Jaycee Woods

While editing the teaser short stories for the Boudica and The Beast story world, I found that the dialogue between a rebel sergeant and a smuggler to be the most horrific as it was the one that was hopeless.

The sergeant offered five diamonds looted from graves for the promise of food, medicine, & ammo that the smuggler was to bring into the besieged city in her mini-sub. The sergeant’s hope was for his soldiers to be able to die with some food in their bellies before they resorted to cannibalism. Before these rebel soldiers was only death by starvation, in battle, execution if captured, or self-deletion.

Taking those teaser stories as a whole, I missed a story option that might be more horrific. As part of the siege, The Butcher attempts to reduce the city by famine. As the food depleted, he offered that the children evacuate the city to be reeducated and given adoptive parents, who had lost their own child in the war. The teaser story would be about a parent in the rebel city explaining to their child why the child would be sent away and never see their parent again.

While the relationship between Boudica and The Beast has a “Beauty and the Beast” vibe, overall the novel is intended to be anti-war as its overall theme.

In addition to the teaser with the smuggler, there is one about an assassin hired by Cleaver (the rebel leader) to delete The Butcher, a merc captured smuggling Union battle plans (actually disinformation), a rebel political officer (Comrade Thumper), and several about captured rebel soldiers at different points in the civil war.