The eleventh hour

I thought about trying to make the 50k tonight, but I haven't, and I'm kind of glad I didn't. Although my novel is going to need a lot more than 50k to wrap everything up and flesh out the sub plot/red herrings, I want to reach the 50k by writing at least the first draft of the final scene. That is what I plan to do tomorrow night. I still really have no clue how it is going to unfold, and I still have a mad visions of the archvillain escaping by helicopter and the hero grabbing the controls (which is definitely not going to be happening!) but that is perhaps the magic of nano. I hope and pray that the final scene will somehow write itself.

Tonight's writing has been snippets here and there. Part of a scene with the murder victim's flatmate, a rather surly model. A bit more of the camel-back rescue with things starting to get steamy between the heroine and the romantic hero. A bit of early scene setting getting the code name of the arch villain in. And a scene where one of the protagonists confronts one of the villains not knowing his own wife is in flagrante under the villain's desk at the time. 2010 words tonight, the total is now 48547. Excerpt:

Hamid had taken over the running of Al Sweihan Trading when his father died. He had recently expanded beyond wooden dhows into container shipping. The containers were modified to carry hundreds of kilos of heroin within their sides, and had so far been undetected by customs officials. It was a profitable activity, but not one that could last forever. And now American patrol boats were increasingly obstructing his armaments shipments, the Indians were cracking down on gold smuggling, and Hamid had recently remarried.

So this latest business proposition, which promised to be highly lucrative, could not have come at a better time. Neither the motivations of the people behind the deal nor their intentions were of concern to Hamid. Being able to carry out the task they offered was enough. Hamid was meeting that day with the man known only as Al Aqoul, a man who spoke over a dozen languages and had connections in nearly every country in the region. But Al Aqoul's trade was something very different to the solid cargoes of drugs and metal that Hamid ferried about.

"What we do is perhaps best described as enabling fortunate circumstances," Hamid was told. "Our local partners are critical to such ventures. Should you accept this commission, we anticipate that the risk will be moderate but the rewards substantial. We are not an organisation that deals in failure."