For those of you who may be unfamiliar, National Novel Writing Month (Often abreviated to NaNoWriMo or just NaNo) is a challenge wherein people commit themselves to writing, well, a novel in a month. It’s a fun way to challenge yourself to Do the Thing and get words some words down on paper. (If you’re interested, you can get more information and sign up at the link above)

Here at Avian30, we’re doing things a little differently, both for us, and for NaNo. We’ve got a new story idea (rather, we’ve picked one story off the list of about 40 new ideas we have) and we want to see what we can do in a month as we juggle working on LiLA Book 4 and edits on Doves and all of the other things we have going.

We also want to show some of our process. We talk a lot about process here on the blog, and we just finished teaching a class through RWA about collaboration. So what we’re going to do in November is give you all a peek behind the scenes. We’ll post daily word counts (even when they’re miserable! Because there will be days when they’re miserable), screenshots of the Google Docs with our terrible stuck-in-the-weeds drafts and all-caps notes shouting back and forth, and maybe even some of our crazy emails back and forth, because man do we send a lot of emails. And, if all goes well, you’ll see the magic, too.

We’re not overly concerned with hitting the 50,000 word mark that’s the general NaNo goal (we’re pretty sure the story idea we have isn’t even a 50K word story), but like Alex, we love challenges, and this is a new one for us. Once the month is over, we’ll finish up whatever needs finishing, send it through our usual editing process, and then sometime this spring (our plan now is March, though as other things get added to our 2015 release schedule that may change too) we’re going to self-publish it.

Being a hybrid self- and traditional-published author is a big part of authorial success these days, and, aside from the whole NaNo challenge, we want to give ourselves the experience of self-publishing as we look at expanding the types of stories we tell, and the places in which we tell them.

So, what are we actually writing? Our (very) working title is currently The Court Quadrille. (That’s gonna change, probably this week). It’s a queer paranormal romance political thiller:

In the remote and provincial faerie Kingdom of Normarach, a wedding is not what Ivo Frederick Myles Dierderich (Myles, for short), had in mind for his coming-of-age party. But he and his twin sister, Hildireth Wilhelmina Otylia Aust (Wil, to her friends), are heirs to the throne, and are betrothed to Etienne, Sovereign of Semailles, to secure an alliance to protect their homeland from another destructive war. They decide to make the best of it despite being unprepared for a palace full of court intrigue and delicious and dangerous new temptations. While Wil sets her mind to being as pleasing and politically savvy as possible, Myles takes advantage of Etienne’s relative disinterest to take a lover. Too bad his heart is set on the disgraced brother of a man executed for treason.