To illustrate or not?

Well my husband started illustrating for my manuscript "Duke's Forever Family" a story about a kitten who wakes up to find his whole family has disappeared while he slept. He sets out on an adventure to find them. During his adventure he finds friends and learns about how others experience loss and hurt.

Well now he kinda just wants to stop illustrating since its a chapter book. He wants to put the book out without any pictures because its 10 chapters long and the shortest chapter is about 5 pages. Its a beginner or entry-level chapter book so that kids who are starting to out grow picture books can step into my chapter stories.

Well he wanted to illustrate it and he had some pretty cute pictures but now he doesn't think we should. I kind of want them so that its an easier transition for kids. It's a toss up. I guess that we still have time to consider it. Being the story does take place during the winter, specifically around Christmas, I kinda want it to be taken care of ASAP so I can get the copyright already.

Scared Myself

So I am working on another manuscript. Its a thriller story about middle school girls at a slumber party. It sounds cliche just by that description but its not just a bunch of young girls being scared to death by killer ghosts.
I think there's more to it than that. In fact, this story won't have much at all to do with ghosts.

I'd like to give a good description but I want to finish the story before I go into it too much.

My point for writing this post was that I scared myself while writing the story. What kind of ninny baby writer am I? Then I had to think about it. If I can scare myself I can scare kids for sure. That's the point of writing horror stories; scaring people, even if I am one of those people.

I wonder if Stephen King ever scared himself. Probably not.

National Novel Writing Month

National Novel Writing Month starts on November 1 and ends on the 30th. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel by the end of November. You don't even have to be any good. You just have to write and some who do participate actually are good.

Micke challenged me and said he thought I could do it. My only problem is I don't feel that I have the time or energy to try and complete an imperfect 50,000 word manuscript by the end of November. I have a 40 hour a week job and kids. I like to write, hence the blog, I just don't see myself being a fast paced, edge of my seat, writer. Currently, I have nobody to answer to, no publisher with a deadline or no agent. So, writing a certain amount by a certain date, hasn't occurred to me.

I do have to say for myself that I did complete an imperfect manuscript of about 18 thousand words in under 4 days. However, that was not my goal, it just happened. Micke challenged me, though. I may give it a try. If I do, that will give me something to blog about.

Anyway you can find out more about NaNoWriMo by clicking the link.