I'm more concerned with the metal detectors. Are these at the airport as they're flying to vegas? Because when I was there in Vegas I didn't see any metal detectors. Or maybe I just didn't notice them....which given Vegas is very possible. Just wondering if you'd done any research on it because I can't think of any that had visible metal detectors.

Basically Casino's are designed to be as open as possible with multiple entry points and no barriers from the people outside to the machines and tables inside. They want people to come inside easily. Leaving they try to make a bit harder but no metal detectors there either. So there's nothing stopping you from bringing a gun into a casino. It certainly didn't stop the guy who robbed the Belagio last year.

In the wee hours of Dec. 14, a man entered the Bellagio wearing a white helmet that obscured his face. He waved a handgun at craps table No. 5 — shouting, "Get out!" to frightened gamblers — crammed chips into his fanny pack and dashed out of the casino and fled on a black motorcycle.

He was caught later by the way although he did get away with like 1.5 million in chips. Of course they pretty quickly changed chips so that the stolen ones became worthless. Its easy to get a gun into a casino, not so easy to do anything with it an then get away. I'd follow that and see where it goes. Think thousands of security cameras and hundreds of people standing around watching at even the oddest hours.

Cranked out another few pages, and I'm finally back to where I was when I restarted an re-worked the story a few months ago. Just short of 11,500 words. Yay! I've nailed down about 2000 words these last two nights. ;p

Well 'hidden' is probably the wrong word as people know of the group, but they know nothing of the internal workings of the organization. It's not a real society from our world. And the plan is for 3rd person limited with a 3 or 4 main points of view. That allows me to get around some of the issues by using certain chapters or characters to give the society time to explain things "off camera" without it being too boring and so I don't have to lay out every detail.

I just don't want the main character to end up being forced to ask the wrong questions so that I can keep things hidden and not lay it out all at once. I want to be able to train someone in magic, strange weapons etc without the reader having to sit through all the lessons and safety warnings. But I can't skip it completely or move on to when the character is an old expert for story and pacing reasons. While I'm sure that Jim could make every lesson Harry ever had interesting I have no such faith in myself and I'm sure even Jim wouldn't write a book entirely about Harry's early years with Justin.

Essentially if someone finds the keys to a nuclear weapon (or the magical equivalent) and then someone in authority has to train that person in its use they aren't going to be cryptic or withhold vital info from that person. Sage Yoda knowledge would be too dangerous and it would annoy me (and anyone reading it I think) if they did because the reasoning would purely be because I was avoiding Info Dump.

The protagonist has read lots of books and has a fair amount of knowledge of the world and his father is in the group in question but he mostly knows of the group through rumor and gossip and not anything his father has told him first hand.

I'm definitely guilty of not letting myself writing crap. Well I write lots and lots of crap and then immediately change it over and over....and then over some more.

Instantly made me think of the movie Sky High from a few years ago. Fun little movie even if it was aimed at kids. Its about a superhero high school and one character is a Technopath... which isn't exactly the same but your post made me think of it. About the only example I can think of from a movie or tv show unless you want to count Myka (sp?) from the TV Show Heroes.

The last two nights I've pulled off 13 pages and about 7k words. Of course that is two twelve hour shifts were there wasn't much actual work to do so I was free to write. So maybe not that much actual progress since I spent so much time procrastinating. Constant struggle, hehe.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'm not sure if anything is gonna work but I might be able to adjust it slightly. Smooth out some of the roughness and at the same patch up plot holes and inconsistencies (more like logic gaps that I've thought of while trying to work this out)....

Oh well. It's gonna take a while but that's how you learn right?