“Dear passengers, we have landed in Kampala. The outside temperature…”

As the plane came to a halt in its designated area, Tom looked at Martin and grinned. Martin nodded his head with a broad smile and said, “Right? It’s crazy.”

The two students grabbed their carry-on luggage, left the aircraft, went through immigration, and exited the airport. The hot African air hit them with a surprising force.

Tom found a currency exchange bank and traded some of his dollars for Ugandan Shillings

So far so good, Tom thought as he began to look around and acquire geological orientation. It was dark outside, but he managed to get his bearings based off of the buildings surrounding him.

“I can’t believe we did it!” Martin said as he spread out his arms and absorbed the new climate.

Tom’s mouth curled to a smile in response. “We’re in freaking Africa, Martski!”

There was a crowd of people and taxi drivers holding up signs with names and company logos. The international travellers paced down the exit path that lead towards the crowd. Eventually, families were reunited, visitors were picked up by friends of friends, and businesspeople found their chauffeurs.

Nobody was there to pick up Martin and Tom. The two students casually walked to the parking lot. There was an abundance of taxis and vans but an insufficient amount of drivers. Tom peeked into one of the rusty old vehicles and spotted an old man lying across the backseat, apparently taking a nap.

“Let’s find a driver who’s actually awake,” he said.

Before he knew it, two taxi drivers approached him and his best friend.

“Taxi? You need taxi? Where I drive you? Air condition!” they called in broken English as they tried to speak louder than the other.

The larger of the two taxi drivers asked for Martin’s bag and motioned over to his taxi. Martin declined the offer of carrying the bag and tried to locate the vehicle the driver was pointing to. A rusty old Hiace van stood about ten meters away from them. The other driver, a scrawny old man with an unusually deep voice, yelled something in his native tongue. He spoke so fast, Martin thought if the other taxi driver could even understand what he was saying. Martin stood inert, unable to decide what to do next.

“Tom, which one?” he said while holding off the scrawny fellow who was trying to push him towards his vehicle.

“Hey!” Tom called the big driver.

Everything was silent for a moment.

“Vamonos,” Tom said and started to walk towards the van.

Martin and the larger driver followed him. The driver repeatedly offered to carry their bags, but the students refused. The scrawny driver yelled after them in an angry voice, but neither of them turned around or payed any attention to what he was yelling about.

The driver opened the trunk of the scratched-up white van and the students placed their bags behind the torn leather seats.

“Where I drive you?” the driver asked Tom.

“Downtown, please,” Tom replied as the driver slammed the trunk.

It didn’t close on the first try. The driver tried again and shut it with even more gusto. It clicked and the door stayed put. Tom took the front seat and Martin crawled into the van and took the seat directly behind the driver’s seat.

Martin shot Tom a confused look.

“Why are you up there?” he said as he tried to find a comfortable stance.

“Why not?” Tom shrugged.

The students waited for the driver to open his door and start driving, but the door didn’t open. Tom looked out the window and saw the driver discussing something in Bantu, one of the main spoken languages in Uganda.

“Why is he still out there?” Martin complained as he tried to figure out what was happening on the other side of the tinted windows he was looking through.

“Looks like he’s talking with his friend.”

“Are they waiting for more passengers?”

“Could be.”

Tom paused for a second and then mumbled, “I’ll go ask.”

Martin couldn’t hear all of what Tom was saying to the driver, but he noticed that Tom nodded after the man explained something with dramatic hand motions. Tom walked back to the van and peeked through the driver’s open window frame.

“We are wait for more of the people, he said. So yeah, more passengers.”

Martin flicked his hand across the air and exclaimed, “That’s ridiculous! We’re the costumers, aren’t we? They’re not allowed to let others join us, right?”

“Martski, we’re in Uganda, not Cincinnati.”

Martin stuttered a few reluctant words but stopped muttering eventually. He sighed and pulled out his iPod.

“Might as well,” Martin grumbled.

“No, no, no,” Tom cautioned his friend. “Don’t make them think we’re rich. We’re already two young white guys with The North Face rucksacks in the trunk.”

“Dammit, you’re right,” Martin muttered as he stuffed his iPod back into his beige cargo shorts pocket.

“Keep things simple,” Tom suggested, resting his folded arms on the open window frame.

“I mean, we could switch to another taxi, dude,” Martin said as he rubbed his tired eyes.

“Nah man, we’re already here. Let’s just wait. I’m sure it won’t take that long. Sit back, relax.”

Tom stretched and walked around the van, checking out the licence plate and the condition of the tires. The wreck was ready for the vehicle graveyard.

Their driver lit a cigarette outside and leaned against a light pole. The sound of aircrafts landing and taking off blurred out the noise of honking cars trying to exit the airport premises. Martin decided to move to the very back of the van.

The students waited patiently for more passengers to join them. Minutes passed, but it felt like hours to them. Martin was tempted to pull out his iPod and scroll through random apps without actually opening them. He wasn’t used to simply sitting motionless, without doing anything. His iPod was his daily companion everywhere he went, and whenever an awkward silence emerged, he would pull out his iPod and act like he was checking something important. But there was something nice about not doing anything. The seat felt more comfortable than when he first sat in it. The van smelled of leather and citrus due to the aroma tree that hung from the rear-view mirror up front. Tom slid open the side door and took a seat next to Martin.

“More passengers are coming,” he stated.

Martin looked through the tinted window and saw a group of Africans approach the van. He counted three kids and four adults. One man in particular was unnaturally obese. As Martin noticed before, there were nine seats in the van. He hoped that at least one of the kids would sit on the big man’s lap or something, because there wasn’t enough room for all of the passengers to have their own individual seat.

The Africans squeezed into the van and Tom and Martin were pushed to one side. An elderly woman and a ten-year-old kid squeezed in with the two students.

“Three seat rows,” Tom mumbled to himself.

“Yeah, perfect for four people,” Martin whispered sarcastically.

Tom quickly glanced over the back seat to check if their bags were still there. The bags were, but half of the rubber mat covering the aluminium chassis wasn’t.

Old Ugandan taxis, he mused. Sweet.

All of the fellow passengers had crammed into the van. The obese man sat in the center of the middle row of the van. The students felt the van shake as the heavy man shuffled in his seat. The driver revved the engine, and the packed van sputtered black smoke as it rolled off the parking lot. The broken exhaust trumpeted loudly as the driver pressured the gas pedal. It was a bumpy ride downtown.

The Africans were talking loudly about many different topics. Their English was understandable. From what Tom could make out of the conversation, the elderly woman sitting next to him was the mother of the obese man sitting in front of him. The kid next to the elderly woman was the man’s son. The rest of the Africans must have been friends or other relatives. The kid’s name was Eddie. Eddie kept talking about big red firetrucks.

“I want to drive one when I’m older,” he said enthusiastically.

“We’ll see, son. First you have to eat lots of meat!” his father said.

The other Africans in the van laughed. The driver was busy talking on the phone with one of his friends, also in a loud voice. Martin could hear a faint hint of a radio, but the voices in the van were too loud.

Martin would have liked to see what Uganda looks like on the streets, but it was too dark to make out the details of what was going on outside of the tainted windows. He could see a few dim lights at coffee shops and in other small stores on the side of the street. The van passed two young men who were arguing over what looked to be a chicken.

The van hit a bump in the road and the man sitting next to the obese man spilled his drink. The obese man pointed out, “Look, Eddie, he peed his pants!”

Again all of the Africans started to laugh merrily. Tom was obviously annoyed at their volume of communication, but he wasn’t going to object. He felt a warm breeze brush over his head and wondered if the air conditioner was broken. The cool air returned immediately, and his doubt vanished. The sound of the exhaust, however, was more defined now, as if there was an opening in the floor of the van.

Tom looked at his watch. It read 22:38.

“How much longer till downtown?” Tom shouted to the driver.

The driver yelled something into his phone and then shouted, “What?”

“How much longer till downtown?” Tom repeated.

The bus quieted for a second.

“We will be soon there,” the man stated in a loud voice.

The Africans picked up where they had left off confabulating. Martin and Tom were too tired to start a conversation on their own, so they listened to what the Africans were talking about. They started the topic of racist foods.

“Cauliflower is just like white broccoli!” the obese man said.

“Broccoli and cauliflower are not the same thing, Daniel,” the woman next to Tom corrected.

“Of course not. They have different colors!”

The woman lifted her hands and silenced herself, unable to think of a good comeback. It was a playful debate between the family, and even though it was a very loud conversation, Martin started to find it amusing to listen to. Tom on the other hand was more than ready to jump out of the van, grab his bag, and hit up a motel.

Sure enough, the driver pulled up to the side of the street in downtown Kampala and came to a halt in front of a cheap-looking motel. He turned his head and said, “Downtown, sirs.”

The elderly woman told Eddie to slide the door open so that she could get out of the van. Eddie and his grandma exited the van. Tom and Martin followed. Tom pulled out a few Shillings and handed it to the driver. He guessed on the amount, but apparently it was just right because the driver smiled and said, “Perfect, sirs!”

Martin went to open the trunk of the van, but it was already slightly ajar.

“The hell,” he maundered as he lifted the trunk completely.

He couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Tom!” he shouted while staring blankly at the dirty luggage compartment of the rusty van.

Tom casually slouched over to him.

“What’s up?”

“Our luggage!” Martin panicked. “It’s gone!”

“… know the answer? Martin?” the history teacher asked.

Martin froze as he was catapulted back into reality from his daydream. What did he ask? He inconspicuously glanced over to the left and gave his neighbour a desperate look.

“Fifty-seven,” his neighbour mouthed.

“Fiftyt-seven!” Martin blurted.

The class laughed in unison and the teacher sighed disappointedly.

“No, Martin. Not fifty-seven,” the teacher said as he rubbed his forehead. “Does anybody else know what the four middle colonies were? How about you, Melanie?”

A classy brunette in the back row of the classroom finished jotting down a few notes and then answered, “Um, the middle colonies were New York, New Jersey, uh, Delaware, and Pennsylvania?”

“Correct,” the teacher said as he turned to face the white board and continued his lecture about the importance of studying American history.

God, I can’t wait for this class to be over, Martin mused. Sure enough, the bell rang in a matter of minutes and the students stormed out of the classroom.

On his way home, he wondered what his parents would say about the trip.

He parked the car and entered the house.

“Back,” he called.

There was no answer. He walked into the living room to see if his parents were there. (Couldn’t finish due to my friends’ spontaneity.)

His mind was working like a machine, pounding through possible scenarios, plans, and ideas. He had to do something about this exponentially growing problem. Not only his family, but the entire community was suffering, and nobody is doing anything about it. Unfortunately, the price is too high. Not even the richest members of the community could afford the medication. But John knew that it would help his people. Above all, stealing it would be impossible as well, because the medicine isn’t manufactured in Uganda, or anywhere in Africa for that matter. It is imported by the pharmaceutical industries stationed in Europe and America. John’s lips quivered with emotion as he blew out another cloud of smoke. He tried his best to relax, to calm down and rest for a few moments. It wasn’t working. John felt like he was about to explode. He threw the cigar away and burst into tears. Nobody could hear him sobbing except for the dogs in the background, but they didn’t care either.
“Is there nothing?” he shouted. “Is there nothing, God?”

He tried to stand up, but his knees were shaking viciously. He sank to the ground and startedhyperventilating. He scratched a fist full of dirt from the ground and squeezed it in his tightly clenched palm. After a while, his breathing slowed and he grappled his emotions. The sun had now set completely and the stars shone brightly above the glittering lake. John closed his eyes and thought about his children. He had four kids. Two of them were infected with malaria, the incurable disease.

John slowly managed to get on his feet. He wiped away the tears and cleared his throat. He started to head back to his home, one of hundreds of huts that constructed the Tanube community. The Tanube community, located in the suburbs of Kampala, was one of the poorest regions in Uganda. John had lived his entire hapless life in that disease-ridden area. American doctors once came to Kampala in 1985 to hand out medicine to the impoverished African people. The majority of the sick became healthier, but for some, the medication had no effect whatsoever. John’s father wasn’t part of the healthy majority.

Gimo Mbali was diagnosed with malaria a few years after John’s birth. He had spent countless nights fighting malevolent fever attacks and cold sweat outbreaks. He had lost his appetite and emaciated to a life-threatening degree over the past few years. The family collected enough money to purchase an immune system medication, which would suppress the malaria symptoms. Unfortunately, the symptoms weren’t cured – only concealed. While Gimo had been slowly dying in his bed, John spent entire weeks praying to God for a miracle. However, nothing happened. The Mbali family tried their best to amass more money by selling products of their own and even stealing from other communities around the area, but before the desired amount of money was accumulated, Gimo Mbali passed away. Every night, John thought about what he could have done to save his father. Medicine didn’t work, God didn’t help, and John’s mother started drinking.

“God does not exist!” his mother would shout. “If he did, your father would have been saved! Doesn’t God want to protect his children? Doesn’t he want to let them live happy lives? Was your father’s life happy? Are you happy, John? Are you?”

The concept of God became more and more distant to John as time passed. He hadn’t lost his faith though. The death of his father made him doubt God’s existence, but it didn’t keep him from believing that God does exist nevertheless. John had experienced many supernatural miracles in his life. It wasn’t pure luck that he didn’t get stung by the scorpion in his shoe last week. It wasn’t pure luck that a lion snapped at his leg but only managed to rip off his shoe while he hung from a tree. It wasn’t pure luck that an African gangster pulled the trigger on him and the gun didn’t fire. John believed that God exists. He also believed that there had to be a cure for malaria.

John wasn’t a doctor, but he knew more than the average African about medicine. Thanks to his favorite WiFi café in Kampala, he used to spend hours researching malaria. He found out that the disease attacks a human’s immune system. He also found out that HIV infections disrupt the immune system’s response to malaria, increasing the severity of the disease. The problem is that there is no cure for HIV or malaria. At least, that’s the consensus.

The effect malaria and HIV had on the destitute Tanube community sparked something in John. He decided to devote his life to finding the cure for malaria. He knew that the pharmaceutical industry was doing its best to develop the cure for the disease, but they weren’t making enough progress with all of the technology and knowledge that they have. John just knew that something wasn’t right.

As John approached Tanube, he noticed that someone had built a fire with twigs, leaves, and trash. A pillar of black smoke rose and tickled the starry night sky. A few kids were outside, playing with what was left of a soccer ball. Many citizens of the community were coughing and moaning in their rusty metal-roofed huts. John walked over to the fire and found another man sitting by it, watching the bright red ashes glimmer as he blew air into the pit. It was Benni, John’s cousin.

“John!” Benni said with a big smile. “How are you, brother?”

“Good, Benni,” he lied.

John grunted as he sat down beside him.

“You did it?” John pointed at the fire.

“I gathered some trash and didn’t know what to do with it. So I decided to burn it.”

“It’s nice,” John mumbled.

Benni glanced at John and arched his brows.

“Something not right, brother?”

John exhaled sharply and looked to the sky.

“You know, Benni…” he paused for a while. “You know when you have this feeling where, where you see a problem, but there’s nothing you can do about it?”

Benni nodded and pulled his knees to his chest.

“Look around you,” John said. “Your son is playing with my brother’s kids over there.”

Benni smiled at the sight of his son kicking the soccer ball at his friend’s head. The kids laughed playfully.

“That’s what we need here, Benni.”

“What–” Benni cleared his throat. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that the kids have life in them. They are enjoying it. No concerns, no responsibilities, no nothing.” He plucked a bundle of grass from the ground. “All of Tanube should have this, right? Life.” He rolled the blades of grass into a ball.

Benni scratched his head and sighed, “Yeah. I feel the same way.” He blew into the fire and caused a flame to emerge from the bottom of the pit.

“It’s like a fire, Benni,” John said as he threw the ball of grass into the fire pit. “It doesn’t stop at anything. It devours anyone. Remember four years ago? It took Gimo and three others.” He rubbed his hands. “Why? Are we cursed?”

“No,” Benni quickly said. “No, we aren’t cursed.” He laid his right hand on John’s shoulder. “This is our fate, brother. Our fathers have fought it. Their fathers have fought it. We are warriors. We fight it too.”

“But every time, we’ve lost the fight!” John said louder than he expected.

Benni looked at John, unable to speak another word. He scratched his nose and turned his gaze towards the fire. The embers were cooling and the flames lessened. The fire was slowly dying down. Benni blew into the ashes one last time and the red glow illuminated his face for a second.

“Benni,” John said in a solemn tone. “Can I ask you something?”

Benni turned his head to face John. “Anything, my brother,” he said.

John cleared his throat. “Do you want to end this with me?”

Benni shook his head in confusion. “I don’t understand. End what with you?”
“This. End the pain. The suffering. Bring life back to Tanube. This disease has destroyed our community. I don’t want to let it destroy it even more. We have already asked the neighbouring communities and cities for help. We have received none. It is up to us, Benni. We are the ones who can make a change if we put ourselves to it. Do you want to end this with me?”

Benni placed his rough hand on the back of John’s scruffy head. A few moments passed before Benni finally gave an answer.

“I will do anything.”

John closed his eyes and a tear drop slid down the left side of his face.

“Let us cure this madness.”

The last light of the fire vanished and a thin strand of smoke twirled into the sky. The kids dispersed into their huts and left the beat-up soccer ball on the dusty ground. A few people coughed here and there and the crickets gathered together to perform a concert for the night.

John and Benni, two sparks of hope enshrouded in a cloud of despair, would restore life to the Tanube community. They had no idea that they were setting themselves up for destruction.

Everything was quiet. Everything, except for the steady respiration of a young man lying on a cheap innerspring mattress. The room was dark and peaceful. A small puddle of drool accrued on the covers beneath his open mouth. He shuffled around, stretching out his soccer ball-print blanket. The bright red digits of the alarm clock scarcely illuminated the left side of his face. Suddenly, the clock started blaring at an ear-numbing decibel. The young man jolted away from the din. He tried to open his eyes, but his vision was blurred as if he were underwater. As he glanced around the room, the ardent red glow of the alarm clock was the only form he could identify as an object. He swatted the top of the clock and it immediately stopped blaring. A shrill ringing shot through his ears as he sighed and slumped back into the fluffy pillow. He tilted his head to the side and glanced at the clock. It read 7:50. His brain told him, five more minutes. He closed his eyes and let his mind go blank.

Five minutes later, he opened one eye and peeked at the clock. 8:12.

“Dammit,” he growled as stumbled out of bed. He staggered across his room, aiming for the bathroom. He managed to stub his toe against the massive closet on the way. “Dammit!” he hissed again as he tightly clenched his teeth in pain. He lurched onto the cold tile floor of the bathroom and gripped the sink. The mirror above the faucet reflected the face of a seemingly hung-over teenager. His short black hair looked like it had had a party with the pillow while he had been sleeping. His eyes were bloodshot, his lips were chapped, and an inchoate beard started to make its way across his edgy face. The young man assembled all of the necessary hygiene products and tools to freshen himself up for the day.

“I hate Mondays,” he murmured to himself as he rubbed his neck.

In record time he brushed his teeth, showered, got dressed, and fixed a sandwich for lunch. He grabbed his school bag and laptop, hopped in his old VW Golf, and drove off to college.

As soon as he stepped into the school building, “The Nuisance” started to approach him.

“Marty! Hey, Marty!” the Nuisance shouted across the hallway as he wobbled towards him in a failed attempt to have swagger.

Martin forced a phony smile as he said, “Hey man!”

A short, overweight sophomore approached him in a clumsy manner. He was wearing green horn-rimmed glasses, his everlasting jeans shorts, and an oversized orange polo . He held up what seemed to be a printed receipt.

“Dude, guess what just happened to me yesterday!”

“Um, I don–”

“I bought an old Xbox on Ebay!”

The Nuisance was clearly waiting for a reply, but Martin just shot him a pseudo-congratulatory smile and gave him a cheesy thumbs up. The Nuisance was just about to open his mouth to bombard Martin with the details of his purchase, when a strong hand emerged out of nowhere and slapped Martin on the stomach. Before Martin could turn around to see what kind of student dared to violate his private bubble in such a manner, the student commanded, “Follow me.” Martin recognized the deep voice and was immediately relieved. It was his best friend Tom.

Martin ditched the Nuisance and joined someone far less annoying. He walked with Tom at an unusually brisk pace, almost as if he was hurrying to get somewhere. Martin risked a quick look to see if the Nuisance was following him. You never know, he mused.

“Thank you,” Martin sighed.

Tom didn’t say a word.

“What’s up?” he asked Tom as the two of them paced down the decorated hallway.

“I need to discuss something with you,” Tom stated blankly.

Martin immediately tried to think of all the bad things he had done in the past week or so. He remembered that he rolled a joint on the school’s parking lot last Tuesday, but nobody was there to see him, so it probably wasn’t about that. But somehow, Tom always finds out about everything.

“And, um, what’s that?” his voice cracked embarrassingly.

“In a minute,” Tom mumbled.

The two college juniors entered the cafeteria and walked down to the farthest end of the munching hall. Tom pulled out two plastic chairs and offered Martin a seat. They sat down and Tom stared at Martin with an emotionless face.

“Bro,” he began, “I’ve been thinking about what I want to do for winter break. You know how my family wants to go to the Swiss alps?”

Martin nodded.

“Well, I’m not in the mood for something cold. So I asked my dad if I could, like, go somewhere myself, right? You know, just travel somewhere and spend some time in the sun. I think it would be pretty cool to be somewhere warm when everybody else is, you know, tearing it up in the snow.”

He cleared his throat and continued, “Anyway, my dad asked me what I had in mind, and I told him that, like, I’d like to go somewhere warm. Somewhere like… Uganda.”

Martin arched his eyebrows and gave him a surprised look. “What?”

“Yeah, I mean, why not? We could spend the fir–”

“We?” Martin cut him off. “What do you mean by ‘we’?”

“Oh, yeah,” Tom said as he leaned back and rested the back of his head in his intertwined fingers. “You’re coming with me.”

Martin caught himself staring at Tom with his mouth half open. He closed it, and stammered, “Dude, I have to talk to my parents about that. I don’t even know if I want to go.”

“Relax, bro,” Tom said soothingly. “It’ll be fine. Why not do something crazy while we’re still young?”

“Tom, it’s not about doing something crazy. It’s about… well… it’s about a freaking thousand dollar trip!” Martin’s voice gradually grew louder. “How are we gonna afford that? We’re poor college students, bro! Where are we gonna sleep? Where are we gonna eat? What are we gonna eat? Please tell me you thought this through!”

“Pipe down, amigo. I don’t want any tagalongs.”

“Screw tagalongs!”

“Martski, think about it. Wouldn’t it be awesome? Wouldn’t it be the trip of your life? Chilling in freaking Uganda, hanging out with Africans, hiking through the wild with nothing but a sleeping bag, a knife, and a lighter?”

Martin sat inert, his sight aimed past Tom, at the baby blue wall of the cafeteria.

“Martski? Hell yes or hell no?”

“To hell with that,” Martin answered.

Tom hit his fist on the table and exclaimed, “Seriously bro? You don’t wanna go?”

“I do, actually.”

They sat in silence for a while. Tom appeared to be a little confused.

“You know what,” Martin offered, “let me talk to my parents and see what they say. I’d actually love to go to Uganda wi–”

“Sweet, Martski. Send me a message on Facebook and let me know asap. I gotta go to class.”

Tom stood up and left the table without leaving any time for Martin to say a word. The rest of the students in the cafeteria quickly finished their last-minute homework and test-cramming, and rushed off to class.

Martin sighed and looked at the huge white clock that hung on the wall on the other side of the cafeteria. 9:02.

“Dammit!” he shouted as he scrambled for his bag and darted off to his first period class. “I hate Mondays.” 

0 – 50,000 words: START!

Good luck and, more importantly, HAVE FUN!

NaNoWriMo it up in here, all day, every day (for the next 30 days, at least).

I haven’t made my mind up yet. Should I try and fall asleep at 11:00PM and start writing tomorrow, or should I stay up till 3:00AM like I usually do and start writing then? I haven’t decided. I’m really excited to start writing.

This is the second time I’m actually attempting to write a novel. I tried before, but school got in the way and robbed my time. I mean, I could’ve made time, but I wasn’t as passionate about writing when I was 15 years old.

Anyways, I hope you guys have a lot of fun writing your novel! Oh, and Happy Halloween!

Halloween is coming up! I’m not particularly excited about it, because in the town that I live in, not much is going on. A few kids will do some trick or treating, but other than that, I’ll just spend the day drinking tea, eating pumpkin soup, sitting by the fire, and getting ready for the National Novel Writing Month!

Two college seniors decide to vacate in Uganda for two weeks. While bivouacking through the African vegetation, they discover that there is a high percentage of malaria victims who are unable to afford any kind of medication for the “incurable” disease. After being agitated by the sight of thousands of suffering children, the two students determine to tackle the quest of finding the cure for malaria and bringing it into the medical market. Unfortunately, the business giants of the global economy will not let them start their business for one simple yet flagitious reason: It is illegal to cure the disease.

Martin and Tom encounter the dark secrets, obscure organisations, and evil schemes that lie beneath the one thing that keeps this world going round: Money.

It seems like everybody is in NaNoPaNic. The date is approaching, and time is sprinting faster than Usain Bolt.

“What’s up with that?! Where’d the time go?!”

I’m in that mode as well. But hey, it’s alright. It’s not like you have to have your novel finished by the time you start writing it! Here’s the reality: You basically have more than a month to actually finish your novel. Your characters don’t have to be completely finished, and your plot ending doesn’t have to be defined in detail. Yet.

You still have time, so don’t panic. In fact, if you’re panicking right now, sit down, drink a tea, take a couple of deep breaths, and get rolling.

I wish all of the NaNoWriMo participants good luck and much fun in this novel writing process!

Cheers.

Have you planned your plot or are you going to be spontaneous in your writing? Good luck to everyone!