Finally finished Chapter 5 of the rough draft. Various RL stuff getting in the way plus bouts of writer's block kept me away from the manuscript, but yesterday I decided to sign up for NaNoWriMo and see if that would help me get back on track. So far, it's working out fairly well. I'm a bit ahead of the daily goal (so far, at least), and I'm finally back at work on the book (well into chapter 6 by now). Since I'd already started writing the book before Nov. 1, I decided to start the NaNoWriMo word count at the beginning of the first new scene I wrote after NaNo 2015 launched, and continue on from there. So even though I'm five chapters in, the word count for NaNo is a tick under 4,000 words at the end of Day 2.

Now, a bit of background info while I'm here. Before the story this book is based on, "Mission to Bellatrix," started forming in my head, its main character was inspired by something totally random. I stumbled onto the cinematic trailer for the first Borderlands game earlier this year (dunno how I missed it when the game was released several years ago), and one particular image caught my attention and ideas started coming together in my head:

This started me thinking about all the male protagonists who are allowed to have scars and still be considered attractive, and in fact usually manage to land supermodel-gorgeous love interests, and how female protagonists almost always remain beautiful no matter what they go through. Even those in action movies are still hot after being in multiple brutal fights. Since I don't like double standards, and for a long time I've had a habit of inverting certain tropes anyway, I started thinking it might make for an interesting story if the heroine has a badly scarred face and maybe a damaged eye like in the above image.

The basic ideas for this character clicked together pretty quickly, but I still wasn't sure what to do with her. I started writing her into a book a couple of times, but it didn't go anywhere. Then I was asked to submit a story for a paranormal/sci-fi romance anthology, and realized this character would be perfect for it. I came up with a bio for her in about half an hour and posted it on my blog. Later on, I changed a few details here and there, such as her skin color, but for the most part, this is the character who appeared in the final draft of the story -- and now she's a major character in this work-in-progress novel.

And as it turned out, I'm having a lot of fun writing this character. :D