#NaNoWriMo Interview: Morgan / Jasmine Giacomo

Is this your first year doing NaNoWriMo? How many times have you done it and have you won?
This will be my fourth year at NaNo. I’ve won every year so far because I am a writing maniac. I’m doing two books this November because they’re just piling up inside my skull, despite my participation in Camp NaNo this summer. Job security’s a good thing, though. I’m 100% certain that I’ll never run out of stories to tell. It’s all a matter of typing fast enough.


What is the best tip you can give to a first-time NaNo'er?
The best tip I can offer is this: DO NOT listen to your Debbie Downer self as you grind through the process of writing out all those words. Your brain will be full of nonsense like “oh, I don’t know what comes next” or “shouldn’t I have fed my children a few times this week” or “my arms are literally falling off.” And the worst one: “I could write that sentence better; just gimme a few minutes to edit it.” NO! Don’t edit. It feels like progress, but it’s not. Write, or write not. There is no edit.

How much preparation do you plan to do before November 1st?
All of it. I use the Snowflake method to prep my novels. The more I know ahead of time, the easier it is to string my words together in a very very long line, with only minimal stopping for unimportant things like potty breaks and more hot chocolate. If my NaNo writing isn’t boring as heck due to all my foreknowledge of every little plot twist, then I’m not doing it right, and I will likely end up on seventeen tangents with forty thousand extra words. I need my outlining to keep me on track, because as I said earlier, I have far too many ideas bouncing around in my head.

Got anything you'd like to tell us about this year’s project?
Of course! But I’ll try to keep it short. This year, I’m writing the third book in my cozy mystery series, Caching Out. My working title is TRAILING DEATH. My protagonists are geocachers who stumble across yet another body while they’re out having fun with their hobby—this time while they’re biking around the trails at an abandoned army camp. Because their hobby involves multi-million dollar satellites, the books do have some tech, but it’s nothing my grandma couldn’t grasp.

Anything else you'd like to share?
The first book in the Caching Out series, FIRST TO FIND, was released on October 29th. It’s available in ebook and print from all major online retailers.

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Morgan is an outdoorsy girl with a deep and abiding love for the natural sciences. Her degrees involve English and jujitsu. She enjoys hiking, camping, and wandering in the woods looking for the trail to the car, but there isn't enough chocolate on the planet to bribe her into rock climbing.
When she's not writing, she can be found making puzzles, getting lost on the way to geocaches, reading stories to her children, or taking far too many pictures of the same tree or rock.
She lives in Eastern Washington with her family.

FTF availability: http://bit.ly/XN5tZN
My fantasy books, under the name Jasmine Giacomo: http://bit.ly/SoVSXF