Stealth Assassination

While many assassinations are public, assassination is obviously best performed in stealth to avoid capture, which is probably why many assassins tend to be more discreet in their attempts.

For example, during the French Revolution, in 1793, Jean-Paul Marat, a radical French journalist, was assassinated while taking a bath. Under the pretence of being a journalist who wanted to interview Marat, Charlotte Corday, who supported the opposition Girondists, gained access to his private chambers, and the rest is history. Over two centuries later, al-Qaeda, a Muslim terrorist organisation, used the same pretence to get close to the Northern Alliance rebel leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud. In the latter case, however, the two assassins were killed along with the target when their fake camera exploded.

Another famous example of a stealth assassination was that of Leon Trotsky in 1940. Trotsky’s rival, Josef Stalin, had him exiled, but still had the KGB track him, with the intention of assassinating him. Trotsky’s assassinator, Ramón Mercader, also posed as a journalist to obtain a private interview, even going as far as to seduce a woman with close ties to Trotsky in order to gain his trust.

Even the CIA is alleged to have carried out or supported many stealth assassinations, including a botched attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro by poisoning his cigar. Many believe the CIA also supported or had a hand in the assassinations and attempted assassination of myriad world leaders, such as Saddam Hussein. Some believe the CIA was also behind the Kennedy assassination. What do you think?

Defining Assassins

Since we’ll be discussing assassins and The Queen’s Blade, I thought it fitting to talk about what an assassin is, exactly. Let’s first take a look at the dictionary definitions:

Oxford Dictionaries: “A person who murders an important person for political or religious reasons.”

Merriam-Webster: “A person who commits murder; especially:  one who murders a politically important person either for hire or from fanatical motives.”

As far as I’m concerned, the word ‘assassin’ refers to anyone who is paid to kill another person. However, most of history’s famous assassins were not, in fact, paid to kill, but committed murder for personal reasons, be they political or otherwise. This confuses me – surely if you are not paid to kill, you are nothing but a common murderer? Yet these people go down in history, romanticised as assassins. For example, why is JW Booth an assassin just because he killed a president rather than Joe Soap on the street? It makes no sense to me.

In my opinion, someone who is paid to kill someone else is an assassin. If you are not paid to kill, you’re a murderer. Real assassins don’t have a personal agenda or anything to gain from the kill either, other than the payment. Blade, the master assassin in my fantasy series, The Queen’s Blade, would certainly agree with my definition. In fact, assassins in the series undergo intensive training and have strict rules to adhere to.

What do you think the dictionary and accepted definition of an assassin should be?

The Queen's Blade series

So, still no news from the UK publishers - about a month to go, apparently, until I can expect a response. Right now I'm editing the Broken World series, which I haven't looked at for a couple of years, and boy, does it need a lot of editing. Every time I look at one of my books, it needs more editing. It's never ending. Demon Lord, which was published in 2006, needs a stack of editing, and, since I want to publish it as an ebook soon, along with the sequel, Dark God, I have to get it right. A writer's work is never done - no rest for the wicked and all that.

So, The Queen's Blade is about an assassin, whose tragic past has moulded him into, essentially, a drunken, lying, hard-nosed sociopath - well, I expect most killers have to be sociopaths, I think it comes with the territory. Blade, however, is a loveable sociopath, not only because he's kind of handsome, but he has this way about him... hard to describe, but he's an interesting person, and, while he tries very hard to be obnoxious, somehow it never works for him. He's also inclined to help people, although he'll never admit to doing it. He's also a eunuch, sadly for him, which is part of the reason for his bitterness.

When I started The Queen's Blade, it was supposed to be about Queen Minna-Satu of Jashimari, and her tragic story of sacrifice to save her people from the cruel and savage King Shandor of the Cotti. In the second chapter, however, guess who made his entrance? I was intrigued. Blade certainly didn't fit my idea of a hero, but he was fascinating, and, as it turned out, the key to the whole series, to say nothing of the fact that his actions - killing people - affected how everything turned out. So I followed his story, and learnt all the details of his life. Amazing stuff. He's now my favourite hero, although I love all my heroes and heroines, Blade takes first prize. Strange for someone like him to be so endearing, but there it is.

To quote Blade in a comment he made to his wife Chiana in Lord Protector, the last book of the series: "How proud you must be, to have a lying, drunken killer for a husband." Well, that about sums him up, and yet, there's so much more to him. There are currently 6 books in the series, including the prequel God Touched. The first book is The Queen's Blade, followed by The Invisible Assassin, then Knight of the Veil, Master of the Dance, and Lord Protector. There may be more, too. So, that's The Queen's Blade series.