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IAN SOMERHALDER FOR THOMAS!

For that matter, I'm working on a very similar concept: technology, for X reason, abruptly doesn't work. Now what?  And yeah, when Revolution came out, I thought "Oh well, time to toss this one in the trash." The thing is, though, given the same exact starting point, the writers of Revolution and I went in radically different directions. We're not even sort of telling the same story, despite the same starting point.

I recently saw somewhere -- and I want to say it was on Chuck Wendig's Terrible Minds blog 'cause he's big with the pithy writing advice except there wasn't nearly enough profanity in it for it to have come from Wendig -- a bit of advice that went something like, "It doesn't matter if someone else had the same story idea you had. Tell yourself that you can do it better." That's what I'm doing. I like my idea, my interpretation, way better. I do like Revolution, but the more I watch it, the more dissatisfied I get if only because I keep thinking, "Man, there were SO MANY better ways y'all could've gone with the basic idea." 

Besides, their interpretation is informed by their details, most importantly the detail of what made tech stop working. Just as with your notion, my version of what made tech stop working necessarily takes my story in a wildly different direction. The inciting incident in Revolution is a key story point. The weapons research, the amulets, are all the focus for the show: who has them, who wants them, what they'll do to get them/keep them. That's simply not the case in my story. What happened and why is incidental. To meme things up a bit, ain't nobody got time fo' dat in my world.

So write it. I've got $20 in my pocket right now that says even if you had quite literally the EXACT same starting point, amulets and all, you'd be writing a completely different story. And odds are very good you'll like your story better. So write it. There's an audience out there who'll like it better, too.

My problem would be that about 40,000 words in, I'd suddenly think up a cool ending that would require me to go back and change or add stuff to the beginning parts.  That happens to me all the time in my pantser method of writing.  My way, it's no big deal. I just make a note and fix things when I edit. But when they're already out there, there's nothing you can do. You just have to suck it up, ditch the way-cool ending, and move on.  That'd kill it for me.

I'd have to write the whole thing out, then release it. And if I did that, if it's good enough to let people read, I might as well try to sell it.

I'm not sure what you're looking for exactly, there being about as many forms of "witchcraft" as there are people, but Cat Yronwode has one of the best/most accessible resources for Hoodoo I've ever seen. You can find her book in web form on her web page at http://www.luckymojo.com/hoodoo.html Poking around the rest of the luckymojo site will net you some great info, too.

Contrary to Charmed, most witches I know don't go in for potions. Herblore, yes, but you'll find lots of that in Hoodoo, too.  Medicinal teas, yes, or baths maybe. But not potions you drink (and certainly not throw) to create a desired outcome.

I don't really mind that you don't spell as well as I do.  I don't sing as well as Christina Aguilera. It's just a thing. People are different.

What bothers me is the harsh reality check you're in for when you find out that neither agents, editors, nor readers will cut you any slack for your disabilities.  Their only concern is, "I can't read this."  It's not their job to work with your disability, it's your job as a writer to minimize the impact it has on your writing.

On board posts? Whatever. Y'know, it's no big thing.  I sometimes am not in the mood to try and translate your posts but so what? No big deal.  But if you want to be a writer, this IS something you're going to have to address and you haven't said word one about what you do to try and address it.  Do you use a spell checker in your writing?  Do your first readers fix your spelling for you? 

It does no good to get defensive with us when we're not being offensive. We're not attacking you for your spelling, just wondering what, as a writer, you're doing to address this difficulty.

Hand-writing's fine, if you don't mind typing it up later. You wouldn't be the only writer to do things that way.  But seriously, you need a spell-checker. Badly. Very, very badly. Even if you're severely dyslexic (one of my last bosses was, to the point of illiteracy) there are software programs that will help figure out what you're trying to say, or you can use Dragon to dictate to. It'll get some words wrong, but far fewer than you have wrong in just that small post.

"Then TDF came along..."  When TDF came along, Urban Fantasy had already been cranking for a few years, and "Storm Front" was published twelve years ago.

Twelve years.

Guilty Pleasures, the first Anita Blake book, was published in 1993 and I feel comfortable saying this book started the UF craze. It was not, to forestall the 'But what about _____' posts, the first UF book by any means, but I think it was the series that launched it into the public eye.  (I've been reading UF since the 80s when Mercedes Lackey published her Diana Tregarde novels, for instance.)

This is not "newness", not even to a geezer like you.