Nanowrimo Flying…Unicorns Looming

I’m pretty pleased with the Nanwrimo output for the year.  It’s rough, and it will need editing, but when is that not true?  I’m over twenty-six thousand words and climbing, and should be into the safety zone before you know it.  For those reading along, I’ll continue – of course – to post the segments of the book until it reaches the end.  It will be considerably longer than 50k and will probably linger with me into December.  That’s fine…there’s so much going on my head is swimming.

One thing it is swimming with is unicorns.  I was a little nervous about living up to the challenge of writing a very serious, meaningful unicorn story, but no longer.  I won’t go so far as to say I’ve dreamed about unicorns, but I have spent a good deal of time researching, thinking, and pondering them of late, and the basic plot of my story has formed.

Unicorns get a bad rap, mostly.  They get the little kid’s stickers, rainbows, flowers and big grins that no equine mouth ever formed in the real world.  They are always gorgeous and white (even though the historical unicorn had the hindquarters of a stag and the tale of a lion.  They have been mocked by sideshow acts with malformed goats, written into gushy fantasy/romance novels – and once or twice pictured absolutely gorgeously in film.  I can’t recall exactly where I saw it – Legend? – but one movie somewhere in the late seventies or early eighties had a wonderful and very “real” depiction of unicorns.

I’ve always thought they were like drugs, or sharp knives, or beautiful women.  You stand in awe, but if you get too close – if you touch – you know from the start it is likely to hurt, or burn, or kill.  It’s that kind of obsession I want to write about.  My story is also – somewhat – about self-discovery.  It will have some melancholy elements, and … well … you’ll have to wait and see, won’t you?

Meanwhile, I am about to dip into Voodoo ritual – not exactly the Voodoo of the world, but Voodoo as it’s been painted in my mind by the works of Hugh B. Cave, movies like The Serpent and the Rainbow, and a thousand stories.  I’ve read, I’ve studied, and I’ve shared the fictional visions of others…now it’s my turn to let Anya Cabrera and her spirits loose in the Barrio of San Valencez California.

Bring on the words…I am ready.

-DNW