NaNoWriMo 2017!

NaNoWriMo 2017 is here, and I've decided to have a proper go at it this time.

Here's the brief outline of the plot and a snippet of the text I've written so far.

     The Last Forecast
       A hydraulic engineer from Hull gets a call he did not expect.
       In a Suffolk village, the assistant curator receives word that her museum will be forced to close.
       A young woman from Hertfordshire is struggling with her rent.
       And a young man, in the cabin of a fishing boat off the Essex coast turns on the radio.

           Today is Friday, 26th September, 2025.
             It is 05:08 and the last forecast is about to be read.

I've got a handful of characters in my head for this and, although I'm ultimately not sure which to put first in the structure, the first I've started on is a museum curator from the fictional Suffolk village of Frampton, Holly Prentice.

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 – Holly –

 – Friday, 26^th September, 2025 –

– 05:25 –

 The cold steel stung her fingers, then slipped, crashing to the ground with a thud. Holly Prentice kicked her leg back out of habit – the same, old reaction she employed whenever dropping anything – so that the heavy set of keys did not fall on her foot. It was normally knives, normally when she drew them from the knife block with a flourish. Or books. She always held them in her finger tips, and never folded them out. She wanted that spine-fresh feel whenever she dipped into them, despite the pain in her foot when they occasionally slipped.
   

Fishing for her phone, and making sure she had a firmer grip on this than her keys, she shone the light, illuminating the cracked step. The keys, an assorted tangle of Chubbs and Yales, lay to one side, and she stooped, head resting against the museum door and wishing she had gloves on. This wasn’t one of those Indian Summer Septembers. It was, to borrow one of her old father’s favourite sayings, cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.
With keys once more in hand, she fumbled for the right one, and stabbed the lock with venom.
   

The interior smelled musty. Or, rather, slightly more musty than usual. A museum full of Saxon remnants was always going to smell musty, no matter how much fancy climate control you paid for. But they’d been closed for a week, now; the silhouettes of the painter’s ladder and the pile of dust sheets loomed out of the gloom of the lobby. He was due to be done by now, but they were holding off the re-opening until Monday, just to be safe.
   

The lights sputtered into life as Holly stepped forward, and she inhaled the lingering fug of paint fumes. She wasn’t convinced the particular shade of beige chosen by the trustees would help display the artefacts in the best possible light, but her opinion on this mattered very little. After all, she was only the Assistant Curator. What did her opinion matter? Beige was cheap, the trustees said. And not just any beige, but a real beigy beige. It would add character, that was the word. Though, please make sure to refer to it as “off-cream”, if asked.
Holly couldn’t remember what she had said in reply to this. Probably just “yes, Lady Eastley”, and, “of course, Lady Eastley”. It had been a very brief, one-sided phone call.
 

Setting her satchel down by her desk, she unwound the new Jags scarf, wishing again that she had bought the gloves at the same time, and flung her coat at the peg. Sitting down in the creaking old leather office chair, she clicked the fan heater on and slipped out of her flats. Waving her feet at the heat, she leant back and shut her eyes, remembering all of the tirade that had followed Tuesday’s call, and the familiar, resigned look on Liam Hogan’s face. She glanced over to his unoccupied desk, where the little plaque bore the legend Deputy Assistant Manager (Guests). It was a title as meaningless as his role, but he was a good kid, and Holly didn’t have it in her heart to end his contract. She knew he needed the museum more than the museum needed him.
In fact, the museum barely needed Holly herself.
 

The sink tap was so tight she bruised her palm trying to twist it. The kettle was so caked in scum that it took ages to boil. The biscuit tin was empty. Holly walked back from the kitchenette, hands wrapped around the mug, scooped up yesterday’s post, and returned to her desk. Looking over the letters, she recognised the monthly budget advisory from the board and threw it aside. That one could wait.