And now I bring you--NaNo 2008!

So we're days away from the beginning of NaNoWriMo 2008. If you haven't signed up, do so now! I think anyone would benefit from the exercise, even if you don't succeed. I have another post about NaNo, which you can read HERE and feel free to go ahead and sign up. Trust me, it's awesome.

A few days out, and my idea is mostly ready to go. So I feel compelled to share it now. So, stay with me, and we'll reveal the first bits of my newest novel (and if you talk to me, you probably know all this already)!

The Inevitable Tragedy of Being Meat

Amanda (that's Mandy to her friends and business associates) is a doctor. Though, not the usual sawbones. In fact, it might or might not be true that she never made it all the way through medical school. She's coy on the subject. But it doesn't matter, because she's found a way to make big bucks in the medical field--off the books procedures. Discreet heart surgery for politicians, pulling bullets out of mobsters, and performing the odd back alley abortion or two.

But to her, it's just the family business. Her father was in the same kind of work, the official doctor of the mob back when the mob still had power. But now he's retired and she's taken up the family practice, motoring around the country to wherever she's called to do her work and help heal those who can't help themselves. Noble work, really.

Great on the bank account.

But now she's called back home to Colston City. Her father is dying. One more job, the remnants of the mobs begged. One more job. Yet the shabby remnants of once-proud organizations couldn't keep a lid on things like they used to. One police raid later, and he's holed up in his home suffering massive organ failure from injuries sustained. And while he might be safe in his sanctuary, he's a wanted man in three countries and there's no way he's going to check into a hospital.

Now little Mandy is left to scour the streets of Colston City for the parts her father needs. But the police are determined to find her father and are hot on her trail. The mob is ready to cover the whole thing up with bullets and cement.

And Colston City already has a resident back street doctor--a madman who doesn't take too kindly to Mandy's efforts to strike out into the city with an open door and a quick scalpel. Without options and with dwindling time, Mandy has to find someone who matches her father.

The hippocratic oath might say to Do No Harm, but blood runs thicker than bactine and the clock is ticking.