Weekend Update

By Frank Anthony Polito

As expected when I officially started blogging, I didn't get much blogging done this week... Caught a bit of a cold last Saturday (felt it coming on right before seeing The Performers), and despite popping Zycam drops every 3 hours for 2 days straight I'm still not feeling 100%. But I thought I'd give a quick update today as to what's been going on...

I spent Thanksgiving alone. Not a big deal. And since I was sick, I didn't go out in search of any invitations to dinner. If you're reading this you probably know that I've been doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) since 11/1, the goal being to write 50,000 of a new novel during the month of November. I've had an idea for a new book kicking around in my head since round about 2009, so I decided to take this opportunity to hunker down and start writing it.

It's called The Spirit of Detroit and is inspired by my all-time favorite novel The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. With one week to go I've got over 45,000 words written -- and I'm not even halfway through my outline. I've been burning the midnight oil, as they say, and last night I was up until 4am typing away.

I expect the final story to come in around 100,000 words. Once NaNoWriMo ends, I'll probably keep on writing to the end, then go back and edit the entire thing. Hopefully it will be ready for self-publication by June or July 2013. Unless of course I can find a real publisher who takes an interest...

UPDATE: I spent the last couple hours (why does it always take sooo long?) tinkering around with the cover. Wasn't digging the boldness of the font compared to the Chabon -- or the way the words were separated between letters. I also made the word "spirit" a little larger and tweaked the color to give it a more peachy hue. Here's a look at the new and improved: