In February, we challenged you to submit a 400-word excerpt from your NaNoWriMo novels. From over 600 fantastic entries, we chose two Grand Prize Winners and four Runners-Up. We hope you enjoy reading them as much as we did! (For more excerpts, check out this forum thread.)

Exhausted from running from the palace patrol officers, Ilham found himself at the kingdom’s outskirts nearing rogue lands, where his people had been pushed. They still kept a sense of community, regardless of how badly they’d been subjugated. Distressingly, the new global rule would just worsen life for people in every sector... Read the rest!

They are so close to landing, so close to success, that every tiny beep or flash of light on the dashboard sets Ariel’s heart racing. Each time, she leans forward, pressing her hands against the smooth metal and checks to make sure it’s not an alarm. It never is. The dashboard fills up the room, a base of pale grey metal, with small buttons and screens and various lights set into the metal in neat clusters and rows. When she first saw it, it almost made Ariel back out of the mission... Read the rest!

Catherine hummed.

It used to amuse her: the pond glistening under trees, sitting on the hill, plucking fistfuls of weeds, the coat racks made into human men so she could dance, and yellow flowers peppered on every tabletop. It used to amuse her: that one weekend when she and Henry learned how to swim together and, gasping, stumbled in barefoot and sopping wet, their cheeks ruddy from pride just as much as exertion... Read the rest!

“Something about this death just isn't adding up,” said Dr. Portas. “How could someone his age die of a heart attack? He was only 33 years old. There was only a 4% chance that he could even have a heart attack." 

“He was also really healthy. Not overweight. No other known conditions,” said Dr. Smith... Read the rest!