I was going to start on War Veteran again now that I have done the first draft of the Easy River to Success revision. I like to wait a few days before going back to the whole story and reading it through. But when I sat down I really started to feel conscious that there was something missing from my preparation. The story is a satire on the common fantasy tropes. So far the main satire I have found is the Michael Swanwick book, Iron Dragon’s Daughter, which I haven’t read. I think I ought to first.
So instead I went back to another story that I started planning just shortly before War Veteran. It’s called Breathless Assassin and its about a character who can see the future or read people’s minds and believes that he can stop assassinations of people who might be of benefit to mankind. I must have sat at my desk this morning for thirty minutes before things started to click into place. I started thinking more about the character and why he would be in the situation he’s in – he’s been invited on the inaugral voyage of a spacecruiser – this is not a scifi story by the way, and I had to think why this might be the case.
So I’m looking forward today to doing a bit more research on surrealist art, mental health and also coming up with some basic information about the other passengers of the spacecruiser and the crew. Should be fun?
