“You guys should get together and write a spy novel.”
It’s funny how one random comment can start a whole chain of events.
A few months back, a friend and I were speaking at a gathering for parents of Naval Academy midshipmen. The topic was life opportunities available to Academy graduates after they finish their military service. I gave my story: submarine officer for six years, followed by twenty years in high-tech, then, about a year ago, I made a huge career change and became a full-time writer.
My friend, JR Olson, spoke next. JR was a career naval intelligence officer and has some great (read: frightening) stories about the world that exists behind the CNN headlines. When he finished speaking, the room was quiet for a minute, then someone in the audience said, “You guys should get together and write a spy novel.”
A week later we decided to do just that.
Even better, we’ve decided to document our creative journey in regular blog posts that we’re calling “Two Navy Guys and a Novel.”
The Project
Weapons of Mass Deception, WMD for short, is based on a simple, horrifying premise: Saddam Hussein really did develop WMDs. The US forces never found them because, in the run up to the 2003 invasion, Saddam moved them out of the country for safe-keeping.
But they still exist. Today. And some very bad people have them now.
That's just a teaser to get your motor running. We’ll talk more about how we settled on this idea for the novel and some of the fascinating history behind it in future posts.
What's Next
Next time, you’ll meet the Navy guys and hear about what we hope to accomplish in this venture. We're planning to post an update every other week–maybe more often if we have something worthwhile to say. I might even put up one of those fancy widgets that lets you track how much we're written each week.
Oh, and we’re happy to take questions from our studio audience. You can send them to david@davidbruns.com.
David Bruns is a science fiction writer from Minnesota, and creator of The Dream Guild Chronicles. Check out his website for updates, new releases and a free short story.
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