Another NaNo-Novel: "The Doomsday Symphony" for NaNoWriMo 2010

While "The Lost Chord" is currently on hiatus, I've been involved with my third plunge into the World of NaNoWriMo.

November is "National Novel Writing Month" when authors and would-be authors around the world sign up for the challenge of writing 50,000 words toward a finished rough-draft of a novel.

If anybody's wondering why I'm not answering e-mails, hanging out on Facebook or blogging, I've been trying to write at least 1,667 words per day and so far doing pretty well: today was the 17th Day and I've already written 41,950 words or 84% toward the total word-goal.

This 'brief' synopsis of The Doomsday Symphony is adapted from the "novel profile" posted on my NaNoWriMo page:

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While I'm usually a very serious guy when it comes to my music or the books I read for enjoyment (I mean, come on: Henry James, Proust, Thomas Mann?) but I've been intrigued by the "mystery/thriller' genre lately, writing two humorous musical parodies of Dan Brown's latest hits, "The DaVinci Code" (which became "The Schoenberg Code") and "The Lost Symbol" (which became "The Lost Chord.")

This time, I decided I'd write an original "Music Appreciation Thriller" that involves a parallel universe called Harmonia-IV where Dead Composers go and continue writing, an evil villain intent on wiping out the masterpieces of four great (if dead) composers through time-traveling, and the theft of a new symphony by Mahler that, if its premiere is scheduled for December, 2012, will help bring about the destruction of the Earth, and an intrepid retired ex-college professor and composer intent on surviving having gotten sucked into this maniacal caper in the first place. Considering the Mahler symphony, I've decided to call this one "The Doomsday Symphony."

The main villain is Forensic Musicologist Dr. Klavdia Klangfarben who, despite having studied with Dr. Frøkken Bohr, is unable to find reasonable employment in her field (been there, done that), has obtained a "Femme Fatale for Hire" license via an Internet university. With her side-kick, a Viennese lawyer from the late-19th Century named Abner Kedaver, they undertake a project, "Operation Fate-Knocks-at-the-Door," for SHMRG, an evil corporation intent on controlling the entire music industry, headed by CEO N. Ron Steele where failed composer Man Kaye is the Director of Office Supplies & Classical Division.

The Mahler score is stolen by an ambitious but no longer young mild-mannered assistant conductor named Rogers Kent-Clarke (who studied with the conductor, Louis Lane) who's looking for a vehicle that will make a splash for him and jump-start his already long-delayed career.

And the disappearance of a local man in a small town in the Poconos leads Detective Jenna Sainte-Croix to the site of a mysteriously abandoned old coal town where she finds herself pulled through a Time-Gate that takes her – like the others – into the parallel universe of Harmonia-IV. There, hanging out at Stravinsky's Tavern, she meets her counterpart, Detective Milo Smedley, once a friend of Charles Dickens, who is investigating the theft of Mahler's score on The Other Side, and they fall in love.

In the midst of all this is our hero, Dr. T. Rutherford Cranleigh, who knows an awful lot about very little and about whom there is not much to say.
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Let's leave it at that, for now – I've got to get back to writing...

- Dick Strawser