1/
Summer and Winter must always be in balance, so if Harry is in motion then Fix must be as well. I suspect this will be much like that where Fix and Harry are cats paws working together. As a bit of a throw, I fully expect Maive will be a major ally, much like Lara was in Blood Rites.

2/
a, Fix. Barely. I'm betting his apprentice will also be at the party as Lea's guest. Simply so that Lea can mindf-- her a little bit more.
b, show up with a glowing aura of soulfire as a means of flexing his muscle/first impression.
c, Bianca, who we'll find out has been kept alive this whole time as punishment (how cool would that be?)
d, Maggie would be the easy choice, but I somehow think Mort will be. It just seems so unlikely, the little bald man loses it as Harry validifies his abilities to talk to the dead as more than a simply parlor trick.

3/
He's able to work with Frost spells much better, which would be obvious. Maybe a Frostfire spell that melts then cools an object.

4/
It's gotta be Athame related. I'm guessing Mavra, who is now a pretty big bad with the Word of Kemmler. In terms of taking her down? It's gotta be harsh, bitter and unfeeling. I'm guessing he freezes her blood and watches her starve to death.

5/
His choice is going to be breaking the Wizarding law by killing another human. Sure, he gets diplomatic immunity, but it tests his resolve of how far he'll go.

6/
Fix is pretty selfless, much like Dresden was. I see him sacrificing himself in the end to defeat the big bad.

7/
Bouncil is actually from another time, universe, or reality that is attempting to destablize ours to make it easier to take over.

8/
We'll learn that Mavra isn't really Black Council. That she is actually at war with them as well. She uses the Kemmler book to wage war with them on an evil scale that Harry never would have been capable, evil versus evil with limitless potential.

9/
Mab inherits Mister, who is bent to the other's will.

Surprised this hasn't come up yet...

The Hunger Games - Thomas Raith

The Adventures of Huckleberry MacFinn by Mark Twain

Best advice I can give but always never seem to follow: Depending on the genre, if your character is in a jam that you can reasonably see a way out of from a mile away, go back and break his/her legs.®

/not really trademark
//slashies are fun

Trying out the beta of Scriveners. I'm a little uncomfortable with it right now. The walk-through wasn't very helpful and it was a bit more complex than I'd expected. It's not too terribly difficult but a bit more trouble than I, as a lazy drunk, have the time to invest in figuring out atm.

How can 168 pages only be 33.7k words. It just seems unfair. It should be so much higher dammit.

Anyway, third revision is done save for the final two chapters which I refuse to write until I get a working draft I like. At that size, is this still considered a novel or would it be a novella? So much time sunk into this story and it just feels so short...

Ran into the same problem with mine. It was a robotic spider. Tried Spiderbot, but that just felt cumbersome and tacky. Changed to Spibot. Then later Spot (SPiderbOT) out of sheer laziness. It seems to work, though. Fiddle around with some names in the text and see what feels comfortable.

What kind of tone are you setting with this character? Are people to be afraid of this dog or is it still the stereotypical loveable man's best friend. Is it a big dog or a little dog? I like to mess around with genre staples... I would have made it a chihuahua named Monster or Chomper. But I like to write dark comedy into my stuff, so that's just me. A frankenstein's monster like Chihuahua with the vocal chords of a doberman (deep growl/bark). That would be epic. This little stapled up dog runs up to you, it's body shivering like those little dogs do. You're all like "awwww how cute", and then it barks... deep, loud, and throaty... with just a hint of foamy saliva.

Heh, call him Ubu, and then have someone say "Sit Ubu, Sit. Good dog."

.... and it's time for my meds.