It takes place in the world of HP, but involves mostly original characters, in an original setting. All details having to do with HP are strictly cannon, except for the linking character, of course..
Lucius has a younger brother named Marcus. He was a top student at Hogwarts and after graduation ran off to Istanbul to do research in the extensive ancient library in a Hogwarts equivalent school. He didn't fit in well with his family, hated the whole pureblood thing, was friends with Arthur Weasley, ended up becoming professor of history and chief archivist in Istanbul and marrying the daughter of the owners of the school.
The story takes place twenty years later. It takes place the summer before the Triwizard cup. The whole story takes places in various exotic places in Turkey.The main character is his daughter, who is 14.
One of my original challenges was to make an adventure story whose main character was not an orphan, had both parents and interacted with them continuously with no obvious dyfunctions.
Halfway through the main story, her cousin Draco comes to visit. He is entirely in-character. His story is a sub-plot. My theory is that snarky boys like him are a products of their environment and that once out of that environment they relax and can even be enjoyable (though still snarky) if they do not feel threatened. It is the classic Northerner-Goes-South-on-Vacation-Has-New-Experiences. He has a summer romance, but nothing major. He remains himself.
The cousins become friends (she likes to piss him off) and he helps her fulfill her quest. His uncle tries to broaden his mind and manages to open a tiny sliver of independent thought (possibly explaining his behavior in the last HP book). He leaves before the story ends to attend the World Cup in France.
The vast majority of the story i about the girl, who is a straight-up adventure hero. While writing I kept flashing to Indiana Jones and going for that tone.
Because of where the story takes place, and the fact that her mother's family are Turkic and thus technically "shamans" or "animists" rather than "wizards" there is a lot of discussion about west vs east, ancient wizarding history, the origins of wands, floo systems along the ancient caravan routes, etc. Visiting scholars from around Eurasia weigh in with their opinions at the dinner table.
Turkey and Central Asia are the places of origin for many of the creatures mentioned in HP. Hippogryffs, for example. Her uncle runs the worlds largest continuously run hippogryff breeding and training center in Central Anatolia. There is a cyclops. Harpies. Merfolk.
I don´t know how to categorize it. It´s 83,000 words at present.
Category?
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Worms, Roxanne, worms!




51,105 / 50,000
Apr 26, 2008 - 11 42
And they were struck speechless...
0 / 50,000
May 19, 2008 - 18 05
I'd go with Adventure/Friendship...sounds really interesting! Will you post on the monster that is fanfiction.net?
51,105 / 50,000
May 19, 2008 - 20 40
I've laid in the last scene. It's done. 89, 964 words.
I've had a few friends read it (one is a professional editor, another is a writer at NASA,) and they have said really nice things ("It's a REAL novel", "I couldn't stop reading" and the editor said she cried at the end), which is very encouraging. :)
I am planning to turn it into a podcast book, just because I have always waned to make an audiobook because I enjoy them so much.
I will look into posting it at fanfiction.net . I have looked around at FanFiction sites but haven't seen much of anything in the way of stories like mine. So I thought, hmmmm, maybe not to post....but now that I think about it, if there are none like mine, then it will stand out :)
I am scared silly...but I guess that is all the more reason to do it, isn't it. That's me. Once I call myself out as a chicken, I have to do it :D
I suppose more proofreading is in order. I work as an editor, too. Now I see with absolute clarity how hard it is for people to see their own mistakes-- humbling! (I am an academic editor)
I'll go look at submission procedures and when I have it up, I'll post about it here.
Thanks for the nudge.
Em
51,105 / 50,000
Jun 7, 2008 - 21 43
I have finished it, and so far the reviews (from Internet friends who work as editors) are good :))
I am posting the chapters to a blog as I do a final proofreading and formatting. I'd love for someone to visit and have a read :)
http://www.adventuresofeflatun.blogspot.com