Today I finished writing a 50,000 word novel that I started on November 1st. Which means I not only won my first year of Nano-Wrimo while taking two Stanford Computer Science courses, but also completed my absurd New Year's Resolution of writing a novel! The book is called Robo Girl, this draft is fairly mediocre, but the plot is pretty crazy. Hopefully, I can make the time to turn it into a more polished piece...before I graduate??

Thanks to all the people that encouraged me and my family for allowing me to spend the majority of Thanksgiving in a coffee shop.

An Excerpt:

I smell the burn before I see the accident. Everywhere is blood, everywhere is red and sticky, dark and rich like syrup. Streaks of flesh litter the pavement. The road is a shredder of life, heavy with roadkill. Cars creep in slow motion with passengers eager to decipher the chaos. As we reach the center, I imagine the tires being inked red, preparing to stamp the unmarked asphalt ahead. The closer we come, the more terrifying the destruction. A skull covered in a ripped uneven layer of skin, leans against a leg, over extended at a forty degree angle with bone jutting through flesh.

Scattered amongst the flesh are glinting metals. Little precise bits of wire and silicon sprinkled like confetti over the funeral. Some parts are still moving. A wired hand, missing a pinky and thumb points its index, middle, and ring fingers into the air, slowly trying to dry the blood still shiny on its surface. A crisp green eye blinks unceasingly as its exposed wires, shooting out of its socket like fireworks, spark to complete the broken circuit. The destruction stretches for the length of about twenty vehicles.

​I can see from my window that most commuters are flipping through their screens, trying to decipher the accident. So many flickering telies on big front screens. In the car adjacent to ours two parents whisper, pointing at a live feed of our roadway as their child sleeps in the back unaware. I watch through my window into their private world as they hold hands and rub each others backs. I watch as the woman’s back begins to shudder and the man commands the feed to stop. I watch as the girl wakes up and pretends not to see their mother tears.

I see their girl, young with chubby cheeks and large brown eyes roll over to peek out her window. I see her eyes grow wider into two little disks as she begins to scream. I see her dad turn and grab her, swinging her into his lap as he shouts at his car again. All their windows go black. Our car lets out a faint note of a flute as a green notification pops onto the screen. We are pushed further back into the queue as the car next to us with now tinted windows merges ahead.

Last year I had three New Year's Resolutions: 1) Run a marathon, 2) Write a story a season, and 3) Grow my hair out, which essentially meant to power through the awkward stage and not shave off my hair once again. I have literally done a halfway decent job on my aspirations because I ran half a marathon, managed to not cut my hair, and, in the past two days, wrote a longer short story with seasonal stories in it (kind of). Whatever! I'm counting it. Better late than never. Let me know what you think (of the story and not my last minute goal accomplishing habit)!