The muse is back

The title says it all. Myrtle the Evil Muse is back and is once again playing her evil games. The following is a snippet from what she hit me over the head with yesterday afternoon. I have no idea where it’s going. So far, she is only letting me take dictation from her (read pantsing it). I’m not even sure what sub-genre it happens to be. All I can say for sure is it is a fantasy of some sort and it is set in something close to modern times. By close I mean it could take place now or sometime in the next 100 years. Other than that, your guess is as good as mine. Because it is being dictated to me, some terms and names will change as I continue writing and then get into editing. For now, I basically grasped what sounded right and ran with it. So, here we go.

Twenty-five years ago, the world changed. One night everyone went to bed, knowing monsters only existed in their imaginations. The next day they woke to the fact those monsters from Hollywood and their guilty pleasure reading were real. Witches and shapeshifters lived next door, worked side-by-side with them, held elected office and taught their children. Elves and goblins, dwarves and giants walked among them. Then there were the things that go bump in the night. . . .

It had all the makings of a disaster but the Tribunal, the ruling body of most of the paras in North America had prepared for that day for not just years but for generations. The public-at-large discovered paras were just like them; there were good and bad guys and the good guys did whatever was necessary to protect the innocent.

That’s not to say there weren’t problems. Not all paras wanted to be outed to their neighbors and employers. Not all “normals” welcomed them with open arms. Fear caused some on both sides to do foolish things. Fortunately, those incidents were relatively few. But that didn’t mean the fear would be quickly forgotten. Even now, there were those on both sides who wanted their kind to take a final stand against the other. Cooler heads continued to prevail and, for the most part, we’ve learned to live in peace.

Still, peace is easily broken and that’s why laws were put into place to protect the paras, making sure they had the same basic and fundamental rights as the normals. The Tribunal implemented its own laws, making sure no para acted against humans without provocation and, even then, the response had to be reasonable to the action taken against them.

So far, it worked.

Mainly because the normals didn’t know just how far the Tribunal would go to ensure the paras did not abuse their talents and gifts. It did not hesitate to issue kill orders when necessary to protect innocents and keep the peace. It was a tightrope that needed to be walked to prevent a war that would cost too many lives on both sides.

That juggling act was about to become much more difficult.

And it was up to me to keep all Hell—literally and not necessarily figuratively—from breaking out.

There’s more. I’ll post it if you want. As I said, I don’t know where the story is going but I sort of want to see.