It's the most wonderful time of the year

I'm always giddy ball of excitement when October starts. Why?

It's not Halloween or Thanksgiving or Christmas.

It's not because the leaves are changing and the weather gets colder.

It's time for NaNoWriMo!

The site has reset, the boards are clear, and the Your 2013 Novel space is waiting to be filled with thousands of characters and places and plots. There are new friends to meet and old friends to see. It's NaNo time, and it's the best time of the year!

I had a tough choice ahead of me for what to write. So many good ideas in the log, waiting to be brought to life. But a few weeks ago, a new one nibbled, then bit, then moved in and said "No, Atlantis. No, Pirates. No, Murder Mystery. This is MY year."

Friends, readers, meet Tricker's Gambit, the Old West fantasy.

Synopsis:

Hustling got real easy for James Proctor the day he found his magic staff. People with more money than brains were much more willing to throw their fortunes at someone who could get rid of ghosts than a shyster with a pack of cards. No one needed to know he's the one who made the "ghosts" with his power over illusions, and no one seemed to notice that the ghosts showed up around the same time he did. It was the perfect scam.

And then the trickster spirit showed up, pretending to be a ghost right in the middle of his "exorcism". And then Proctor used the staff in a way he wasn't supposed to. Now the trickster is stuck in the body of young housekeeper Helen, Helen's stuck as a ghost, and Proctor's just stuck. By all laws of the magic realm, he should lose his staff and memory of everything fantastic. However, the governing Council isn't without mercy...for Helen (Proctor and Varmint the trickster did this to themselves, after all). Proctor is given a stay of execution until he fixes his mistake and gets her back into her own body. With a deputy and his posse hunting them down for kidnapping Helen, a vampire lord tracking Proctor over a gambling debt, and the Council watching their every step, the three have very little time to find the lost artifact that will fix their problem, and they're not the only ones looking for it.

So that's my new baby. I love the characters, I love the plot and setting, and I'm looking forward to working on it. This month is for plotting, and next month, the fun begins.

I hope I don't pull my hair out.