Who am I?

I'm middle-aged, working as a contractor and seeking full-time employment. I don't have as much time to write as I would like, but I'm trying to make time for it. Everyone needs a hobby. I got into writing through roleplay and people tell me I can write. I've tried several times and I've got the writing bug. I've submitted a few short stories, but have nothing published professionally. My current project, Dovah Queen, is an attempt to get past my biggest flaw as a writer, self-criticism. I have started quite a few stories where I get half-way or three-quarters of a way through a story and I stop writing because I feel it isn't good enough and everything that I'm writing is crap.

As for my handle, I originally only planned to write one story here, and when looking for a handle I chose the name of my protagonist. While it should be obvious, my name isn't Harper Potts and the backstory given of Harper Potts in no way reflects my real life.

Harper Potts, the Girl Who Died (Hiatus)

What happened to Harper Potts, the Girl Who Died? Sadly the same thing that happens to all my stories. I go strong for a while then hit a spot that I just can't write around. There were two particular stumbling blocks for this story. The first was that I needed to introduce a new defense instructor who was an auror and I stalled on the original character. The second is that my story is focused too much on the ships. There are already ships in motion and a whole Daphne-Harper-Hermione triangle forming. However, these kids are only eleven in body (even if Harper is older in experience) and that's more than a bit icky to me. I might return to this story at some point. I haven't totally given it up, before now it is on long term hold.

A Bug in the Game (Hiatus)

This is one of my favorite unfinished stories. You can thank Faria Lyton for that. I volunteered to beta for Co-Op mode. Faria Lyton asked me to write the first interlude going over the same events from Taylor's PoV and I agreed. Then I wrote a bit more from Taylor's PoV. Then FL asked me for suggestions for a different cape name for Taylor. Funny thing, I actually had one all written up.

It was a plot seed that I'd had some time ago for a story that I had tentatively titled "Let There be Butterflies." In canon Worm Taylor fails to pick a cape name. I wanted to look at what a large impact very small butterfly, choosing a name, could make on the story. The intention was that Taylor embraced the heroic version of herself that was rammed down her throat by the PRT in canon. How much different would Taylor have been if she'd embraced a Weaver-like character from the start instead of getting it pushed on her. So I dusted off that idea and FL loved it. So that became canon and my contributions grew from there. So FL and I talked it over and agreed that I would write a companion story to Co-Op mode from Taylor's point of view.

The odds of this being completed are low. Collaborative writing is hard and I don't have much time to write. It would take both me and FL to be in a place where we had more time to write.

GoT Alternate Endings and Dovah Queen

I'm a long time Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire fan. I read the books before HBO even announced they were doing the show, so I have been waiting many years for the conclusion, and I thought it sucked! My biggest issue is the heal-face turn of Daenerys. I know many defend HBO and point out that there were signs all along that Daenerys was overly ambitious and a little unstable. I'll admit it doesn't come completely out of the blue. I saw the signs, but hoped they weren't going there. If HBO had given me a story where Daenerys gradually descended into villain by taking being more and more callous in her quest for power, sacrificing lives, and not caring about the costs - I could have accepted that. Instead, Daenerys fell in two episodes, and then snaps and burns King's Landing. The burning of King Landing's landing didn't work for me. It felt like a forced bridge too far so they could justify why Daenerys had to die. Then the Starks get a happy ending. It didn't work for me. It felt too forced and arbitrary. In short I feel Daenerys deserved better, and the Starks didn't deserve their ending. It left me bitter and sour. Which is good for my readers because it inspired me to write again. I found writing my Alternate Endings to be very cathartic and I've kept writing since.

Dovah Queen was a surprise. I originally intended it to be just a short story motivated by the pun. However, the more I thought about it, the more that I felt that Daenerys as the Dovahkiin really worked. I've put more words into this story than anything I've written and I feel good about the first book. It had the length and depth needed to be a published work and the start of a series. For now my plan is to continue the story of Dovah Queen and prove to myself that a can finish what I started. I have a good deal planned out and I don't plan on stopping any time soon.

Harper Potts Challenges

I'm going to start posting a few challenges. These will be mostly story ideas that I just don't have time to write. If you do take up a challenge, please drop me a PM. I'd love to see what you do with it.

Rita Skeeters's Year Off (Rita PoV) - This was an idea that came to me recently, but I'm a yank and I think you would almost have to be a British to pull it off well. When Hermione Granger captures Rita Skeeter at the end of Goblet of Fire she still extends to extort Rita to stop writing. As she makes the deal, almost as an afterthought she adds. "Well, at least stop writing in the Wizarding World. If you want to get a job writing for a muggle paper, you just might learn something about real journalism." Naturally, Hermione is thinking of the free press as a bastion of democracy and having more integrity than the wizarding world. Rita after a short funk decides to at least check out the muggle papers. It's the summer of 1995 and scandals abound with the muggle papers in a feeding frenzy. Rita decides to take a job working for a major muggle paper (with a little help from a Confundus charm). She gets scolded for simply making things up and stating outrageous opinions as facts. Her boss and coworkers quickly show her the proper way to write a story - quote outlandish sources, get the most extreme viewpoints from both sides, and that special word 'alleged'. By the time Hermione Granger contacts her to write a story for the Quibbler, she may never want to go back.

Sincerely,

Harper Potts