I keep forgetting to post over here, I usually update my word count over at Twitter. Mostly because it's nice to write something more here, which makes it quicker to post just the word counts at twitter.

Anyways, I've fallen a bit behind with nano. This past week has been busy, not giving me as much time to write. I did get some time to myself today, and spent a few hours writing. I ended up with 4094 words today, for a total of 21,472 on my draft (33 pages single spaced). It's not the 25k I should have as of today, but I'm not as far behind as I was before. I was just under 4k while finishing up the last scene for the day, when I decided to add some extra thoughts for the character, so I could get to the 4k (it was my aim for today).

Behind or not, I am really liking how the story is going so far. I made it to the point where my main character has put the pieces in place so she can fall for the red-herring. (Yes, SF mystery). I've also gotten another scene in from the perp's point of view. It's kind of fun writing from his POV, to set the stage for what my MC is going to be in for, and putting up a smoke screen around real clues. I haven't read much science fiction, but I've read lots of mystery novels, so I feel comfortable with the mystery aspects of the novel. (I am planning on reading more SF after getting through this draft. I just finished Ursula Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness, and have Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land next on my short list).

When it comes to the SF area of the novel, I want to have the reader feel like it's a different setting then our present day Earth, but I don't want it to seam artificial with extra "sciency" sounding words thrown in for the sake of being there because they sound SF. I want to create an environment that supports the story and characters, without distracting from it. I'm hoping future readers (ha) will have a feel for the novel's time and place without it being to in the foreground. I'm aiming for "reader following my MC around the station as she solves the mystery" rather than "oh look, yet another shiny piece of high technology that a random character happens to be using". When reading Le Guin's novel, the characters were interesting, and I kept reading to see what happened to them. There was enough world building so that the actions of the aliens made sense, and I could almost feel the cold of the world they were on. But it didn't detract from the story at all, the action moved forward and the characters could stand on their own.