It's been a while since I last updated here, so this entry might be a little more dense than normal!

To start off, I turned 19! For my birthday, my family took me sky-diving, which is something that I've always wanted to do. So Dad and I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane. My face looked like this:




It was ridiculously fun. Dad's face was pretty priceless, too.

Other than that, I've seen almost all of the new movies out (Despicable Me, Inception, The Last Airbender, Toy Story 3) and hung out with friends. I did buy myself a beautiful birthday present: a 16 GB, emerald green iPod to replace the one that I lost. It's gorgeous and full of Natalie Merchant, who Mom and I are going to see in concert on the 17th.

I'm very nearly finished with the Temeraire books. I can't wait for the new one to come out in January. Here's hoping that I'll have time in between my textbooks and novels for school to finish Tongues of Serpents, which is the sixth book. Speaking of the series, I had a chat with Naomi Novik on facebook the other day, thanks to Barnes and Noble. She was answering all kinds of fan questions, so I decided to ask her something that I had been wondering ever since I finished her second book.

Naomi Novik @Devan Manning "I would just like to ask how hard or how easy it is or has been for you to come up with the plot for the Temeraire series. I've tried writing myself but the plot and the pacing always seems off to me. I'm sure practice is the key, but I was wondering if you had any suggestions concerning an author's worry for their own plots or how to make them last for an entire series like you have done."

This is a tricky question, and for me a terrific learning experience was working on the Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide game -- we had to have 30 hours of gameplay or else you can't sell it! -- so we ended up working out a sort of structure with a backbone of core plot that was about 15 hours, organized that into three acts, and then hung side plots off that like ornamentation.

I think a process like that can be very helpful, and also breaking things down into smaller chunks -- I like the three act structure myself a lot as you can see from the Temeraire books.

I had a fan-girl-induced giggle fit when she answered, although upon re-reading it, I don't feel like it's all that great of an answer. I guess she was just trying to tell me that practice is key...

Now to the only subject that I really care about: Nicole, Kelsey, and I have set up a miniature NaNoWriMo for ourselves right before school starts! We're doing two weeks (the 2nd to the 16th) and trying to get to 10,000 words. I'm already two days behind, but I've been working my ass off. So hopefully tomorrow, on my first day off of the week, I'll be able to crank out a story which should be a couple thousand words. I'm not worried about it.

But I don't know what I'm going to do for the real NaNoWriMo...hmmm....

Well I'll probably post again on the 13th (my three year anniversary with SBUX), the 17th, and then on the 20th (first day of school).