A year after running away from home, twelve-year-old Jeremy Crowther returns to resume the life he left behind. But when nobody recognizes him—not his mother, not his brother and sister, not his best friend—when even the physical evidence denies that he ever existed, what life is left for Jeremy to return to?

That’s the premise behind Jeremy Comes Home, my first National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) project. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in November.

I start writing tonight at midnight, along with a mixed metaphor of other enthusiastic NaNoers at a cafe in Dixon, CA.

I got the germ for this novel while sitting in a theater in Berkeley on October 2. Some writer friends and I were listening to Neil Gaiman read some of his short stories from Fragile Things. One of the stories, “October in the Chair,” was partly about a boy who had run away from home. As I listened, I had the thought, what if he went home and his mother didn’t know who he was? And a plot was born.

[Update November 1] You can track my progress on the NaNoWriMo progress sheet. Yes, my user ID on the NaNoWriMo web site is Bleen Booley.