November Spawned #1

Welcome to the first issue of November Spawned. I should begin with explanations – of this journal’s title, its goals, and so on. But I feel tired today. I write this, having just finished proofreading this issue, a wearying task, given its length. However, what was hard work for me is a bounty to you, the reader! My plan, really, was for each issue of this publication to be much shorter, and next year perhaps it will be, but this year I don’t have a huge number of short extracts, and I do have a pair of complete novels available for serialisation, and so rather than publish three quarters of each, I have allowed the page count to swell to unwieldy proportions. So thanks to neophyte novelist Ranjna Theaker, who toiled upon Being an Alien almost every night of November 2004 while I worked away at the next computer along upon my own The Fear Man (soon to be serialised in this magazine’s sister publication, Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction), and to John Greenwood, who had to finish his novel by mid-November in preparation for a tour du monde. Both will be remembered and honoured for having nourished this publication in its infancy. I will discuss their novels at further length in future editorials.

Despite myself, I have alluded in the above to the journal’s purpose, which is, if I must be drawn on the matter, to publish extracts of novels written during the month of November. I must explain further. Every November an ever-growing army of writers embarks upon a quest: to write 50,000 word novels in the space of a month. Thousands make the attempt, thousands succeed, thousands fail. All are enriched by the experience. This is NaNoWriMo (though because all those capitals make me a bit seasick I’ll refer to it as Nanowrimo from now on, if that’s okay), or in full, National Novel Writing Month. Further details on this amazing endeavour are available at the website of the organisers, www.nanowrimo.org. (I should point out at this juncture that this journal is entirely unofficial as regards Nanowrimo – it has no standing with the organisers, has not received their approval, and piggybacks shamelessly on their success. Incidentally, the forums on that website are a superb place for any budding writer to visit, with many areas remaining active throughout the year.)

This journal had its genesis in three things. One is that I am lucky enough to have the technology at my disposal to do it with a minimum of trouble, thanks to my day job. The second is that while perusing the huge list of novels being written for Nanowrimo I found myself wishing I could read them all. In an ideal world, this journal would feature at least a thousand entire novels a year. The third is that while proofreading an issue of the superb Medico-Legal Journal (see www.medico-legalsociety.org.uk for further details), and reflecting upon what an excellent read it was every issue, despite the potentially dry subject matter, I wondered whether that might be a good format in which to present fiction, and here it is! My goal is for each issue to present a set of extracts from a variety of November-written novels of fantasy, science fiction and horror, whether they were finished or not. I want to give the reader a good substantial read, and give Nanowrimo participants a quick reward for their hard work. Here are two of my customers right now:

Although Ben Watson’s interesting extract from his Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner Club seems to be lacking in wizards, spaceships and zombies, at least one of those makes an appearance further into the story – revealing which at this point would be spoiling the surprise. I will also mention here that his website, http://markosfishbar.tk, is well worth a visit for its amusing if irregularly published comic strip.

Steven Gilligan contributes to this issue an extract from the novel he worked on for Nanowrimo 2003, The Ephemeral Homunculus, a reworking in fantasy form of some of the ideas originally meant for Alpha.one, which was to have been his second novel published by Silver Age Books – now a mere bibliographic ghost, you can yet hear its eerie whispers emanating from the mouth of this homunculus.