NaNoWriMo 2014: World War W

The idea for this year's NaNoWriMo came to me one cold January day, sitting in panel discussion at RustyCon, when I wrote these 3 words down in my "idea file" on my iPhone:

War on Women.

It was just an idea at the time, the classic "What if?" statement: What if there was an actual, literal War on Women? With soldiers and armies and everything? Sure, it's a crazy idea. But I think that's the perfect realm for Science Fiction. Let's explore the What If's and see where they lead. A concept leads to thoughts which leads to debates where leads to...

So as I'm developing and researching this concept, a couple things happen.

First, we have the killing spree at SBCC. Idiot wrote a manifest--a fairly honest accounting of his chilling belief system. Great insights into hatred and those thought patterns. Then as of late there's been another concept going around called "The Ratio", which is the idea that mankind would be better off without men. The Ratio would reduce males to 10% of the population.

Now we can just laugh these things off as the rants of haters, but let's bring the What If? to bear again...what if these kinds of people somehow got into power? Look at Hitler. By all measures he was a small man, but he rallied a country around a central concept: racial purity leading to world domination.

Is it really that far-fetched that someday, haters could come into power again and cast the world into turmoil?

Take a world like ours, but one in which tension between the sexes has grown to the point of conflict that explodes into war. Into this world throw in some young adults, those with little stake in the conflict but feeling every cut of it, and now my concept has grown into a full-on novel, a YA SF Dystopia.

I now present to you my NaNoWriMo 2014 Novel Concept, which I call

World War W

It probably the most ambitious project I've ever undertaken, but maybe the most meaningful.


Coming Soon...The World War W NaNo Cover!