Why I Wrote “A New Life”

In the 1990s, my best friend and I wrote a novel set on Averit, a planet ruled by wealthy aristocrats who frequently send assassins after each other. Every aristocrat maintains a cadre of skilled bodyguards, who have their own association, ceremonies, and jargon. In that novel, the heroine was a young guard who also acted as a decoy double for her employer--a doppelganger guard.

Adrienne Ramos was the heroine’s boss in that novel, but as sometimes happens with secondary characters, she became a distinct and fascinating person in her own right. I always wanted to tell what happened to Adrienne after the novel ended. So I sent her to the other side of her world and gave her a different role as a doppelganger guard and a new romantic interest. I wrote “A New Life” in the 1990s and did a substantial rewrite in 2004, specifically for the Zircon Contest.

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