Oki and Nobbin

As part of NaNo 2019, I decided to do a lighter-weight version of my usual livewriting adventure, and spread the love over the entire month, while still taking input from the audience. I wrote most of it in one-hour bursts around noon each day, and integrated some truly bizarre suggestions into the text that made things unpredictable, but also kinda wonderful. There's nothing quite like a callback to reader-suggested weirdness.

So what's it about? Here's the summary I used on the livewriting site:

Oki Pallen is a mercenary with a very big debt to pay, and not much time to pay it in. But things go from bad to worse when she takes a gig helping the free-spirited prince Nobbin find his missing... planet. Turns out, there's a reason he can't get back home — and it might just make Oki's other problems pale by comparison. Marginally.

This was the last project I did using my old development stack before switching things up to a more modern node-based framework. I composed in markdown in a special editor, which was streamed to the website in realtime. The system went haywire a few times along the way, which is a big part of why I decided to invest some time in a better foundation.

Oki and Nobbin was originally an animated series pitch with a few episodes scribbled out, but I decided to adapt it for an older audience, and write almost a prequel to the series I'd envisioned. Once it goes through its required editing and revision, I'm sure I'll release it as an actual book — but for now, it stands as a catalyst for a newer and better version of my livewriting tech.