Hi there! Thanks for coming to my fundraising page for the National Novel Writing Month's November Write-a-thon. On November 17th, I'll be joining more than 100 authors at the Women's Building in San Francisco. Our goal: Write as much of our novels (did I mention I'm writing a novel this November?) as possible over six hours of food, drinks, and fun.

All the money I raise will go directly to the Office of Letters and Light, whose free programs such as National Novel Writing Month inspire tens of thousands of kids, teens, and adults to write books every year.  The money will be used primarily to support the Internet tools that the Office of Letters and Light uses to help writers everywhere get the tools that they need to persevere, as well as putting together and sending out kits to classrooms where younger writers will participate in these activities, and helping send volunteers to the classrooms to help the kids get going and keep going.

You can find out more about the Office of Letters and Light by going to their website and to the websites for their various programs:

Office of Letters and Light

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)

NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program

As a special bonus, anyone who donates any amount here gets to be in my novel, a sure ticket to fame and fortune (should I ever get this thing published).  Usually I offer to name a character after you and then kill that character off in a manner of your choosing, but if this doesn't work for you, I'm sure we can work something out.

The novel I'm writing this year is called The Lord of Nightmares, and it's a sequel to The Return of Deacon Dread, which is the novel I wrote last year.  It's meant to be juvenile/YA comic horror.  The basic premise is that a supernatural foe called the Lord of Nightmares is using supernatural events to take over the city of San Augustin (a city much like San Francisco).  The heroine is Zoe Garrick, a young woman from England who is in the U. S. to study the history of the Old West.  She has been chosen by the spirit of the mysterious Deacon Dread (who takes the form of Johnny Cash for reasons I haven't quite figured out) to defeat the Lord of Nightmares.

You can read excerpts as I post them at the official Lord of Nightmares blog.