the magnum opus for NaNoWriMo is gurgling out of the spigot at a pretty satisfactory rate, thanks for asking.
thus far, what I have going is a sort of Bildungsroman (or roman a clef, if you will--it just depends on what kind of a mood I'm in when I commence to typin)--a touching & chilling coming-of-age-tale of a young girl in suburban New Jersey & how she deals with the usual problems of growing up in suburban New Jersey--peer pressure, friction 'twixt her & her divorced mother who's struggling to makes end meet on her meager wages from the local Ultra-Walmart, & making the cheer-leading squad. Home life is complicated by her mothers endless string of psychologicaly damaged boyfriends including a PCP & Chloroseptic-addled drummer for a defunct 80's Hair Band with a shady past & a blood-drenched future; an alcoholic journalist who likes to play with knives, sobs uncontrollably while stabbing at the keys of his typewriter with stubby, grimy fingers & smells vaguely of raw potatoes; a charismatic yet oddly sinister bank robber on the lam from the law who spends his days 'hiding out, see?' in a little fort made out of couch cushions & a blanket in the middle of their garbage-strewn living-room floor & his nights hanging from the rafters like a bat; a serial killer/ necromancer who leaves cryptic clues for the police written in rhyming Sanskrit couplets--his victims invariably left-handed stenographers of both sexes with cleft palates & freckly forearms left nude & ritualistically arranged on day-glo beanbags with the index fingers of both hands inserted into either nostril; & a Defense Contractor.
the girl has been carrying on a torrid affair with a reptillian bounty-hunter who is either from far in the future or the distant past ( altho it's revealed in the shocking twist at the end that he is NEITHER, but is, in fact (SPOILER AHEAD) Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld) who is constantly freebasing the powdered spinal fluid of a giant black beetle (which are usually, oddly enough, invertebrates) roughly the size & shape of bicycle helmets that he hunts in the dank & dripping catacombs underneathe that sleepy New Jersey suburb where they (the beetles) feast on the corpses of mob dumps & feral cats that sluice in with the rainwater.
this fluid gives him (the reptillian bounty-hunter/neocon sonofabitch) super-human strength, endurance & concentration, with the unfortunate side-effect of continuous, rather caustic, diarrhea. (this is symbolic of something but I haven't figured out just what just yet--I figure that I'll wait until the second draft to shoehorn in the symbolism, weather, & psychology)
anyway, the story begins with her drowsy, practically comatose New Jersey suburb celebrating the bicentennial of it's founding (with a tip o' the cowboy hat to Larry McMurtry's Texasville) by drunken pirates (with a tip o' the cocked tricorner with the Jolly Roger embroidered on the brim to Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island &/or Kidnapped) when the festivities are disrupted by the invasion of a vicious skinhead biker gang that descends on the town with their beweaponed hoverbikes & proceeds to whoop, holler, kick up dust & gravel, rape the elderly, eat babies raw & pee wherever they like to.
they must be stopped, but by whom?
I'll tell you who, godamnit, a scrappy band of local misfits that call themselves 'The Jersey Devils' who may not be cool, may not be popular, but by god, they got a lot of moxie.
anyway--that's just the first chapter--it starts to get a bit complicated after that.
I'm hoping to sell the film rights for a kajillion dollars.
--------------
actually, I kinda wrote a paragraph on November first & was then distracted by a shiny object outside that I thought might be a quarter or a Spanish Dubloom (but turned out to be, in fact, a bottlecap), & didn't get back to it.
maybe next year.
thus far, what I have going is a sort of Bildungsroman (or roman a clef, if you will--it just depends on what kind of a mood I'm in when I commence to typin)--a touching & chilling coming-of-age-tale of a young girl in suburban New Jersey & how she deals with the usual problems of growing up in suburban New Jersey--peer pressure, friction 'twixt her & her divorced mother who's struggling to makes end meet on her meager wages from the local Ultra-Walmart, & making the cheer-leading squad. Home life is complicated by her mothers endless string of psychologicaly damaged boyfriends including a PCP & Chloroseptic-addled drummer for a defunct 80's Hair Band with a shady past & a blood-drenched future; an alcoholic journalist who likes to play with knives, sobs uncontrollably while stabbing at the keys of his typewriter with stubby, grimy fingers & smells vaguely of raw potatoes; a charismatic yet oddly sinister bank robber on the lam from the law who spends his days 'hiding out, see?' in a little fort made out of couch cushions & a blanket in the middle of their garbage-strewn living-room floor & his nights hanging from the rafters like a bat; a serial killer/ necromancer who leaves cryptic clues for the police written in rhyming Sanskrit couplets--his victims invariably left-handed stenographers of both sexes with cleft palates & freckly forearms left nude & ritualistically arranged on day-glo beanbags with the index fingers of both hands inserted into either nostril; & a Defense Contractor.
the girl has been carrying on a torrid affair with a reptillian bounty-hunter who is either from far in the future or the distant past ( altho it's revealed in the shocking twist at the end that he is NEITHER, but is, in fact (SPOILER AHEAD) Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld) who is constantly freebasing the powdered spinal fluid of a giant black beetle (which are usually, oddly enough, invertebrates) roughly the size & shape of bicycle helmets that he hunts in the dank & dripping catacombs underneathe that sleepy New Jersey suburb where they (the beetles) feast on the corpses of mob dumps & feral cats that sluice in with the rainwater.
this fluid gives him (the reptillian bounty-hunter/neocon sonofabitch) super-human strength, endurance & concentration, with the unfortunate side-effect of continuous, rather caustic, diarrhea. (this is symbolic of something but I haven't figured out just what just yet--I figure that I'll wait until the second draft to shoehorn in the symbolism, weather, & psychology)
anyway, the story begins with her drowsy, practically comatose New Jersey suburb celebrating the bicentennial of it's founding (with a tip o' the cowboy hat to Larry McMurtry's Texasville) by drunken pirates (with a tip o' the cocked tricorner with the Jolly Roger embroidered on the brim to Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island &/or Kidnapped) when the festivities are disrupted by the invasion of a vicious skinhead biker gang that descends on the town with their beweaponed hoverbikes & proceeds to whoop, holler, kick up dust & gravel, rape the elderly, eat babies raw & pee wherever they like to.
they must be stopped, but by whom?
I'll tell you who, godamnit, a scrappy band of local misfits that call themselves 'The Jersey Devils' who may not be cool, may not be popular, but by god, they got a lot of moxie.
anyway--that's just the first chapter--it starts to get a bit complicated after that.
I'm hoping to sell the film rights for a kajillion dollars.
--------------
actually, I kinda wrote a paragraph on November first & was then distracted by a shiny object outside that I thought might be a quarter or a Spanish Dubloom (but turned out to be, in fact, a bottlecap), & didn't get back to it.
maybe next year.
And I could never compare to the sea!!! Nooo! :o