Ladies and Gentlemen: Start your engines!

So last week I said I wasn’t going to do the A to Z challenge, and I’m still not. Instead, I’m doing Camp NaNo. My reasoning for not participating was that I could literally write a novel in the same amount of time, so that’s what I’m doing.

I don’t usually announce the starts of books (hint: I start more of them than I finish), but since everyone else is laying themselves bare with the challenge, I thought I’d go for some transparency. Cheer if you like. Call me crazy. You can even say “Holy Krakatoa! I’d never let people see my writing process like that.”

Yeah, I’m feeling a little nervous and exposed. I mean, shoot, what if I abandon this? Oh well, take some risks and write, right?

So, without further ado, the novel.

TITLE: WHY SO GRIMM, KITTY?

Genre: Paranormal/Creature romance

Pitch: Kat is the captain of the cheer squad, with a long and sundry history with the smoking hot quarterback. They’re quite the pair, but when Kat wakes up to discover she is a telepathic, shapeshifting cheetah, she loses her confidence. Now that she can hear everyone’s thoughts, she knows the terrible price her beauty has had on the rest of the school. She professes illness and runs away to explore the Great Plains as a cat. When her ex-boyfriend goes hunting, he accidentally bags the big cat: Kat.

Instead of killing Kat, the quarterback decides to give the cheetah to his new girlfriend. Before Kat can shift back to her normal size, the quarterback’s new squeeze puts a chain collar around her neck, one that would kill her if she shifted back. But that was no accident. The quarterback’s rebound hotty is none other than the Grimm Reaper, and she’s pissed. Kat was supposed to go unstable from the telepathy (also a Grimm Gift) and stage a massive school shooting. Now the Grimm Reaper will do anything to get the deaths she needs, even if it means dating the quarterback. Can Kat beat back the Grimm Reaper, rescue her boyfriend, and do it all before Prom? No wonder they call it Senioritis.

April fools!

I can’t write paranormal romance to save my keyboard. It’s not that I don’t enjoy it, it’s just that I do such a bland job at it. So yes, this is a joke. For those of you tortured with my bihourly tweet pitching on Friday, this was the FakePitMad pitch.

Anyhow, I really am starting a novel today. As in, I’m going to post this entry and open a scary blank document and type. Just like that. Okay, it’s way harder than that, but you all know what I’m talking about. If I’m not back in two days, someone send a bottle of wine (Pinot Noir, please).

(okay, a hint about the book: I’m toasting the start with a special brand of rum: Kraken)