Meet Jada Bolen

As we approach the launch of Droplet Fiction, I'm going to do a few introductory posts about the stories that are part of its launch slate, with some interesting details about their origins that you may not know (and I may not remember to tell you again).

First up is Jada Bolen, star of Weapon of Mass Destruction.

The thing about deadly weapons is they can do a lot of good in the right hands, and a lot of bad in the wrong ones. But what if the weapon has a mind of its own, and kinda enjoys the havoc it wreaks? Worse yet, what if that weapon gets loose, after forty years of cruel imprisonment?

Lucky for us, Jada -- the weapon -- is bound by a security measure: she needs to ask permission to touch absolutely anything.

Unluckily for us, her new handler is a little too innocent, and easily swayed.

What's it all about?

A powerful terrorist organization has started making moves against supposedly-secret government agencies, killing the members of a long-defunct black ops team — that was last active over forty years ago. But when Simone Barclay arrives to escort one of the last surviving members to safety, she gets the shock of her life: Jada Bolen, the person she's meant to save, is a deadly weapon who has been forbidden, for almost half a century, from touching anything without explicit permission from her handler.

Unfortunately, with her handler/husband dead, Jada needs to take her orders from Simone — and Simone has exactly the kind of personality that can be abused by a manipulative killing machine. Suddenly, Simone pulled into two different directions at once: finding out who's behind these killings, and trying to keep Jada isolated, so she can't go on an unhinged killing spree with a banana peel.

The only question is: will she get to do either of those options before the terrorists strike again?

How'd it come about?

I've been mulling this story for years now in various forms: Jada, a highly-trained assassin who was deemed too dangerous even for the US military, has been locked up for 40 years (and yet doesn't age, somehow) to keep her from unleashing chaos on the planet. The thing about her is: she has a very strict code of conduct that she can't break, so if she promises not to touch anything without explicit permission, she is bound by that promise. And so the rest of the story is, obviously, about her getting permission to touch innocuous objects that she then uses to kill people until her permission is revoked.

This is basically a miniseries broken into chapters. The stories are freewheeling action and flashbacks, the characters are all very serious people in very silly situations, and the finale is...well, "Give Me Back My Human" is one of the episode titles. It's going to be the most fun you can have without a helmet, I promise.

How many in the series?

There are seven WMD stories in the series. The first, Open the Door Please should be launching in late September. Buckle up, it's gonna be a bloody ride.