Stories for a winter's night

Title: The Devil You Know

Series: G1 universe, focusing on Original characters

Rating: R

Summary: In the early days of the civil war on Cybertron, Sentinel Prime authorized several refugee vessels to take Neutrals away from the planet in hopes that they could start peaceful colonies where they would be safe. Many of these refugees were never heard from again; lost to us through time and distance. But history does record the fate of one of the vessels. The Stormchaser was three orns away from its destination when it was shot down by Decepticons in an act of cowardice and deceit. There were no survivors. That is what history tells us. But in this case, history is wrong.

Author's Note: Day 29. Less than 1,000 words to go. *Whew!*

This chapter will be expanded upon in the edit, but right now my brain refuses to provide any more information.

49225 / 50000 words. 98% done!

Chapter 20

( Cut to save friends pages and those who aren't interested in reading this oh so very rough draft )

Title: The Devil You Know

Series: G1 universe, focusing on Original characters

Rating: R

Summary: In the early days of the civil war on Cybertron, Sentinel Prime authorized several refugee vessels to take Neutrals away from the planet in hopes that they could start peaceful colonies where they would be safe. Many of these refugees were never heard from again; lost to us through time and distance. But history does record the fate of one of the vessels. The Stormchaser was three orns away from its destination when it was shot down by Decepticons in an act of cowardice and deceit. There were no survivors. That is what history tells us. But in this case, history is wrong.

Author's Note: Day 27. 45,311 words written, three days left and 4,569 words to go. There is no way in hell that this story will be completed in the remaining time, not unless I pull a "rocks fall; everybody dies". But I will hit the needed wordcount.

All joking aside, I will avoid the gatuitous gaming reboot method of dealing with the lack of completion, and just post my notes for the remaining chapters and the epilogue for those folks who are reading here, sort of like a sneak preview. Also, it will mean that I can have my last two words be "The" and "End", just like I wanted. Okay, so it's cheating a bit, but it means that I will have my notes posted somewhere, just in case something happens to my saved copies.

And the normal wordcounter will be replaced as soon as languageisavirus.com is back up again. I can't say that I particularly care for the one's provided by NaNo. Since their "live" they're constantly updating, but somehow, the wordcount doesn't seem to keep up to date (hence why it says I've only written 44,152 words at the time of this posting).

Edit: And the site is back up. Yeah for a normal word counter!

45311 / 50000 words. 91% done!

Chapter 18

( Cut to save friends pages and those who aren't interested in reading this oh so very rough draft )

Title: The Devil You Know

Series: G1 universe, focusing on Original characters

Rating: R

Summary: In the early days of the civil war on Cybertron, Sentinel Prime authorized several refugee vessels to take Neutrals away from the planet in hopes that they could start peaceful colonies where they would be safe. Many of these refugees were never heard from again; lost to us through time and distance. But history does record the fate of one of the vessels. The Stormchaser was three orns away from its destination when it was shot down by Decepticons in an act of cowardice and deceit. There were no survivors. That is what history tells us. But in this case, history is wrong.

Author's Note: Day 24. Still on track, somewhat. I ended up forgetting my notes at work (they're stuck in the back of my notepad), and the SanDisk that had the electronic copy is now corrupted. ... Great.

But I've reqritten my notes as best as I can recall, so I think I'm on track for this weekend.

42128 / 50000 words. 84% done!

Chapter 17

( Cut to save friends pages and those who aren't interested in reading this oh so very rough draft )

Title: The Devil You Know

Series: G1 universe, focusing on Original characters

Rating: R

Summary: In the early days of the civil war on Cybertron, Sentinel Prime authorized several refugee vessels to take Neutrals away from the planet in hopes that they could start peaceful colonies where they would be safe. Many of these refugees were never heard from again; lost to us through time and distance. But history does record the fate of one of the vessels. The Stormchaser was three orns away from its destination when it was shot down by Decepticons in an act of cowardice and deceit. There were no survivors. That is what history tells us. But in this case, history is wrong.

Author's Note: Day 20, and really, I have nothing to add except that I will be very glad when this is done. I hope to have the rough finished by the end of the month, but seeing as this is only chapter 15 of 30 (well, 17 or 32 with prologue ane epilogue), and each chapter is between 1,500 and 2,000 words long, I think that my actual end date will be early December. Then I will take a break for Christmas before doing a proary edit and revision. After that, I'll start begging for betas ...

35355 / 50000 words. 71% done!

Chapter 15

( Cut to save friends pages and those who aren't interested in reading this oh so very rough draft )

Title: The Devil You Know

Series: G1 universe, focusing on Original characters

Rating: R

Summary: In the early days of the civil war on Cybertron, Sentinel Prime authorized several refugee vessels to take Neutrals away from the planet in hopes that they could start peaceful colonies where they would be safe. Many of these refugees were never heard from again; lost to us through time and distance. But history does record the fate of one of the vessels. The Stormchaser was three orns away from its destination when it was shot down by Decepticons in an act of cowardice and deceit. There were no survivors. That is what history tells us. But in this case, history is wrong.

Author's Note: Day 18 and I am ahead of schedule by one day. I've just completed the Epilogue, but I won't post it yet since it may change, depending on what the characters decide they want. But just having it gives me a goal to aim for. And, of course, I've finished this chapter and am partway through Chapter 14.

31894 / 50000 words. 64% done!

Chapter 13

( Cut to save friends pages and those who aren't interested in reading this oh so very rough draft )

Title: The Devil You Know

Series: G1 universe, focusing on Original characters

Rating: R

Summary: In the early days of the civil war on Cybertron, Sentinel Prime authorized several refugee vessels to take Neutrals away from the planet in hopes that they could start peaceful colonies where they would be safe. Many of these refugees were never heard from again; lost to us through time and distance. But history does record the fate of one of the vessels. The Stormchaser was three orns away from its destination when it was shot down by Decepticons in an act of cowardice and deceit. There were no survivors. That is what history tells us. But in this case, history is wrong.

Author's Note: Day 17. After a decent night's sleep, I'm back and running. I caught up with my lapsed word count from yesterday and I'm flying along today. At least so far I am. It seems that that little blockage disappeared with sleep, so it's all upwards from here :)

27030 / 50000 words. 54% done!

Chapter 11

( Cut to save friends pages and those who aren't interested in reading this oh so very rough draft )

Title: The Devil You Know

Series: G1 universe, focusing on Original characters

Rating: R

Summary: In the early days of the civil war on Cybertron, Sentinel Prime authorized several refugee vessels to take Neutrals away from the planet in hopes that they could start peaceful colonies where they would be safe. Many of these refugees were never heard from again; lost to us through time and distance. But history does record the fate of one of the vessels. The Stormchaser was three orns away from its destination when it was shot down by Decepticons in an act of cowardice and deceit. There were no survivors. That is what history tells us. But in this case, history is wrong.

Author's Note: Day 15 and I'm halfway through. Not only that, I have now beaten my wordcount from last year. It all makes me happy.

I thought that I would take the opportunity at this time to explain why I decided to write a fanfiction with no canon characters in it. Well, the truth is, I've always been facinated with the idea of Cybertronian colonists and refugees. I mean, we know they existed, but they're never really covered in canon, save for a few footnote entries (and of course, Padragon -- did I spell that right?) I've wanted to tell this story for a while, but I knew that I couldn't tell it the way I wanted to if I did it through canon characters. The only way that would have worked is with the characters discovering the colonies after the fact, and I didn't want to do that. So OCs it had to be. So the question ends up being, is it still fanfiction if it doesn't contain anything really canon and only borrows from the universe? I don't know.

25227 / 50000 words. 50% done!

Chapter 10

( Cut to save friends pages and those who aren't interested in reading this oh so very rough draft )

Title: The Devil You Know

Series: G1 universe, focusing on Original characters

Rating: R

Summary: In the early days of the civil war on Cybertron, Sentinel Prime authorized several refugee vessels to take Neutrals away from the planet in hopes that they could start peaceful colonies where they would be safe. Many of these refugees were never heard from again; lost to us through time and distance. But history does record the fate of one of the vessels. The Stormchaser was three orns away from its destination when it was shot down by Decepticons in an act of cowardice and deceit. There were no survivors. That is what history tells us. But in this case, history is wrong.

Author's Note: Day 14 and the end of Week Two. According to Chris Batty, the creator of NaNoWriMo, Week two is the hard one. The honeymoon is over and the full magnitude of the idiocy that you have taken on hits. My problem was that the words weren't flowing as well as they could have. I have the whole story planned out, but I found that the characters were doing things out of turn and Ms. Inner Editor was trying to break out of her closet with her red pen. Now I think I have finally come to terms with the notion that the outline is just a suggestion, and not a contract. The next seven days should be easier. Admitedly, I don't have a four day weekend coming up, but I think I'll be able to manage ;p

23419 / 50000 words. 47% done!

Chapter 9

( Cut to save friends pages and those who aren't interested in reading this oh so very rough draft )

Title: The Devil You Know

Series: G1 universe, focusing on Original characters

Rating: R

Summary: In the early days of the civil war on Cybertron, Sentinel Prime authorized several refugee vessels to take Neutrals away from the planet in hopes that they could start peaceful colonies where they would be safe. Many of these refugees were never heard from again; lost to us through time and distance. But history does record the fate of one of the vessels. The Stormchaser was three orns away from its destination when it was shot down by Decepticons in an act of cowardice and deceit. There were no survivors. That is what history tells us. But in this case, history is wrong.

Author's Note: No comment ...

Chapter 7

( Cut to save friends pages and those who aren't interested in reading this oh so very rough draft )

Title: The Devil You Know

Series: G1 universe, focusing on Original characters

Rating: R

Summary: In the early days of the civil war on Cybertron, Sentinel Prime authorized several refugee vessels to take Neutrals away from the planet in hopes that they could start peaceful colonies where they would be safe. Many of these refugees were never heard from again; lost to us through time and distance. But history does record the fate of one of the vessels. The Stormchaser was three orns away from its destination when it was shot down by Decepticons in an act of cowardice and deceit. There were no survivors. That is what history tells us. But in this case, history is wrong.

Author's Note: Day eight and 30% done. Today I hit my first hitch, however. I completed chapter four and realized that I'd written the events of chapter four and five in one chapter. I could have just posted as is, but since I'm after word count and I want to keep somewhat to my outline, I decided to split them and fill out the resulting holes. You may call it padding, I call it creative pre-editing.

15003 / 50000 words. 30% done!


Chapter 4

( Cut to save friends pages and those who aren't interested in reading this oh so very rough draft )