NaNoWriMo: The Victory Lap

NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month—took place throughout the month of November as writers around the globe sought to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. On Thursday, Dec. 3, we chatted with participants Aaron Smith and Mary Elizabeth, and we heard updates about four more.

Listen to the show.

Read Aaron Smith’s novel excerpt.

Read Mary Elizabeth’s novel excerpt.

Aaron Smith

Aaron Smith was born and raised in Fair Haven, Vt. After spending the past 10 years running various Internet businesses in Boston, Aaron left his job, sold his condo, got married and moved back home to the Green Mountains. Dividing his time between writing, historical research and looking out the window waiting for snow, he is currently on a six month honeymoon traveling throughout the great state of Vermont and writing about his experiences with his wife Laura on their blog VermontOrBust.com.

Mary Elizabeth

Mary Elizabeth has written an impressive number of non-fiction and educational books, but she’s doing her first fiction reading ever (!!!) as part of our show. Her most recent book is the newly-published Barron’s American Slang Dictionary and Thesaurus. She has also written books on poetry, public speaking and spelling for Barron’s Painless series, and six Garlic Press Literature Teaching Guides for works such as To Kill a Mockingbird, The Odyssey, and The Lord of the Flies.

Mary Elizabeth is the librettist for the children’s opera Kiravanu, which premiered in Sydney, Australia in 2008. Mary Elizabeth is also a composer, whose setting of

W. H. Auden’s “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio” was premiered by the Otter Creek Choral Society and Champlain Brass Quintet in 2003. She was responsible for researching and creating the nearly 1,700 international music education worksheets for the Sibelius Music Notation program, and she has recently created the music illustrations and piano tracks for Barron’s AP Music Theory with Audio Compact Discs, due out in February 2010.

Mary Elizabeth teaches technology-related courses at University of Vermont through Continuing Education. You can follow her on her blog, Voice of the Phoenix, and read some of her thoughts on fiction, non-fiction and audience that came up after appearing on the show.