Serial Killer's Children

In case you missed it Saturday, my current WIP (and focus for this month) is called A View that Lacks Stars. It's my NaNo from two years ago and was inspired 1) by a child bride I meet and 2) ...some type of story prompt on some website or another. I'm guessing the NaNo forums, cuz during my PC service it was pretty much only that and Facebook.

Anyway, this idea was of a serial killer taking a fancy to someone he sees in a coffee shops and starts bringing girl small gifts from the kills to start the wooing process. Cat's bring you dead birds, serial killers bring you cufflinks with blood on the back of them.

But as I've been instructed a few times via Writing Excuses, you never go with the original idea. Twist it, go beyond, and make it your own.

Thus, the MMC in Stars isn't a serial killer. His dad instead is a mercenary, okay, assassin, who has a habit of taking tokens from his kills and adding them to a shrine for his dead wife. And what would happen if kid then re-gifts these tokens to his crush and one of the hundreds of them just happens to have belonged to her recently killed friend?

You have a story, that's what.

On a space station. Cuz I like space.

So A View that Lacks Stars came about due to a marriage of plot and character inspiration. That's quite rare for me, it's usually a 'what if' situation that does the job and then poking and prodding at it. This is also the first novel I feel super invested in to move it beyond the first draft and I totally blame my first inspiration for that.