Tonight starts Nanowrimo, if you want. Last year I was in such a different space with it. I was writing something really beautiful and I got sidetracked.
It turns out that I won a cover!
Damn. Proof of that so I can remind myself not to get sidetracked again. To say that this has been the worst year of my life is not an understatement. Here is the proof on that. 
I was writing a really healing tale for a cute guy. A tale that could heal 9/11 and some misery. But you know what? This year has been SOLID MISERY and so have the last eight for me. In this economy I have been really screwed over. It would be nice to think that the new year is not going to be about that. I am so sick of being cheated out of things, like happiness.
This year, that happy great feeling place is gone.
Somebody else is in my beautiful house, with my beautiful trees and my kitchen and my fireplace. I am in HELL. HELL ON EARTH, and so I guess this year’s very confessional first person POV novel for Nano is going to reflect that.
It’s called “Dead Cinderellas” this year.
I feel like that.
The novel is going to be about what it was to be a child in the Cold War era. First isn’t a POV I usually use but I just saw the winner of the Man Booker used it for one called The Sellout. Well, fine.
First it is.
Nuclear War is not a place I thought we would ever see in my lifetime.
So maybe the novel can talk about the hideous place childhood must have been after the death of JFK. Mine was. My parents divorced and the split-up began when I was just a little girl. In fact it was this very year.
To write backward into this arena of my parents, I have no idea why I am wearing a Halloween costume in January, except that, I have always loved costumes. The year was really hard. My mother was having an affair with a writer from NY named James and my father was shooting surfing films all around the world that year.
That Christmas dad came back, and after that it all got very sad.
Maybe my mother dressed me in that, or I dressed myself because my dad got it out of me about what she had been doing. I said “James” and that was the truth. Imagine being that young and telling the truth to Daddy about a guy named James.
She never forgave me for it I’m sure.
The novel goes so far back I have no idea what I am going to be unearthing but I’m already almost at 500 words and we aren’t even at midnight.
Happy Halloween.
Hopefully the election will bring good things and NO NUCLEAR WAR.
That would be nice.
VALENTINE BONNAIRE - WRITER 