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Turns out the main bad guys in my NaNo story are Greek. Those of you who know me probably aren't all that surprised. I have nothing against Greeks, really, but most of the time, if someone has annoyed me recently, it was probably a Greek, on the grounds that I work in a lab full of them, and they're occasionally quite annoying. They're an ancient cabal of dark magicians (the bad guys, not the guys in the lab, at least, not to the best of my knowledge) who have lucked into more power than they could possibly have hoped for and are now busily abusing it. Mwaha. haha. ha.
The weekend, well, the weekend hasn't really been so restful. Calmer than the week, but that's not really saying a lot. I washed all my trousers at once, since they'd somehow all got to the point of needing it at the same time, did the fencing club's insurance inventory (or rather, realised that I had the scribbled copy in my pocket and that the deadline was today, panicked, found all the relevant prices, did the math and submitted the document a mere hour or so late), and went to a NaNoWriMo write-in. I say write-in. A couple of weeks ago, I went to a write-in at the Sanctuary, but only me and the Municipal Liason (an old friend of mine) turned up. Last week, we are fairly reliably informed that a reasonable group of folk showed up, but neither of us attended for various reasons. Today, we went, and it was just us. Not that I'm complaining about the opportunity to sit at a small, candlelit table with a coffee and discuss nothing in particular that happens to be happening in our stories, it's just not what it said on the tin, as it were. Although the mulled wine was good. Even if I must next time remember to get the version with the Amaretto shot: the ML's cup smelled awesome.
Rather irritatingly, though, the fact that I was washing my trousers meant over the weekend I had to wear my tired old tracksuit trousers, which I normally only wear for exercise. They're a bit baggier than I'm used to, and I caught the pocket on a drawer-handle as I was leaving the kitchen, and ripped it (the pocket) right out. So I'll have to fix that before tai chi on Tuesday. Woe.
Both of the above are true. I forget exactly how many stories there are supposed to be, but it's a scarily small number, something like seven or ten. There's "farmhand saves princess", there's "plucky nobody defeats evil empire", "boy finds girl, loses girl, wins girl back", and so on. Technically, if you reduce all stories down to their barest components, they fit into one of these categories. Note that Star Wars encompasses all of the above examples. A little more discussion can be found here, for the interested.
Equally, there are no new faces. I went to a NaNo write-in today, which turned out to be just me and one of the Municipal Liasons, at the Sanctuary Cafe in Hove, and the woman who served me at the counter was the absolute spitting image of Amy Hayes, someone I knew from Texas. Different hair-style, different dress sense, but physically almost identical. It's a peculiar experience, and as my social circle continues to expand with time, I'm having it more and more of late. This one, though, was particularly striking because I encountered this woman (whose name is Alice, apropos of nothing in particular) in a cafe very very similar in structure to Austin's Spider House cafe, to which Amy took me and a friend several times while we were out there. Setting and resemblance are enough to touch off old memories. I wonder how Amy is these days? Must get back in touch.
NaNo progresses, of course, and my body-count hasn't risen any higher, which is probably for the best. I have a couple of antagonists and a protagonist, which is a good start, but the plot is about to get interesting ahead of schedule due to my running out of words and having to introduce a turning-point event a good deal earlier than I intended. Or, I could jump tracks and tell someone else's story for a bit, and come back to that little cliffhanger. Decisions, decisions...