The "novel in a year" blurb lists the resources of eHow and Robert Ray's "The Weekend Novelist." I recently purchased the early edition (1994) of Ray's book and was disappointed to see that he spends the first month dedicated to developing characters. I'm happy to see that the eHow guidelines focus the first month on pre-planning, deciding the "big issue" of story/plot with character development coming later. Although I agree that character and plot are the two most important ingredients of a story, beginning a plan with a character first and plot second is like hiring an employee and then deciding just what it is you plan to have him do. Other than this "out of order" issue with Ray's book, it appears to be a good resource.