It's not easy to come to terms with yourself when you're a young, grumpy vampire running from your own mother's army. In a harsh new world, forever-16-years-old November has to face her fears, dreams, insecurities, the people who mistreated her, the ones she deeply loves, and the ones she learns to love along the way.

SYNOPSIS:

"No(vember)" is a Coming-Of-Age Dramedy. It is loosely based on my own life, but translated into a story that has a little bit more... bite to it. The funny thing is that it also involves a pandemic, which I didn't know was coming in real life when I had started to write the story.

Do you remember being 16? The teenage angst? The sudden realization that childhood is over? Imagine being 16 forever! And not only that. Imagine being 16 and having the overwhelming urge to drink other people's blood in order to stay somewhat sane!

That's what happens to November. Or rather No, which is her chosen name. She is a grumpy, pessimistic young woman who lives with her beloved older sister April, her highly delusional, choleric mother Liza who she could never connect with, and a picture of her dead father on the kitchen counter. All of that works out more or less until – a global pandemic starts turning people into vampires. Including No.

No's old life ends, but a new one begins for her. We meet her again, three years later, after a while of raging through the town, killing and transforming people, when she has finally calmed down. No is the ultimate outcast now, the product of a virus that humans are terribly scared of and that they don't want anywhere near them. But at least she found herself a likely friend to share the loneliness with: a vampire badger called Maybe with whom she lives in the woods, outside a massive wall that was built to keep the vampires out of town. And she secretly teamed up with April, who works at the local hospital and provides her with cruelty-free donor blood. All of this needs to happen secretly because in the meantime her mother Liza recruited an entire army to fight the vampires who she believes killed her property, her daughter, November. Vampires are a plague to her and she's made it her task to kill them all and seek revenge.

Finding peace within such an existence obviously isn't easy for No. Especially when another young vampire called Kurt comes along and causes a terrible massacre at the hospital which No unwillingly finds herself involved in. So when things finally seemed to work out in No's favor - suddenly everything is taken away from her again.

In order to flee from her own mother's army, No has no choice but to leave her dear sister behind and team up with Kurt, who is way too optimistic, kind of annoying, and originally was one of Liza's army soldiers before he was transformed. Together they seek safety at a campsite that celebrates the coexistence of humans and vampires. But are they really safe there and is there still safety for them in this world?

No and Kurt find themselves on a journey, forced to confront their fears, dreams, insecurities, the people who mistreated them so badly, the people they deeply love and the ones they learn to love along the way.

“No(vember)” leads you through the story of a misfit, of someone who is broken in a broken world and who slowly starts to puzzle herself together again by picking up tiny pieces along the road. It is a story about deep, platonic friendship, sisterhood, and self-acceptance.

In the bittersweet end, No will have grown despite being 16 forever and we will learn to understand that vampires might not actually be the monsters in this story.

NO(VEMBER)