NaNoWriMo - Wish me luck

Okay, it's official, I have signed up to participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). In signing up for this, I have decided to write a 50,000 word (~175 page) novel by the end of November. This means that I will have to write an average 1,667 words per day.
I think the most difficult thing will be trying to leave all of the editing till I have written everything.
During the month I will try and give updates - but please feel free to send me an email to ask how things are going.

Here is the link to the site:
http://www.nanowrimo.org/
Here is the link to my profile (word count):
http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/240190

Maximum Ride by James Patterson

**Please keep in mind that there are more then likely going to be spoilers in these posts, so if you don't want to know anything - then please don't read after the first title is presented (titles are in bold


All righty, here we go again, another review by yours truly. Today we shall be looking at the Maximum Ride series (currently two books - I'm thinking there will be a third).
This series is about six kids (ages ranging from teenager to six years old), who escaped from an institute they call "The School". I won't go into details as to what they did in the "School", but I will say that it wasn't good. The story is mainly written from the point of view of Maximum Ride, the oldest of the six. One more interesting little tidbit, all the children have wings. This series has it's own blog, I don't mean one that was made by a fan, but one that is suppose to be written from the character's prospective. Link Be careful, the blog takes a lot of processing power, many images.

**Possible Spoilers below - you have been warned**

The Angel Experiment
Now you know, I wanted to write a nice detailed explanation of what happened in this book, but too much happened to be able to do that. So I will give you a quick rundown.
Six kids were experiments at a place called "The School", with some help, the escaped. They managed to start living a fairly normal life, they had a home, watched TV, didn't have any parents, and never went to school (either kind).
Then all that ended, when some other experiments from The School attacked them and kidnapped the youngest girl, Angel (seeing any relation to the title?). The remaining kids then go on and try to save Angel from The School.
Their house gets destroyed, by the other experiments from The School. They are now out in the world, alone and without a place to go. On their way to save Angel, Maximum Ride, is injured helping a normal child. She later finds help with that same child and her mother.
After returning to the flock, Maximum Ride and company then focus on rescuing Angel. Most of them get captured though.
The ones who did not get captured, then rescue Angel and the others.
Maximum Ride starts to have major headaches, and sees images. With these images and some information that Angel learned (she can read minds by the way), they head to New York to try and find out information about their parents.
They get to NY, only to find that they don't know where to go, and end up sleeping in some subway tunnels and in the park.
Maximum starts to hear voices as well as seeing images. With the help of this mysterious voice in her head, they finally reach their goal, a place called The Institute.
Getting into The Institute, they find a bank of computers, and some information on themselves and supposedly some information on their parents. While there, they find another lab, with experiments just like them. They free them, and try to run for it. They are found by some Erasers (the bad experiments I mentioned earlier), and Maximum is forced to fight one that she knew as a child.
Of course they escape.

School's Out - Forever
This book starts out with the children heading to Florida, and a quick stop at Disney World (admit it, you would too), where they narrowly avoid being found by Ari (the Eraser that Maximum knew as a child) - they were helped out by a child who thought that Ari was Wolverine.
Later they get attacked by Ari, who is pissed because he missed them at Disney World, and Fang is hurt badly. They end up having to take Fang to a hospital. The hospital staff notices right away that he is not normal. Rather quickly the FBI is called.
Soon enough, the flock ends up being taken to the house of one of the FBI agents, who treats them very well. She feeds them (tries to cook), clothes them, and even makes them go to bed on time. Maximum is feeling very conflicted at this point. The flock then works on trying to find their parents with the information that they took in the previous book - they have little success.
The FBI agent decides that it would be a good time for the children to go to school, a private school (noticing something about the title yet?). The flock goes, and tries to be normal, with little success of course. Though Fang does get an admirer, and Maximum even goes out on a date. Things turn south from that point on. After Thanksgiving dinner, and an announcement that the FBI agent would like to adopt them, the children are almost caught by The School (the really bad one in this case - man this could get confusing) - but manage to escape, and flee the area.
Camping out in the swamp lands, they run into a couple of kids - who escaped from an institute just like the flock, and end up giving the flock a lead as to where to go next.
Following this lead, they decide to find out more about a company that supposedly controls almost everything - and might accidentally nuke the world.
Sleeping in a motel room close to this companies headquarters, Maximum is kidnapped, and replaced with a double (the rest of the flock see through the double in no time).
Maximum manages to escape (with some help from her voice), and tracks down where the flock is. Maximum is just in time to save the flock from a trap that the double and The School had set for them.
There is some more, but nothing of too much note.

I know I was rather quick on these, but there was just so much going on, that it would have taken a book to fully review these books.
I can't wait for a third one, there has to be a third one.

Midnighters Trilogy by Scott Westerfeld

**Please keep in mind that there are more then likely going to be spoilers in these posts, so if you don't want to know anything - then please don't read after the first title is presented (titles are in bold print).**

One of the most recent series that I read was Midnighters by Scott Westerfeld.
Simply put this series is about five teenagers who have one thing in common, they are some of the only few people who are awake during the secret hour (which resides in exact midnight). Of course this secret time could not be a peaceful time of enjoyment, no, it is also inhabited by demons who's only desire is to remove these "Midnighters" from their time, and is a time when any modern technology does not function.

**Possible Spoilers below - you have been warned**

The Secret Hour
This book mainly deals with introducing the individual Midnighters, their personalities, their present situation. Immediately a monkey wrench is thrown into the normality of the Midnighter's lives, when Jessica moves into town.
Jessica is not like the other Midnighters, her eyes aren't photophobic like the rest of them, and she is just too normal. When Jessica is around, the darklings (those demons that I talked about earlier) go nuts.
Now it turns out that each of the Midnighters have an ability, one can read minds, one can do complex math in her head, on can see signs of the darklings, one has almost no gravity during the secret hour. There is one small problem, Jessica doesn't seem to have any ability to keep her safe during the secret hour. Jessica spends most of the book having the other Midnighters protect her with their abilities and their knowledge of darkling lore (did you know that darklings have a fear of the number 13?).
The book ends with Jessica taking a great risk (along with the rest of the Midnighters) to figure out what her ability is. She is the one that the darklings have feared would come - the one who could bring fire and light to the secret hour.

Touching Darkness
This starts to give you an insight into the past of the Midnighters (those of the previous generations), and another threat that the current generation of Midnighters must face - but with some help this time.
Jessica now has her ability, and the darklings are now scared beyond reason, everything should be cake from now on - right? Nope, life is never that simple. The long and short of it is, that some of the Midnighters discover that one of Jessica's daylight friends family may have some knowledge of the secret hour, and have found a way to communicate with darklings.
Des, using numbers and math finds a hidden spot in the midnight hour, and there is a Midnighter from a past generation (one that everyone thought was completely wiped out). All of this leads to the Midnighters making the discovery that about 50 years in the past, the Midnighters had been betrayed, and one of their own was now part of a darkling.
It turns out that the Midnighter from the past, the one that was now part of a darkling, was dying. That means that they will want another Seer.
Jessica's daylight friend's family is pulling out all of the stops to get the current seer. They succeed. He is taken as part of a darkling (the other seer is left to die in the desert), but is saved by Jessica; he is not the same though - something changed in him, he's not fully human now.

Blue Moon
This book is the one that has the fastest pace of them all, it's a non-stop thrill ride, with a shocking ending.
The seer is now part darkling, the mindcaster now has control over her ability, and everyone else is the same.
Early in the book, things start to get weird. The five Midnighters are in a school assembly, when the secret hour suddenly comes (in the middle of the morning). Things are obviously wrong, but no one can figure out what.
This one you can finish on your own. I may not fully agree with the ending, but it does provide some food for thought.

Morning

Another early morning. Didn't sleep too well, but I surprisingly don't feel too bad - I'm sure that will change as the day goes on. Jana and I got up, and went to have some breakfast at McD's; too bad the weather is so bad right now - rain and thunder.
Today is the day that I have to go in to make up for that day I called in sick. Lucky me. I don't plan on staying all day - but I must say that I am worried that I will end up being there all day (I know how these things work).
Let's see, I talked to Dustin last night, for the first time in I'm not even sure in how long (isn't IM great?). I will have to talk to him again later.
Note to self, write a quick review of some books that I have read lately - I think that might be a good use for the bandwidth that I'm using. BTW, if you haven't tried the Blogger Beta, you should give it a try, it may be missing a few features, but it's still got some stuff that Blogger was missing.

Mood: Cautiously Optimistic

Oops, I posted this to the wrong blog twice - I must be tired.