I've been reminiscing about my childhood again, which, in hindsight, wasn't very good, but it did have some good stuff in it when it came to pop culture, etc. Pogs for example. I loved those things, and I still have the ones I got from 1994. I think I have about 2,000 of them. Anyway, I don't know how many of you were kids when I was, but nevertheless, I will tell you a story about stories. I was a collector of a series of books called "Barf-O-Rama." Think "Goosebumps" only disgusting. I think only 15 were ever made, even though #15 had an ad on the back that mentions #16 as well as a title for it. I thought to myself, I think I might be capable of writing one of these, so I am trying. So I counted the number of words on a page of one of the books in the series, then multiplied by 116 (there were 116 pages in the book.) The result: 20,000 words. So that is what I'm aiming for in this book. I'm calling it Hairy Snotter (the original Barf-O-Rama titles were parodies of films, etc., like "Jurassic Fart" or "Forrest Dump," stuff that was popular in 1993-4 or so.) Since the advent of the Harry Potter novels, I decided to write a story called "Hairy Snotter," even though the 15th book mentions the title of the supposed next one as "A Fungus Among Us." I think I can write children's books. That's what the aim is here. Of course, I'm using words like "quizzically" so hopefully they'll learn words as they go along. So right now I just finished up chapter 4. A typical Barf-O-Rama book has 14 chapters. I don't know what I'm going to write until I write it, but at least I do know the ending of the story in my mind. So if you have kids aged 8-12 that know how to read, or maybe you're curious as to what my (atrocious) writing skills are, I've posted a pdf of what I have so far of the Hairy Snotter book here:

http://www.atari2600land.com/barforama/hairysnotter.pdf

Only 10 chapters and 80 more pages to go! Maybe when Novel Writing Month rolls around in November, I'll finally finish the thing and then publish a copy just for myself. But I'll worry about trying to find a one-off publisher once I get the book finished!