What am I writing for Nanowrimo?

Well, it's only a few days away, so I decided I'd better bite the bullet and actually decide what I was going to write this year.

It wasn't very easy. To be honest, my mind has kind of ground to a halt when it comes to creative ideas. Even my blog post yesterday was fairly pathetic - I only published it when I eventually decided all the research into the best seller list was worth showing off (and mentioning all those best sellers might earn me a few extra visitors.)

But part of the Nanowrimo ethic is to concentrate on actually sitting down, shutting up and WRITING rather than flouncing about, wondering what to write.

It's DOING instead of talking about it. The very act of writing, with discipline, is the first step towards possibly becoming a novelist.

So I have decided to 'do it.'

Now my decision this year was to write something totally unrelated to Adventure Eddy. That's pretty much all I write about in my spare time and it's time to give the exhausted 'redheaded rogue' a well deserved breather.

For the month of November, Eddy has taken his rusty old Pontiac Firebird to a delightful hotel I know in Devil's Bridge (that's in Wales) where he will spend four weeks drinking draught Premier, eating steak dinners with onion rings and trudging through the Welsh woodlands. It will be damp and cold and character forming, so good for him.

And occupying the vacant space inside my imagination?

Out of the list of story ideas I outlined last time, the lucky winner is to be The God Squad.

The God Squad.

I have given much thought to what makes a book successful. One of the attractions has to be controversy. Take the Di Vinci Code. A fairly run-of-the-mill thriller became one of the greatest selling books of all time because it flirted with religious controversy.

That idea, plus the fact that the characters were already fully formed inside my head, inspired me to pursue The God Squad as a project. It's not particularly religiously controversial - but it's plot is involved with religion, how it's perceived and one possible way religion and reality coexist.

Plus it's got vampires and monsters in it. Religion+Vampires+Monsters = Bestseller.

The God Squad is Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets the Di Vinci Code.

The Premise

Have you watched Torchwood? It's the BBC series about a team of incompetent Welsh people who secretly combat alien threats to Earth's security. It's a spin off of Doctor Who and is largely only viewable thanks to that lovely John Barrowman - a guy even the most homophobic and repressed rugger-bugger will admit is 'a bit of all right.... for a bloke.'

Torchwood is terrible, but it's premise is interesting. That's why The God Squad, when we're not marketing it as Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets the Di Vinci Code™ is going to be marketed as The Real Torchwood™.

Aliens bore me. I'm much more interested in monsters, ghosts, myths and legends. Therefore, my 'real Torchwood' consists of a Vatican sponsored team of monster exterminators.

A team of heavily armed, ruthlessly trained priests who are sponsored by the Vatican, the Church of England and the British Government to destroy anything 'extra-Biblical' that's upsetting the status quo in England. There are similar teams across the world.

Extra-Biblical, you ask? Whassat, then?

I don't know if you've ever read this, but it's one of the bits I remember from all my brief theological studies back at Lampeter. Back in the old testament days, angels and man used to coexist on earth. They used to coexist so closely, in fact, that sometimes angels would 'lay' with humans and the resultant offspring would be Nephilim, half human, half angel creatures.

God was all big and shouty in those days, so he was outraged. Had Jesus been around, they might have resolved something peacefully, but instead God decided to wash the earth clean with a great flood. He told Noah to build an ark and then let it rain for forty days and forty nights.

After the Flood

Now I'm postulating here, but in my book's world, the resultant flood washed away not just the Nephilim, but also all the other mythical creatures that Noah didn't take samples of onto the ark. Unicorns, griffins, dragons, vampires, goblins, trolls... The whole lot.

The 'old' pagan monsters were washed away and the 'new' Christian world was born, repopulated by the non-heretical ancestors from Noah's Ark. That's where we learnt our understanding and tolerance of 'acceptable' animals (like dogs and cats and tigers and duck-billed platypi) and developed our fear and hatred of 'unacceptable' mythological creatures.

The thing is, floods aren't entirely effective at wiping things out. Some of the creatures survived. Dragons and griffins escaped to the mountains. Satyrs and unicorns found safety in caves. Even some of the Nephilim survived (their descendants would later became professional basketball players, I assume.)

The survival of these 'cryptozoological' animals explains why dragons, chimeras and werewolves have cropped up in the popular imagination for the last four millenia - and why we're scared and hateful of any animal not listed on Noah's passenger list.

Ever since the creation of the Catholic Church, cryptozoological animals have been ruthlessly hunted down and destroyed by top secret teams of exterminators. This has helped spread Christianity across the world (settlers to Africa, for example, exterminated the very real monsters that terrified the tribesmen.)

It sounds morally reprehensible (for example, what have unicorns done to deserve extermination?) but on the whole, it's not a bad thing. Cryptozoological animals are generally very fierce, very dangerous and, after surviving the great flood and millenia of persecution, very pissed off.

The Dream Team

Having established the world we live in, in which mythical creatures live in the shadows and threaten the safety of decent, God-fearing people, let me introduce The God Squad.

The God Squad is the modern day incarnation of the Vatican monster-hunters. Since the cryptozoological exterminators pre-date the existence of the Church of England and the British Government, the current 'God Squad' operates with complete autonomy on British soil, reporting only to the Vatican (although receiving advice and support from the Church of England) and enjoying Diplomatic Immunity via Vatican City.

The God Squad is a six man team, based in a large Victorian house in Victoria, London (actually overlooking Westminster Cathedral.) This house, which includes a chapel, laboratory, luxury sleeping quarters, a massive occult library, a shooting range, 'danger room' and garage complex, is known as The Sanctum.

It is maintained by Carruthers, a stuffy British butler.

This is the headquarters where the God Squad await the call to action, heading out across England to investigate (and eliminate) any reported supernatural activities.

The team itself consists of:

'Fitz' Fitzpatrick: Vatican Liaison. A charming, fast-talking Irish-American from New York City, Fitzpatrick is responsible for planning, organising and executing The God Squad's activities. He was born and raised in a Roman Catholic orphanage, so he's (in theory) a good Irish catholic. He's not a priest, though, and he was raised on the streets of New York City, so he's tough, cunning and streetwise (not to mention a little amoral) too.

Father Sam McCoy: Apothecary. A grizzled, middle-aged New Yorker, McCoy is the medic and healer of the group. He is a fully licensed doctor as well as a priest. A lifelong friend to Fitz, the younger American often looks up to McCoy as a father figure.

Father Huxley: Inquisitor #1. Not to be mistaken for Friar Tuck, Huxley is a monster of a man, as strong and muscular as he is fat and leering. A God fearing priest, Huxley is often driven by his rather lascivious nature and this has caused scandal after scandal for the Catholic Church. They were at their wits end - until they realised his firebrand persona could be directed towards the enemies of the Church. Huxley is dressed in an ankle length cassock, has a loud, booming voice and is best known for his great strength and use of his famous 'Crucifax' to smite the unGodly.

Father Mandrake: Inquistor #2. At a wiry seven feet tall, this former Masaai tribesman is a terrifying sight. Mandrake (he changed his name when he converted to Christianity) was a hunter, bushman and missionary in Africa for many years, until his unswerving accuracy with his .577 Holland & Holland rifle attracted the attention of the Vatican's 'monster hunters.' Mandrake's already imposing demeanour is make even more terrifying by his habit of carving scripture into his dark skin as 'penance' for dark thoughts he is tortured by, but never shares. A quiet, gentle man, he is utterly deadly with a kisu, rifle or his bare hands.

Rupert Hawkins: Librarian. A one time Oxford don, stuffy upper-class Hawkins was recruited by the Vatican for his encyclopedic knowledge of British history and mythology. He has memorised the Bestiarum Vocabulum, which is pretty much the officially recognized Vatican 'What's What' of monsters. A fund of knowledge, Hawkins is not a combat operative and is more likely to cower under a table, clutching an ancient book, then join the two Inquisitors battling evil. when push comes to shove, however, Hawkins can defend himself adequately with a WWII-era Webley revolver.

'Kitty' Katherine - Sororitas. Every monster hunting team has one female member, due to the fact that women and femininity are very powerful in the pagan world the Vatican is trying to exterminate. An icy cold, utterly composed Oxford scholar, Kitty is fairly fearsome. She's rail thin, pail and always conservatively dressed. While Hawkins concentrates on the monsters and mythology of Britain, Kitty is a walking encyclopedia for magical, occult and Wicca activities. She knows the Malleus Maleficarum like the back of her hand and can also perform many of the occult ceremonies and spells outlined in her books.

So that's the Team

There's our gang, all holed up in that big house in Victoria. They train and study and (in the case of the two 'Inquisitors') pray until the telephone rings and they're alerted to another supernatural conspiracy. Werewolves in Wolverhampton. Harpies in Hardwich. A blood drinking cult posing as Boy Scouts.

When the call comes in, they pile into The God Squad-mobile which is lovingly tended by Scruggs, the mechanic. This vehicle is called, for reasons that have faded into obscurity, Traveler.

A Rolls Royce Flying Spur, with custom coachwork (it's something between a hearse and an estate car) and an updated engine, reinforced chassis (including bull bars) and over sized tyres. It's the sort of thing that makes the Torchwood Range Rover look like a Dinky Toy.

Crammed into Traveler - aside from enough seats for the entire six-man gang - is a mobile laboratory, medical lab, a small reference library (which Kitty and Hawkins tailor for each mission) and, of course, a gun rack containing enough firepower to blow most supernatural entities back to the biblical days.

Highlights from the gun collection include Mandrake's Victorian-era Holland & Holland .577 Nitro Express rifle (utterly deadly, but elegant) and Father Huxley's Armsel Striker 12 gauge semi-automatic shotgun (basically a drum-fed Tommy Gun that fires shotgun shells instead of bullets.)

Throw in handguns and rifles for the less violent team members (all of whom are trained to shoot) and it's a pretty lethal team - plus Hawkins keeps specialised kit on hand to deal with werewolves (silver bullets) vampires (charcoal rounds) and whatever else might come their way.

What's the Story?

Now you've got the gist of what I've invented, forget it all.

Because like the clever opening of Torchwood, this story is not about Fitz or McCoy or any of the other God Squad members. They're just supporting characters.

The REAL main character is a hard working Doctor at Winchester Royal Infirmary. The scary old Victorian hospital is being closed down and she's in charge of a arranging the packing up.

This doctor (who is currently nameless) reluctantly becomes part of The God Squad team when she stumbles over what looks like a very dangerous, messy and most-certainly extra-Biblical conspiracy right in the heart of Hampshire's cathedral city.

Huh?

Since they're all deranged 'exterminators,' grizzled New Yorkers or snooty scholars, I didn't think any of The God Squad characters would make a good main character - so by recruiting a reluctant 'normal' to the squad, we-the-normal-public get to follow a character we can relate to and care about.

The Mary Sue - your eyes into their world.

It's the oldest trick in the book - think Gwen in Torchwood, Winston in Ghostbusters. Even Wesley in Star Trek: The Next Generation. The best one is probably Rose - just your normal, every day chav - in Doctor Who.

They are our doorway into these magical stories.

When you've got a host of exciting, unusual, powerful, dangerous characters, it's neither sensible or believable to try and tell the story from their perspective. That's why, for example, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a regular girl who just happens to be a slayer (teenage America mutters: that could happen to me) while the interesting characters (like Spike) are centuries old vampires (nobody but Anne Rice believes that could happen to her.)

Hopefully this kind hearted, brave but tragically human doctor will be the key to helping my story come alive.

And last but not least...

Well, that's the background to the story. Notice I haven't even begun to outline plot... That's something I'm going to have to throw together before November 1st.

But it's certainly an interesting arena to play in. And if I can include plenty of gratuitous violence, some gore, some sex, some character conflict and lots of humour, maybe The God Squad could turn into something really exciting to write about.