We are ten days into NaNo and I hope you are plugging away and not pulling your hair out. Take a break, grab a cup of coffee and please welcome Nancy Cavanaugh. **gives a woot woot and claps**If you want to buddy Nancy her NaNo username is crafty1_nh
Current word count 0/50000 As of 10:30 a.m. on day 2 I have 2,733 words
Thanks for hanging out with us today and answering some burning questions we are all dying to know!
Nancy take it away! Nancy A. Cavanaugh is a single, work at home mom living in Keene, NH. She shares her tin can with her teenage daughter, two bratty cats and a Betta fish named Phreddie. She works from her living room doing freelance writing, web design and desktop publishing. Nancy has one self-published book, Mini Tales, which can be bought for the Kindle or as a PDF from her web site at http://www.nancyacavanaugh.com . You can follow her NaNo journey at http://aepyornis.weebly.com/nano-blog.html.
What is The Egg Mystery about? David Stitson is 16 years old and the new owner of a large house and all of his grandmother’s possessions, including a large crate in the attic. David and his best friend Brian Jacobs discover the crate contains a huge egg and a letter with a hidden surprise. Follow along as David and Brian discover more about the egg, the bird who lays it, and the surprise as they find themselves on a plane heading to Madagascar. Mystery and adventure abounds.
Why in the world do you NaNo? I love to write and I love challenges. I just wish they did this in the summer when there are fewer family commitments and no major holiday in the middle of it all.
Do you plan for NaNo or are crazy like me and NaNo on the fly?
I have tried to do NaNo on the fly and was fairly successful. This year I did a lot of planning, like writing out a full plot summary (or mostly full) and creating a character list with some of the details filled in about each character. Age plays a huge part in the story so I needed to figure all that out first. Ack! Answering this just made me have a rethink on part of the story, thankfully not the part I'm working on.
Where did you get the idea for The Egg Mystery?
I was doing research on the aepyornis, an extinct bird native to only Madagascar, for a non-fiction book I want to write for kids. I discovered that the Denver Museum of Nature and Science has two aepyornis eggs that are whole, or mostly whole as one has a hole at one end and something rattling around inside it. No one, as far as the guy knew, had looked inside, which is unfathomable to me. It triggered a story idea about a museum curator's daughter finding out about the rattle inside and doing her own investigation. When she looks inside she discovers a map from Madagascar. She and her best friend tag along on an expedition to find more eggs and bones, then sneak off to follow the map with a guide they hire. Eventually they find a valley or something with hundreds of aepyornis. The next day I had a rethink and came up with the version of the story I'm writing now.
What is your down and dirty tip for upping your word count? Copy/pasting: "I thought I could, but I couldn't so I'm typing this instead." Just kidding. I have no tips for that. I just plan on trudging along, following the story summary or going wherever the story wants to take me.
Quick it's day thirty at five at night and you have 45,000 words, what are you going to do to finish? I will make sure they have provisions then I will close myself in my bedroom and tell the child and cats if they do anything to distrub me it will cause the end of the world and if that happens it will be all their fault. I'll add in something about not wanting to have all that guilt so it is best that they just not disturb me. That or I'll just threaten to pull her Internet access and take away all the cat toys if they do.
Nancy I truth or dare you! truth
If you were a character in any story, who would you be and why? Hands down, Nancy Drew. Well, for a long time it was because we had the same name, but as I got older it was because we had the same first name AND she got to go on all these super fun adventures with her two best friends and occasionally her boyfriend too. The seemingly endless supply of money to support the adventures was a bit of a lure too.
Thanks for stopping by today!
4 comments:
Great interview and interesting premise for a story. Good luck with NaNo! :D
That story sounds fascinating and fun! I would definitely read it.
Thanks for the interview!
Hi, Nancy! Great to meet ya! Glad you're doing NaNo! Yippee!
I did it last year, but had no interest in it this year. I'd rather get my WiP out of the way--it's a loooong project of editing. ;)
But I do love to see it turn from an ugly duckling into a gleaming swan! ;)
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