I’m onto the next story, then: The Chef takes place in and around a revival diner in the middle of the city’s leisure district, and what started out in my head as a quirky little postmodern romance has turned (inevitably) darker. There are broken hearts. There’s cosmetic DNA synthesis and brothels staffed entirely by robots programmed to cater to any perversion. There’s a desperate, confused young man on the brink of insanity and a woman whose no-nonsense attitude masks an innocence even she isn’t fully aware of.
It’s funny - the way I usually approach plots is to see what unfolds, but fairly early on I realised that the format of this one is a conventional tragedy in an unconventional setting. There are a lot of secrets in this story. A lot of horrible things done behind closed doors, hanging by a thread that snaps the moment someone else finds out. I’m having fun writing it. I’m having fun writing.