Random NaNo Action

Hermione Granger was sent to Azkaban for the attempted murder of her best friend.

And now, seven years later, she's been released, and intends to finish the job.

I have to admit, not a lot has been done.

Since coming back from my site-visit, I haven't done a great deal, either on Darkest Dawn or Western Sky. A little on MIB, but I think that - come the weekend, I am going to try to finish Darkest Dawn (I have the events of the final battle written, just not the chapter) and then get back to Western Sky, because I really should get that going again.

But now I am having ideas about NaNo - just picking a story on the 31st and writing it with almost no prep.

I also have ideas for a modern day LOTR (other than B5, obviously), and - strangely - a Dr Seuss version of LOTR. Just cause it would be funny :)

M.I.B.

I live around forty miles from where I work. As a consequence, I spend a fair amount of time driving (depending on traffic, it can be anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour, and sometimes up to two hours if there is serious, major traffic).

And while I drive, I generally listen to audio books, the radio or (since May) I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue (which if you haven't listened to it, you really should. It's very entertaining).

But also while I drive my mind tends to wander. Not in a dangerous "I should pay more attention to the road so as not to kill people" kind of way, but it makes odd connections, gives me strange ideas and generally inspires my imagination.

One result of this was "Harry Potter and The Deathly Silence". In the week leading up to the release of "Deathly Hallows", I wrote a 12 chapter story about what the various HP characters would be up to on "National Deathly Hallows Day" - based on the principal that every single Author in Fandom would be reading DH, and not writing fanfiction, and consequently the characters would be free to do what they wanted.

Another result of this was "Lost In MIddle Earth" - Harry and Hermione get trapped in The Lord Of The Rings, and have to play out the entire story to escape. It was a parody, and a lot of fun to write. (And started with a phrase from Xena which gave me the whole idea).

And today - well today I had another idea.

In the world of Harry Potter, there are Aurors. They deal with crimes against the wizarding world.

But they don't deal with crimes against the muggle world, because - as far as I can tell - no one at The Ministry gives a flying crap about muggles. There is Aurthur's department, but that's about it.

So I started wondering - what if there were serious magical criminals in the muggle world. Not only Death Eaters, but other murderers, rapists, paedophiles, bank robbers, terrorists etc.

What if you could go out and commit a murder, and remove all trace of you being there? If you could force someone else to rape a woman, and enjoy it vicariously (and why does the word vicarious have the root word vicar?).

And how would the police ever investigate things like that, let alone stop the person? (A wizard who can kill with a word might not easily be stopped).

So maybe The Wizarding World needs someone to deal with crimes like this. Crimes performed by rogue wizards, against both muggles and wizards (on the assumptions that Aurors are like policemen, and not special service agents).

Which is where the MIB comes from. I realise someone already took the initials MIB, but this is a similar thing. The Muggle Investigation Bureau work in secret - with only a handful of contacts in the muggle police knowing about them, they use spells to make people forget about them, and they operate above the regular law, both in Magical and Muggle worlds.

It's a pretty small group - maybe around 40 agents - and (probably nor surprisingly) made up of a lot of the more famous HP characters (Harry, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, Luna, Neville etc), under the direction of a senior agent (possibly Harry, but maybe one of the older students - Percy?)

I kinda wanna do a tv show, but I think I will leave this as a set of normal stories - each dealing with a specific case, but also potentially a longer arc running through them (White Rose/Dark Wheel style).

I am off on business next week, so I might use the 3 hour train trip (plus any free time I might have during my stay there) to plan this out, see what I can think up.

Now - I know what you're thinking. This is quite similar to The Western Sky - a group of investigators above the law, dealing with crimes against The Muggle World. Well - no. Because only one TWS case has dealt with muggles, and that was more as a tiny-arc than a major plot line. (So tiny that I kinda forgot about it).

Anyway. I am now going to cross post this to my fiction journal, to see what other people think.

I suck at writing fight scenes

The reason The Darkest Dawn is taking so damn long is the final two chapters - I am really, really bad at writing fight scenes, and since the story culminates with a huge battle, that poses a problem for me.

Anyway - that's the reason TWS has been delayed, and why TDD has also been delayed. Because I am trying to write about six or seven different fights, and not doing it all that well.

Which kinda bugs me, but what can you do?