Jumping on the Notebook Bandwagon Today

Spiral Bound Chaos.

I've noticed a pattern across the Authory Internetz (official term!) today, one that I think I should jump in on ANY TIME NOW. Anyway, on blogger, on twitter, on forums, probably on tumbllr too, the big thing the past couple of days is sharing our notebooks. (Is this an actual thing or just one big coincidence?) Either way, to the left is a picture of all my notebooks I use for writing. Now, I don't actually use notebooks that...much. I mostly just use notebooks to write down very brief outlines to get me through the Nano months. (Of which we are up to three a year now. Yay.) But eh, here's a quick and dirty breakdown:

Pink Notebook - Bought at Wal-Mart, it currently contains the ongoing outline of CROSS//Process. I don't know what the second part will hold, yet. But it's two subject so it's got room for additions.

Large Orange Notebook - Bought at Seria in Japan. It's the well-worn notebook containing the still ongoing outline for CROSS//Revenge. Well-worn because it's been toted around and handled by Japanese chilluns (including one who tried to nom on it) and so, so many stains from all my Sunday dinners at Coco's Family Restaurant (I miss that place!)

Tiny Orange Notebook - Bought at a bookstore in Japan. This is my "catch all" notebook that I carry in my purse at all times, mostly for jotting down Real Life notations and contacts. But the front part is the "idea bank" for ideas I have randomly that I'll probably never use. No seriously, their are some awful ideas in there. No. Seriously.

Fancy Looking Orange Notebook - Bought at Seria (DOLLAR STORE BTW) in Japan. The actual writing space on each page is tiiiiiny so I can see why it cost a dollar now. Anyway, this is my Hubpages / General article writing notebook. I put my article ideas down in here so I can whip it out and go "wait what should I write about now".

So that's my life with notebooks. Oh, and that orange pen came from Japan too. Everything orange in that pic came from Japan.

Looking for a blog post idea? Apparently we're supposed to post about our notebooks today.

OH AND OF COURSE can't forget my "other" notebook...

God I hate this thing. Not Pikachu, though.

Name That Character!...kinda.

Are you SURE this isn't in Oregon?

One of the great things about being networked with other writers is that...well, you can use them. Shamelessly. And rip them off. Shamelessly.

I'm in a small, annoying pickle, readers. A pickle of my own creation but a pickle nonetheless. You see, I need to come up with about 99 last names. Well, exactly 99 last names. I've got...10?...so far?

These last names will comprise the 99 family/house/estate (they can never agree on what to call them, okay) names that make up an advanced humanoid race in my CROSS// series. There are only 99 names because well, they live a really freakin' long time and don't breed much. (I hear the men are largely asexual. Damn.) And since I only have about 10 figured out so far and would like to have a reference list of all 99 should I ever need some names...this is where you come in!

Help me come up with some names!

First, the background info of these people:

1) They are called the julah, and are the supposed oldest kinds of humans in the universe.
2) Full-blooded julah live between, on average, 3500-4000 (Earth-ish) years. Less than that live to about 200 if descended matrilineally, "normal" human lifespan if patrilineally.
3) Their role in the universe is to act as spiritual priests, guidance counselors, and academics to the Void to which they are connected.
4) They are a very uniform and quiet people who keep mostly to themselves.
5) Most of them can practice varying levels degree of sorcery as well depending on their education. This includes manipulating matter, teleporting, psychic channeling, and healing at the very basic levels. Advanced julah (mostly at the priest level) can communicate with spirits, create alternate-reality spaces, place souls into a constant state of reincarnation, and even raise the damned dead.
6) There are about three million full blooded julah left in the universe at the time of the series, twice as many half-blooded, and an uncounted amount of a quarter and less blood (after a half most naming conventions are dropped and the julah government just doesn't care, man.)

The names that you (or hell anybody) can contribute have to follow only very simple guidelines.

1) Containing 2-3 easy to pronounce syllables.
2) Can be based on "real" Earth names like some of the ones below but nothing like "Smith" or "Rodriguez" or "Tanaka" (ie. the most prominent names), obviously.
3) I have established a small pattern of names ending with "-an", for whatever reason. I don't really want more than 33 or so names to have this ending though.

Otherwise, go wild!

If you have any name suggestions or just general keyboard vomits to contribute, feel free to comment with them. Odds are I'll shamelessly steal use them, and even if the names never make it into text they'll still be on my master list of the 99 names. :')

Names I already have are listed below. Bolded names are names that some characters already have so they're a done deal, if you're looking for ideas to jump from. I kinda wanna have every letter start at least one name, so if you have any great "X" suggestions...

--

Amyran

Bacqucé

Charron

Dunsman

Ferran

Karaov

Lerenan

Marlow

Narath

Wellems

--

No but seriously guys I need like 89 more names. Go.

Weekly Writing Check-In: Preparing for the Inevitable

lol spoilers tbh.

Hey guys, it's October.

October is a great month for three super solid reasons.

1) My birthday is in October. Actually this should be all you need to know about October to know that it's fabulous.

2) It's full-on fall now. Hot weather is LOL BAI and blessed coolness all day comes and makes life freakin' bearable outside again.

3) NaNoWriMo season is officially here.

GUESS WHAT. I'm going to do what I've done for every nanowrimo I've ever been in since I started in 2007 (except for last year technically) and work on a WIP. Another 50k here we come.

So this is what I've been doing this week~~

CROSS//Rebirth

Finished editing chapter 2 and almost done with chapter 3. Hoping to have it completed tonight so I can start fresh on chapter 4 during my business trip. The first five chapters are the first hump to get through as they're the first set of chapters I wrote en mass, so they always require the most changes and the most analyzing on my part to make sure they match up with the rest of the novel. Thus far I'm averaging about a chop of 1k words per chapter - most of it is fluff, redundancy, etc, all that good (or not so good) stuff. Editing while on my trip should be...interesting, granted that I will be moving everything to my traveling EEE PC. Not the greatest computer to do any doc work of any kind on. At least I THINK it has Word 2007 (what I use on my main laptop here) on it so my flow should only be disrupted by a super tiny keyboard and it crashing every five minutes from memory loss.

CROSS//Revenge

Like I said above, Nano season is here, which means my preparations are in full swing. Luckily, that's not very much! I'm more or less ready for nano to come now. I've known what the following couple of chapters were going to be since the end of last nano. And I already outlined pretty much the entire next section that I may or may not get through this year. So all that really leaves me with is finalizing where things are going so I can just jump in and write write write without too much blockage. I think I mentioned last week that I fubbed on a plot point but that's since been sorted out (as you may see in the pic I've posted). Oh, about the pic. I needed to take a pic of something. But, you know, spoilers~ So check out at your own risk or just admire my super badass orange pencil I got yesterday. (Seriously? Japan is the best place to buy cheap and amazing office supplies. It's an addiction, really.)

That's all for this week. Proper Nano flail post to come if I ever find time this week~