have cooked up a plan. No, John wasn't the murdering type, too quiet, too shy. I was ashamed that I had dishonored the man who had saved my life by thinking he could have possibly been involved."

I'm doing pretty good. Still 44,895 words to go. Not bad, not bad. My friend Kyle Lansing has been doing some writing too. I helped him set up his blog which you can read here.

Thank you,

George Moyle



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Whoo, 3231 words. Quite a bit of words. I'll post a little excerpt:


"At first, I couldn't see anything. A crowd had surrounded something. I pushed and shoved my way through the crowd. What I saw I couldn't believe. There, laying before me was White. White had slash marks across his face and chest, and someone had taken the liberty of cutting off most of his hair. There he sat in a pool of blood, our new leader. There were screams from startled men. Cries of disgust from children. Sobs from sorrowful women. This wasn't just anybody, this was White. Though the town would have hated him if they knew his secret, they did not (at least for the time being). So instead they were filled with anguish over the murder of a popular figure in our society.

My only instinct was to run. Someone had found out, and I would be next. It wasn't a very logical assumption. No, the more logical idea would have been an inside job. Someone was jealous, they could have killed him. Of course, I would realize this soon enough. For the time being however, my only coherent thoughts were, “run, must, must run, escape, s-someone knows, someone”. Just as I escape the crowd of onlookers I did what my body told me to do, beyond the control of the mind. I threw up.

A few men turned around to shun me, for bringing shame to the “manly” image. Of course, they weren't part of a secret society whose leader had just been killed. If the threat of death hovered over you like the blade of a guillotine, would you be afraid? Then I saw Kennard staring silently at the body. As I approached him he whispered, “Who could have done this?”"

That's it for today.

Sincerely,

George Moyle

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

Hello, I'm George Moyle. I'm a writer who's participating in NaNoWriMo 2006. I am working a novel currently entitled Secrets of Serodor, a title which might change. I have currently only written 897 words, but I will have a lot more free time to write in the coming days. Here's an excerpt from the story:

"The door opened up in front of me and I rushed in, pushing the door closed behind me. There I stood in the middle of the darkness, until the lamp in the middle of the room was re-lit. Gazing around I saw the usual faces. What an odd bunch we must have been, big and small, skinny and fat, young and old. All of us tempted by the freedom of knowledge. We all considered ourselves Christian, went to church like the others, prayed liked the others, believed in God. Yet somehow we were criminals in the eyes of the church. A few of us even volunteered for guard duty so we wouldn't come under suspicion. We wished people could accepts us for our beliefs. Our beliefs were that though the Church was teaching about God, there were many things that it hadn't been teaching correctly. For example we believed the sun revolved around the Earth, that other places existed (some bigger than Earth), and that the Earth was not flat (the church still believed it was although explorers already proved that we were right). We were mathematicians. Some of us doctors, some scholars. We were whatever people wanted to call us. We called our little group Serodor, for us it meant free. We considered ourselves free, free to think how we wanted, free to act in our own ways. We valued knowledge and traded it."

Like it? I hope so. You should see more in the coming days.

Sincerely,

George Moyle

All text is copyrighted:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.