I've done it for five years. I'm doing it again this year. For one solid month, for 30 running days, I will focus my attention and intent on writing a long piece of fiction. A story. A novel. Not blogging. Not editing. Not all the other running-words-together writing I do. I will focus on writing a book and I will do it by joining 200,000 or more other writers participating in NaNoWriMo a.k.a. National Novel Writing Month . And I will do it first thing every morning, crapping out 1,667 - 2,500 words before I do another thing. I will not care if it's crap. I will write. I will write fiction. I will create a world. I will create characters. They will do stuff. To each other. To me. And maybe, some sweet day, to you. I am already starting to get nervous. My palms are sweaty. My heart is beating faster. Freakout! How about you? Are you revved up for NaNoWriMo? Does a group effort like this excite you? Propel? Inspire? Leave us your NaNo handle i...

Photo credit: Google Images This morning, there was a ghost of a chance I might finish the book review I had planned for this last day of the month. I'm afraid you'll have to wait until November though. My time somehow disappeared into the ethers. It's just as well, because in November we'll focus on new books published by our friends and favorite writers, to give you ideas for holiday shopping. So I'll share my favorite new thriller author in a few days. Tomorrow is National Author's Day - how cool is that? I think someone should take us all out to dinner, don't you? Add to that National Life Writing Month (life writing is what we call memoirs now) and Pursuit of Happiness Week and you see why we can think of lots to be thankful for other than just Thanksgiving Month. We'll share some of the things we're grateful for in upcoming posts, because it's a pretty good time to be a writer despite how bad the news makes it sound. We hope you...