Pleased to note another pitch sale for Wild Cards, to the upcoming volume “Sleeper Straddle”. This is going to be a perhaps slightly challenging story to write; I pitched them an alternate history Sri Lanka, set in the present day. In the Wild Cards universe, Jayawardene negotiated a peace with the Tamil Tigers some time back, so for a long time, the island was relatively quiet, and the LTTE are no longer a major political force.
But in this story, rising Sinhala nationalism has become coupled to narratives of purity and anti-joker (and ace) sentiment, leading to ghettoization, etc. and a new resistance movement has formed; my protagonist Nikisha, is a young rebel woman fighting with them. She’s Tamil, but also affected by the Wild Card, with a body that has been changed and a little bit of a superpower…
This new group is trying to occupy a moral high ground, so they haven’t utilized suicide bombers, child soldiers, etc. But it’s still complex and murky, as such conflicts often are. Will be fascinating to explore.