The Big Reveal...and an invitation

Believe it or not, in some cases, embarrassing yourself, or rather, the fear of embarrassing yourself, can be a force for good in your life. I've always believed that the number of people you tell that you're doing something difficult, like quitting smoking or going on a diet, is inversely proportional to the likelyhood that you'll give up on that difficult task.

I'm going to try and write a 50,000-word novel in November and I've decided to not only tell as many people as I can, but invite them to read along as I share my daily output. I figure this is the best way to scare myself into keeping it up to the bitter end.

So, you're invited to read along with my novel, Touch, which I shall briefly outline for you below, by sending me an email and asking me to put you on the mailing list. There's a nice easy email link over there on the right under the header "Subscribe to my daily NaNo Novel Updates." In return for the silent encouragement your interest will give me, I will email you the text I have managed to write that day. It should be approximately 1700-1800 words per installment.

Now, I warn you, this is go to be very rough text. It is a first draft, and in order to reach my goal of 50,000 words by the end of November, I will have to mostly resist the temptation to edit as I go along. It will probably be riddled with typos and bad sentence structure. It will most likely have gaping plot holes and a few wooden characters. But, I think I've come up with a passable story idea, so I hope it will be interesting enough to allow you to overlook (for now) its shortcomings.

So, as promised, here's the basic outline so you can decide if this is something that might interest you...and if it does, I hope you'll follow along as it's written!

Millions of years ago, in another galaxy, members of a dying race have devised a way to spread their DNA across the universe, hopefully to land on at least one planet with compatible life forms. Here on earth, in the present day, a pretty rock washes up on a riverside where it's found by a little boy. As soon as he touches it, it cracks open, and inside he finds an intriguing goo, to which of course, being a little boy, he is irrisistably drawn. He touches it. From that moment on, the alien DNA enters the body of anyone he touches, or anyone those people touch, spreading itself within weeks across almost the entire planet. The DNA causes very subtle, but discernible physical and psychological changes in those it touches. Many people welcome it. Many fear it. Some want to destroy it. 

And some very special people are profoundly changed by the DNA, becoming the centre of a storm that rages around one of mankind's greatest fears: the fear of change.