And finally, here’s last year’s NaNo, a.k.a. The Year I Tried To Write Utter Crack But Then It Turned Sort Of Serious For Some Reason. I can’t fault the premise, tho. Basically: Jo’s not having a good day. She wakes up to find a dead guy on her porch and an alien in her bathroom and then the dead guy apparently walks off of his own accord and somebody’s turned her boyfriend’s estranged father into a gold statue and that’s not even the weird part. How did it turn from that to angst? I dunno, maybe I was in a bad mood that month.

Hey, at least he gets a last name.

2008 was by far my absolute worst NaNoWriMo disaster. Yes, I reached 50,000 words. But like 2005, I’d planned a story all October, then ditched it a couple of days into November. And while 2005 was a fairly awful story, at least it had some characters I cared about, even if I had to import them from elsewhere. 2008… it is probably the worst thing I have ever written. Here is one of the two main characters. I couldn’t recall if she has a last name and, after scanning through the story for as long as I could bear, couldn’t find one. I couldn’t remember what she looked like, either. For me, this is not at all normal, as I’m sort of absurdly loyal to the fake people in my head. The only reason I’m drawing her at all is because I wanted some representation of every year, and when a story’s called Allie & Paul I should at least draw Allie and Paul. So here is Allie. Later, Paul. And then we will never speak of this again.

Erwin Carter. Politician, diplomat, not particularly trustworthy.

There is a distinct possibility I’m stealing skintones from Leyendecker paintings again. IT’S EDUCATIONAL, OKAY. (I still feel like a cheater.)

Gable’s not too fond of sharing a first name with this little ray of sunshine. In another story, he might’ve been the main character. In this one, things don’t work out so well for him…