Looking back at NaNoWriMo's of the past, part 2.

NaNoWriMo was a month-long creative writing challenge that took place every November.

As I mentioned, I’m busy writing this year’s NaNoWriMo project, My Place or Yours.

As I won’t have a lot of time to write posts, I’ve put together this series of retrospectives from my past NaNo challenges in advance, so that I can have a clear run at the novel in November.

This week I’m featuring NaNo’s projects from 2018 and 2019.

In 2018, for a change, I wrote my third Steampunk novel. After all the world-building I’d done for the first two, it seemed a shame not to use it again.

The Sensaurum and the Lexis was intended to be the first in a series featuring a band of adventurers called The Orphan Detectives. Set in the same world but a while after the events in A New Life in Ventis, Norlandia was more technically advanced yet still recognisable. In the novel, there was a mad scientist with advanced technology, intent on world domination.

Here’s the original cover.

And the latest version.

Is Jackson Thwaite ready to discover the secret of Makewright Orphanage?

Although he doesn’t know it, he has been selected to be part of something vital to the land of his birth.

Norlandia is a country under threat, as never before. The old heroes are but a memory, while evil forces gather, seeking power.

They are armed with the latest devices that perverted science has devised.

Control of Norlandia and everyone in it is their ultimate aim.

Who will stand in their way?

Under the command of the mysterious Mortimer Langdon, all that stands between civilisation and anarchy are Jackson and the rest of The Orphan Detectives.

And a review.

The Orphan Detective’s second adventure, The Safety of the Realm, is available now. And I have a rough plan for a third story.

2019 was the year of The Hitman and the Thief, a crime novel set in a possible far future, where criminal families control planets. It stars Dan Jones, a disillusioned assassin who has one last job to do before he can retire. The fact that things don’t go to plan forces him to work with a partner and catapults him into a chase across the Galaxy. I’m particularly proud of the twist that I managed to achieve in this one.

Assassination can be a messy business, especially if you’re having a bad day.

Dan Jones is the ultimate problem solver, the hitman for crime boss Fliss Bauer.

Fliss has a rival, Kalindra Dallin. She runs a particularly unpleasant planet. Dan is told to arrange her demise. It’s just another job; until a random event means that it all goes horribly wrong.

To save his skin, Dan is forced to try again, only this time he has to work with a partner. He doesn’t want to but it’s the only chance he’s going to get; if he wants to put things right.

Can the hitman and the thief get the job done, more importantly, can they keep each other alive?

Here’s a review,

I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane. If you’ve read one of the books mentioned, please let me know what you thought of it.

Next week, I’ll be looking back at 2020, 2021 and 2022.

If you missed the first part of the series, find it here.

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