author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

What the hell happened?

Well, it was more complicated than I thought.

The logistics of the scene I want to write are still evading me. How does Mr. Right end up getting into the position of witnessing Mr. Wrong's abuses, let alone defending Diane from them? Did he somehow get invited along in a car ride that was intended to end in a sex scene? That seems unlikely. Did Mr. Wrong just happen to park the car somewhere along the Diagonal Highway on a night when Mr. Right was going for a late night bike ride from Niwot to Boulder? Even more dumb. If Mr. Wrong is in the middle of doing nasty things to the main character when Mr. Right shows up, does he still manage to whip out a gun while still, er, engaged, and then does he just ditch Diane on the side of the road and drive off?

And then the thought occurred to me that all three of my NaNo novels so far will have sexual assaults in them either onstage, offstage, or in flashback. I'm not sure I like the trend.

So, I'm just not sure exactly what's going to happen or how high the stakes will be. Does the story really need an attempted rape right before a gunshot murder? Isn't the shooting enough? Do we need another unicorn story in which a unicorn visits a rape victim, thus proving that it's not virginity but pureness of heart that unicorns actually care about? Does this story need to be one?

All of which is a) more than you want to know, and b) a lame excuse why after last night's enthusiasm I somehow haven't written another word.

But, hey. Last night, I typed until I bled. "Dude," said my husband, "that's hard core!" Yeah. People walk into your apartment and find you dabbing blood off the keyboard with a bit of moistened toilet paper. That should count for something... even if the bleeding wasn't really caused by the typing. Or maybe it was. I mean, I don't know exactly how that cut on my knuckle from the other week's bicycle wipe-out reopened. I just realized that my finger was wet, and looked down, and there seemed to be a lot of red. Maybe it was the typing. Serious, hard-core typing. Yeah.

Hey, look! That websnark guy is doing Nano too! Go look at his excerpts and leave me alone while I frantically make up 2,000 words of, oh, I don't know, background material or something.

Yeah, so I devoured Abarat Book Two: Days of Magic, Nights of War pretty much over the 24 hours following its purchase. That stuff about how books don't get read during NaNoWriMo? Apparently, there's an exception.

Now I am in agony because now I have to wait for Book three. That's gonna be, like, a whole 'nother year. At least! Wow. I think now I know how a Harry Potter fanatic must have felt after eating up Goblet of Fire the day after it came out.

This just in: The second book in Clive Barker's Abarat series is out. I hadn't expected to see it until 2005, and here it is, out in hardback on the endcap shelves in the Boulder Bookstore's young readers section when I went to go exchange Mr. Socks Fox for a copy with correctly cut pages. Whoot!

(By coincidence, when I went to go return my library books and pay my fine, I picked up a copy of Barker's The Thief Of Always from the paperback sale rack there. Who knew it was an omen?)

Abarat is the first book that, once I finished reading it, I flipped right back to page one and started over. It was sort of an "Ohhhh... I get it now," moment. The writing isn't by itself the best in the world, but the world that is this fantasy's setting is compelling, and the illustrations painted by the author are gorgeous and vivid. It's a story that really sticks with me and follows me into my dreams.

Right. So... I need to reread the first book again, but If I Recall Correctly, the hero is one Candy Quackenbush (ha! love it) from Chickentown, Missouri. Or another state that starts with an M. Her life ranges from utterly boring to sinisterly abused. One day, she's out wandering in a cornfield... and discovers a lighthouse. She becomes involved in the struggle between two very strange characters over the lighthouse's key, which when used correctly causes the sea to roll in. So off she sails, floats, swims to the archipelago known as The Abarat, where each island perpetuates a single hour of the day (making Time in actuality a Place), and the evil and creepy Prince of the Midnight Island is particularly interested in her for reasons that begin to come clear towards the end of the first book.

(I'm eager to see how many of my guesses about that are proven right in the second book.)

As I understand it, Clive Barker has been painting oil portraits of these characters for years. One day, IIRC, he realized that all these pictures he was painting were coming from a single story, and he sat down and wrote that story out. It'll span four books, each of them illustrated with prints of those paintings, and Disney's already bought the rights for the animated film, due out in 2005ish.

I'm hoping it'll turn out to be the first decent adaptation of a Clive Barker novel yet. (Don't even get me started on Lord of Illusions. Choke me with a nine of swords, why don't you.)

So go go go go read these books, 'cause they're that darn good, and 'cause it's neat to see Mr. Barker, known for his work in horror, doing astoundingly inventive young adult fantasy.

No, of course that bar hasn't moved 3,250 words to the right. Yes, I know I'm in deep ca-ca. Indeed. Look, don't bother me and my nice fuzzy coat of comforting denial. I am in pain right now, all around the collarbone, and the creases under my eyes are sticky with tears, and it's all Aeire's fault.

Still don't get it? Try reading this one. Yeah. That one's pretty good. Hmm. So's this other one.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a three-hour nap to take.