one heart above and one heart below

 I think I have decided what I want to write for NaNoWriMo this year. I wavered over an idea I have been mulling over an idea for awhile, but for some reason it hadn't been inspiring me. I'll talk more about that idea at a later date, but the bare bones idea that I think I want to write came to me today.

I want to write about an archivist (her name is Josephine "Josie" Williams) and she's doing cataloging for a government agency (tentatively called "the Department of Oddities") wherein she discovers all sorts of strange things and finds herself in the middle of a government conspiracy to cover up such things as magic and strange animals and societies of people who were thought to be horror stories and houses that shift and create strange rooms.

She works with documents and memoirs and notes and journals, etc. probably spanning from the 1600s to the present day. (Roughly, it follows the colonial history of New Jersey, where I want to set the story. The archive will probably be a building somewhere in the Pine Barrens.)

Some of the people Josie encounters:

• Helena Ward, werewolf, present day [a rare visitor to the archive, looking for info on her family]
• Samuel [No Last Name Yet], mage, 1740s [founder of the Princeton College of Magics]
• Annie Ward, werewolf, 1860s [relative of Helena]
• James Anderson, architect, 1820s [builds a house that is almost alive]
• Lucy McMillan, kitchen witch, 1930s-40s [weaves magic into knitting and cooking]

I'm sure that I will want to add more as the idea takes shape. But I hope this idea sticks.