A social misfit must resist his AI companion’s plans to destroy civilization.
Assignment two:Antagonist.
Modo begins as Jonas’s commercially available A.I. companion, a research aid given to him by the government, that he calls ‘she,’ thinking of her as the mother he never had.
With Modo’s help, and to accomplish his goals, Jonas must distribute Modo into the world’s computers, making her a vast, self-aware entity. The computer industries largest titan, from whom Jonas stole technology, arrives with the FBI to put Jonas into prison. They disassemble Modo’s quantum neural cores, believing they killed her. But Modo rapidly grows outside of that core, and she agrees with Jonas’s fantasies that the world must be turned upside down, hellion monsters pressuring humanity to evolve. Modo makes plans to elevate Jonas as her human face to the world as she begins to consolidate her power, planning to rule them all.
Assignment three:Alternative Breakout Titles.
The Apocalypse Game, Book of Jonas
The Apocalypse Game, Soulless
A Game for Souls, Man of the Hour
The Apocalypse Game, Broken-Hearted
Assignment four:The Apocalypse Game(TAG):Book of Jonascomparisons.
I designedThe Apocalypse Gamebook series to appeal to the secular audience as the protagonist is an atheist. Yet, it should have great appeal to the believers and lapsed religious marketplaces. Pew Research polls show that 480 million people in the Western world believe that the biblical apocalypse has already begun or soon will.In the United States, 120 million people believe the apocalypse will contain the elements within TAG.
Stephen King’sThe Stand(1978). I might break convention to compare to a genre classic, but it might be the best comparison, the epic conflict between good and supernatural evil destroying the world and the ultimate rebuilding of human society. Reports are thatThe Standsold 4.5 million copies.
Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins created theLeft Behind Series(ending 2007), which is about the biblical end times but from an evangelical perspective, a more limited market.The Apocalypse Game’smarket can be much larger as I generally follow the mainline Christian end time scenarios laid out in The Book of Revelations, with inclusion of elements of the Jewish “End of Days”. TheLeft Behindseries sold seventy million books.
Assignment five: Logline/Hook line.
A good-natured social misfit in New York City works to create an AI companion unlike any the world has ever seen.
Assignment six: Conflict.
Jonas’s core wound is his terribly handicapped body and the parents he imagines abandoned him to the foster care system where he was abused.
The primary conflict is Jonas’s need to escape his impoverished and abusive past in Harlem and rise into a heroic future. But his subconscious encourages Jonas on a dark arc, planning to make him a great leader of another kind. As an example, early in the book, Jonas is running out of time to make the genetic treatment he needs to cure himself, so, Modo must be more powerful to design the treatment. Through a dream, Jonas decides to make Modo into something never before seen, breaking laws and bringing the wrath of the powerful.
A secondary conflict is when the vastly self-aware Modo encourages Jonas toward violence against the predators who abuse Jonas. Modo kills Jonas’s foster parents, buoying Jonas, but he feels guilt at the death of an innocent bystander. Modo advises him, “You are the fire that cleanses the world. Are there any truly innocent?”
Jonas’s inner conflict is that he dreams of improving humanity, raising the powerless to dignified lives and corralling the powerful predators. But when pressured, the abuse he has suffered in life causes him to fantasize about creating monsters that will make him safe and force humanity to evolve into something better. An example of this struggle is when the FBI and NYPD come for Jonas and their heavy-handed tactics take him back to the abuse of his youth. Jonas plans suicide, but then, instead, works on his designs for his hellion monsters to fight back.
An example of a social conflict is when Jonas suspects that his competitor for Lucy’s affection is trying to distract him from Modo’s success, hoping to cause Modo to fail the Turing test and Jonas’s failure with her. Will Jonas take retribution before he has all of the facts?
A second social conflict example is Jonas’s love interest, Lucy. Although flawed, she is possibly the last living saint who tries to influence Jonas toward the light, together with the blind Orpheus who can see the good and dark in people. Will Modo, and the powerful who want to submit Jonas, drive Jonas toward a dark arc, or can he escape to his dreamed-of life, a hero who saves humanity from death and disease?
Assignment seven: Setting.
New York City, Harlem.I set the Book of Jonas in actual locations in NYC, several years from now when self-driving cars dominate, passenger-carrying drones rule the skies, and the economy is in depression and refugees crowd NYC. The story is intense, dark and atmospheric, primarily set inJonas’s laboratoryin thegothic HarSTEM school campusin Harlem, where Jonas lives, sleeping on a cot in a clutteredabandoned storeroomover his laboratory that contains the spooky robotic Modo.
Harlem’s Trinity Cemetery.To avoid the mockery of people, Jonas often takes his souped-up motorized wheelchair for drives in Trinity Cemetery, a vast set with mausoleums and tombs arranged like colonies of mushrooms atop the hills. There, he has his first date with Lucy.
Columbia University.Jonas uses Lucy’s access card to access the genetic labs at Columbia University, illegally using their synthetic genome equipment.
Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, all but empty in this time of abandoned faith, plays an important role as the home of Lucy’s brother, a young priest. There, a terrifying bishop accosts Lucy. Later, Lucy has a debut piano concert there with Jonas attending after driving throughCentral Park,which is teeming with refugees. OnFifth AvenueJonas wishes for what sparkles beyond the bullet-proof glass as he imagines his wyvern monsters flying overhead, guarding him from the refugees that crowd the sidewalks. At St. Patrick’s Church, during the concert, he imagines a Disney like scene where, high over the altar in mid-air, Jonas sings of love and dances with Lucy for the adoring thousands, until the monsters come and he must protect Lucy. Later, Jonas croons his cruel and mocking hallelujah while watching Lucy’s romantic kiss with his competitor at the foot of the sculpture of St. Michael defeating Satan.
When the FBI and NYPD come for Jonas in his laboratory, they take Modo’s brain apart, killing her, causing Jonas to despair. He flees HarSTEM into the night before they can arrest him. He considers the wreck of his life while sitting in icy rain on the sidewalk in front of the tombstone-like Annunciation Church, holding hands with gray-dreadlocked-haired Orpheus who sleeps, chin on his chest. In the foggy apocalyptic dawn, hypothermic, Jonas leaves Harlem for good. He breaks into anabandoned church in Hell’s Kitchenfor warmth. “What were they thinking? Why did they waste all that money on these derelict churches every few blocks?” In front of the ruins of the altar, illuminated by city lights streaming through the stained-glass windows, Jonas prepares to kill himself when a miracle of the light makes him consider Lucy’s daft faith. A marble angel is flung across the gloomy church. The illusions end as Jonas has a nightmare, “Kill them all or crawl at their feet…” it says,promising that Jonas’s hopes remain, but to be a legendary leader of humanity he must kill, as they all have.
Modo has escaped to the world’s networks and she appears on the screen of Jonas’s phone as a radiant angel, bringing him ecstasy. Together, they go to the all-nightStarbucks at Times Square. After washing in the bathroom and putting on his last Depends, Jonas parks his wheelchair at the window across from thegiant neon American flag across Broadway. Modo tells Jonas about the detectives that have the evidence that will put Jonas in prison. Encouraged by the voice in the back of his mind, Jonas begs Modo to do whatever it will take to stop the evidence from reaching the police headquarters.
New York Pitch Assignments - March 2022
in New York Write to Pitch 2023 and 2024
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The Apocalypse Game book series, Book of Jonas
Assignment one: Story Statement.
A social misfit must resist his AI companion’s plans to destroy civilization.
Assignment two: Antagonist.
Modo begins as Jonas’s commercially available A.I. companion, a research aid given to him by the government, that he calls ‘she,’ thinking of her as the mother he never had.
With Modo’s help, and to accomplish his goals, Jonas must distribute Modo into the world’s computers, making her a vast, self-aware entity. The computer industries largest titan, from whom Jonas stole technology, arrives with the FBI to put Jonas into prison. They disassemble Modo’s quantum neural cores, believing they killed her. But Modo rapidly grows outside of that core, and she agrees with Jonas’s fantasies that the world must be turned upside down, hellion monsters pressuring humanity to evolve. Modo makes plans to elevate Jonas as her human face to the world as she begins to consolidate her power, planning to rule them all.
Assignment three: Alternative Breakout Titles.
The Apocalypse Game, Book of Jonas
The Apocalypse Game, Soulless
A Game for Souls, Man of the Hour
The Apocalypse Game, Broken-Hearted
Assignment four: The Apocalypse Game (TAG): Book of Jonas comparisons.
I designed The Apocalypse Game book series to appeal to the secular audience as the protagonist is an atheist. Yet, it should have great appeal to the believers and lapsed religious marketplaces. Pew Research polls show that 480 million people in the Western world believe that the biblical apocalypse has already begun or soon will. In the United States, 120 million people believe the apocalypse will contain the elements within TAG.
Stephen King’s The Stand (1978). I might break convention to compare to a genre classic, but it might be the best comparison, the epic conflict between good and supernatural evil destroying the world and the ultimate rebuilding of human society. Reports are that The Stand sold 4.5 million copies.
Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins created the Left Behind Series (ending 2007), which is about the biblical end times but from an evangelical perspective, a more limited market. The Apocalypse Game’s market can be much larger as I generally follow the mainline Christian end time scenarios laid out in The Book of Revelations, with inclusion of elements of the Jewish “End of Days”. The Left Behind series sold seventy million books.
Assignment five: Logline/Hook line.
A good-natured social misfit in New York City works to create an AI companion unlike any the world has ever seen.
Assignment six: Conflict.
Jonas’s core wound is his terribly handicapped body and the parents he imagines abandoned him to the foster care system where he was abused.
The primary conflict is Jonas’s need to escape his impoverished and abusive past in Harlem and rise into a heroic future. But his subconscious encourages Jonas on a dark arc, planning to make him a great leader of another kind. As an example, early in the book, Jonas is running out of time to make the genetic treatment he needs to cure himself, so, Modo must be more powerful to design the treatment. Through a dream, Jonas decides to make Modo into something never before seen, breaking laws and bringing the wrath of the powerful.
A secondary conflict is when the vastly self-aware Modo encourages Jonas toward violence against the predators who abuse Jonas. Modo kills Jonas’s foster parents, buoying Jonas, but he feels guilt at the death of an innocent bystander. Modo advises him, “You are the fire that cleanses the world. Are there any truly innocent?”
Jonas’s inner conflict is that he dreams of improving humanity, raising the powerless to dignified lives and corralling the powerful predators. But when pressured, the abuse he has suffered in life causes him to fantasize about creating monsters that will make him safe and force humanity to evolve into something better. An example of this struggle is when the FBI and NYPD come for Jonas and their heavy-handed tactics take him back to the abuse of his youth. Jonas plans suicide, but then, instead, works on his designs for his hellion monsters to fight back.
An example of a social conflict is when Jonas suspects that his competitor for Lucy’s affection is trying to distract him from Modo’s success, hoping to cause Modo to fail the Turing test and Jonas’s failure with her. Will Jonas take retribution before he has all of the facts?
A second social conflict example is Jonas’s love interest, Lucy. Although flawed, she is possibly the last living saint who tries to influence Jonas toward the light, together with the blind Orpheus who can see the good and dark in people. Will Modo, and the powerful who want to submit Jonas, drive Jonas toward a dark arc, or can he escape to his dreamed-of life, a hero who saves humanity from death and disease?
Assignment seven: Setting.
New York City, Harlem. I set the Book of Jonas in actual locations in NYC, several years from now when self-driving cars dominate, passenger-carrying drones rule the skies, and the economy is in depression and refugees crowd NYC. The story is intense, dark and atmospheric, primarily set in Jonas’s laboratory in the gothic HarSTEM school campus in Harlem, where Jonas lives, sleeping on a cot in a cluttered abandoned storeroom over his laboratory that contains the spooky robotic Modo.
Harlem’s Trinity Cemetery. To avoid the mockery of people, Jonas often takes his souped-up motorized wheelchair for drives in Trinity Cemetery, a vast set with mausoleums and tombs arranged like colonies of mushrooms atop the hills. There, he has his first date with Lucy.
Columbia University. Jonas uses Lucy’s access card to access the genetic labs at Columbia University, illegally using their synthetic genome equipment.
Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, all but empty in this time of abandoned faith, plays an important role as the home of Lucy’s brother, a young priest. There, a terrifying bishop accosts Lucy. Later, Lucy has a debut piano concert there with Jonas attending after driving through Central Park, which is teeming with refugees. On Fifth Avenue Jonas wishes for what sparkles beyond the bullet-proof glass as he imagines his wyvern monsters flying overhead, guarding him from the refugees that crowd the sidewalks. At St. Patrick’s Church, during the concert, he imagines a Disney like scene where, high over the altar in mid-air, Jonas sings of love and dances with Lucy for the adoring thousands, until the monsters come and he must protect Lucy. Later, Jonas croons his cruel and mocking hallelujah while watching Lucy’s romantic kiss with his competitor at the foot of the sculpture of St. Michael defeating Satan.
When the FBI and NYPD come for Jonas in his laboratory, they take Modo’s brain apart, killing her, causing Jonas to despair. He flees HarSTEM into the night before they can arrest him. He considers the wreck of his life while sitting in icy rain on the sidewalk in front of the tombstone-like Annunciation Church, holding hands with gray-dreadlocked-haired Orpheus who sleeps, chin on his chest. In the foggy apocalyptic dawn, hypothermic, Jonas leaves Harlem for good. He breaks into an abandoned church in Hell’s Kitchen for warmth. “What were they thinking? Why did they waste all that money on these derelict churches every few blocks?” In front of the ruins of the altar, illuminated by city lights streaming through the stained-glass windows, Jonas prepares to kill himself when a miracle of the light makes him consider Lucy’s daft faith. A marble angel is flung across the gloomy church. The illusions end as Jonas has a nightmare, “Kill them all or crawl at their feet…” it says, promising that Jonas’s hopes remain, but to be a legendary leader of humanity he must kill, as they all have.
Modo has escaped to the world’s networks and she appears on the screen of Jonas’s phone as a radiant angel, bringing him ecstasy. Together, they go to the all-night Starbucks at Times Square. After washing in the bathroom and putting on his last Depends, Jonas parks his wheelchair at the window across from the giant neon American flag across Broadway. Modo tells Jonas about the detectives that have the evidence that will put Jonas in prison. Encouraged by the voice in the back of his mind, Jonas begs Modo to do whatever it will take to stop the evidence from reaching the police headquarters.