Ron91710

Chapter Two: introduces PROTAGONIST - an overprotective mother who feels guilty for not being home as much as she’d like, and later in the story, is not above lying to her son to protect him from scary realities of the world. This follows the opening chapter from the ANTAGONIST POV - a creepy slightly disturbed 15-year-old girl. It sets up a fear connection between Mother and Son. First the son will be afraid of “Patty”, a girl he’s never met, and years later, the mother will be after she meets her in person.  I'm using chapter 2 as my writing sample, since most of the chapters are in Protagonist POV anyway.

EXCERPT:

Vivian heard the yell from her son’s bedroom. Her feet hit the floor, slapping hard on the cold wood down the hallway toward his room. Her mind half-awake, she pictured him fallen out of bed, like two nights ago when the thud awakened her. As soon as she opened his door, her eyes focused on the bedside rug, empty. Instead, he was still tucked in, head tight under the covers, not moving.

“Honey are you okay?” proud of her restraint at this hour. Not Now what? Not This is two nights in a row. She pulled down the race car comforter and put a hand on his forehead, miming the technique she’d read about in a parenting magazine: Let the child know that night terrors are a sickness.

“I dreamed about the girl in the freezer,” he said. “She was trying to get out.”

She sat down on the bed. “Honey, that was a nightmare. There’s no girl in any freezer.”

“Yes there is. Dad put her in there.”

Even at this absurdity she felt something endearing in her son’s fear. Cherish the moments he needs you to make the monsters go away, she thought. He’ll grow up fast. She reached for the lamp and her attention was drawn to the watercolor on the wall. Her son’s name floated in thick amateur letters above a blob of a pony. A thunderbolt of love struck her as she took in the three over-sized consonants surrounding a cowering vowel. She’d lobbied hard to name him Mark, after her father, but Scott was dead set on naming him Lars, after his grandfather. Days of alternating hurt feelings and playing martyr gave way to the unexpected, even giddy compromise: Mars. But as a middle name, sort of hidden away, like a secret ingredient in the recipe of their new son’s life. And though they used it like a nickname, and last month made sure his school papers listed only his first name, the watercolor had made it clear that Scott Mars Castro, by christening it with his middle name, had made the first decision that might carry into adulthood.

His voice piped up. “Dad turned her around, so she wouldn’t look at me when I opened the door. But she’s still there.”

“Mars, that’s enough. Your father would never do such a thing. How ‘bout I get you some water?” She rubbed his chest and planted a hard kiss on his cheek.

After she’d delivered the water, and before turning off the light, she surveyed the room she’d decorated when she and Scott bought the place last year.  All the important choices made on patterns and color. The placement of personal objects among the functional, new clothes hung orderly in the closet, a place to grow a perfect boy into one ready for an equally perfect place in the world. Except the school year had brought a new reality to Scott and Vivian’s life. They’d somehow become parents of a child who exempted himself from roads of discovery, and instead saw daily separation from home as traumatic and painful. Last week Mars treated the neighbors to a terrified escape from Scott’s car while he was already backing out of the driveway. Vivian saw everything from the living room window. Scott braked, ran out after him, grabbed his arm and marched him back to the car where his protests remained audible even after he closed the door. And now the nightmares. She first thought his new separation anxiety was cute and showed the world how much he loved his parents. Lately it wasn’t so cute anymore.

Back in her bed, she tucked herself in next to Scott, closed her eyes, and replayed her son’s yell in her mind. Something was off about it. Something that hadn’t registered at first, but now that she was back in bed, she realized what it was. He’d called for his father. Not for her.

She felt petty. Letting something like that pierce into her. She was grateful beyond words for everything their family had. She’d been gone all summer for the TV show as her son called it, in a tone carrying an undercurrent of your other family. Later this fall, the first episode of the season would air, and she was looking forward to him seeing how Antiques Road Station was about helping people, about showing them the value of what was there in their own homes.

From the open bedroom door, she heard the fridge in the kitchen downstairs turn on, and the sudden connection to her son’s nightmare made her sit up. The freezer in the garage. She turned Mars’ story over in her head, the oddness of it, the absurd accusation of it. She mumbled out a laugh, felt Scott stir in response, and sat there another moment to make sure he hadn’t woken, realizing she needed closure more than sleep. She got out of bed, went downstairs to the kitchen, and opened the side door to the garage. She turned on the light. The white Maytag, filled with meats, ice, and frozen fruit looked undisturbed. Scott kept the freezer covered with a picnic blanket, a security gesture as charming and useless as their picket fence. She folded back the blanket and slowly opened the lid. Part of her expected to hear a creak, like the door to a haunted house, but it was too new for that, and she only heard a quiet suck of warm air go in.

No dead girl. Last weekend’s catch lay on top of the stacked meat. Scott’s weekend fishing hobby had yielded one Largemouth Bass, cleaned and stored in a Ziplock, then wrapped in newspaper to ward off freezer burn. She lifted it out and wiped the ice particles off the paper to see a page from last week’s Chino Champion: an advertisement for Stater Bros on Riverside Drive. Feeling foolish for letting her mind find intrigue in her son’s macabre dream, she flipped the frozen fish back on the stack where it landed on its opposite side, exposing the face of a child staring back at her in newsprint. The caption: Missing Child. Patty Walsh. East End Ave. She grabbed it and unwrapped the paper. It was damp but still legible. The girl had been missing for two weeks. The street name didn’t ring a bell, but Vivian hadn’t learned all the outskirt areas yet. Their own Lincoln Ave was surrounded by other historically named streets: Gettysburg, Philadelphia, Jefferson. Two blocks away Telephone Ave may have been an homage to Alexander Graham Bell, but East End had neither quaintness nor historical cachet. Dairies and farms, two aircraft museums, and quiet neighborhoods of mostly single-story houses. That was the Chino she and Scott moved into. But lately pastoral lots had given way to over-development, homes built to the property line, front yards non-existent. Chino Men’s prison, once separated from the town by miles of empty fields, was now shoulder to shoulder with sprawl.

The girl in the newspaper might have been a Darwinian casualty, off-putting in a way that went beyond homeliness, as if diseased with her own life. Neglectful parents, Vivian thought, grateful her son had the two best parents she could think of, but felt guilty veiling herself in comfort when someone else’s child was missing. Still, Mars had two solid families in his DNA, both fiercely devoted to raising a child ready for rigors of life. Her stock hailed from Alberta, Scott’s from Mexico, both third generation, and neither with close relatives outside the states. America had been the only homeland they had ever known. Still, what makes for the ingredients of a well-adjusted child? Adulthood always went astray, followed its own course, just as often oblivious to careful planning as not. But kids? Who decided which ones were okay, better armed for the future? She went to the recycling bin, rummaged out another newspaper, and re-wrapped the fish. She slipped the original paper in her robe pocket.

Back in bed, a heaviness anchored in. Was Mars okay? Her travel schedule had ended for the season, and she’d kept a close watch on how he’d adjusted to her earlier absence. When she was on the road, she’d talk to him on the phone every night, send photographs from the cities she where she was working. Scott would drop him off at her sister’s house each morning. She was the homemaker of the siblings, plus there were plenty of neighborhood kids to play with until Scott picked him up after work. By all accounts, Mars had seemed to enjoy his summer, not appearing any worse for it, no obvious resentment. And tonight’s nightmare was easily enough explained.

Still, maybe things were not so perfect. Who a child calls for in the middle of the night is primal, instinctive. They call for the one person they consider their protector. That stayed true whether it was after a bad dream, or when they were dying on a battlefield.

Boys always call their mother.

Story Statement:

Vivian, a TV art appraiser, yearns to tell her son the truth about his late father’s affair, but that means confronting Patty, his supposed mistress, to find out what really happened between them on that tragic night he died, a night Vivian wanted to bury forever.

Antagonist:

At fifteen, Patty wrestles with a tenuous grip on reality, secretly has a baby, and when her father finds out, he makes her give it up for adoption. She later runs away with her boyfriend but accidentally causes his death at a rest stop and will remain obsessed over him for the rest of her severely troubled life.

As an adult she becomes a highly manipulative high school art teacher and has an inappropriate relationship with a student as a psychologically disturbed way of recreating her earlier relationship with her late boyfriend. That student is Vivian’s son’s best friend.

To escape growing suspicion Patty relocates to Solvang, CA where she becomes resident artist at a winery. Unaware of the past relationship with her son’s best friend, Vivian draws up the courage to finally confront Patty to confirm her past relationship with her husband. But not wanting any of her past to come to light, Patty is determined to destroy both Vivian’s efforts and credibility. She also has her eyes on a local fifteen-year-old boy, and when Vivian finds out the truth, she doubles down on her efforts to bring Patty’s past to light.

Titles:

Art Asylum

Woman Child

The Monster of Solvang

Jill Came Tumbling (Because of a specific nursery rhyme reference, but may need to change antagonist's name to Jill?) 

Comparables:

(I like to think of my writing as Tom Perrota meets Fannie Flagg)

Little Children – Tom Perrota - (He takes a simple story and brings life to it with layers and layers of character development. Small moments are thrilling to read because of his intense details and descriptions.)

Any Fannie Flagg Novel (Quirky tightknit insular communities with characters with more to them than at first meets the eye.)

The Imperfectionists – Tom Rachman (But a museum instead of a newspaper)                                                 

Logline:

When a still grieving TV art appraiser discovers her husband’s untimely death may be connected to a woman who seduced her teenage son’s best friend, she must save the troubled young boy who has become the predatory woman’s next victim.

Logline redo: (patterned after publisher's market place loglines in new deals section)

Part mystery, part domestic thriller, part character study, about two women, an Antiques Road Show appraiser still grieving her husband’s death and a sexual predator who’s trying to stay a step ahead of the law, whose pasts once tragically intersected and whose present lies in vengeful confrontation with each other in a fairytale themed California tourist trap, leading to more secrets revealed and a shattering conclusion.t

Inner Conflict:

Vivianwants to heal the rift with her son who has grown distant from her since his father’s death. Although she’s successfully buried the past, it was done at the cost of not telling her son the truth she suspects about her late husband’s affair. Unable to continue that dishonesty, she finally discloses her suspicion to him and her plans to confront Patty, the mistress. He further he shuts her out, part of him blaming her for traveling all summer with her TV antiques art appraisal show, but another part knows it can’t be true.

Secondary Conflict:

Her son, Mars, wants to find Patty’s stolen journal in the hopes of exonerating his late father’s reputation. He knows Patty had an affair with his best friend Cole, and when he finally reveals this to his mother, he also tries to talk her out of contacting him to come forward to the authorities as Cole has finally managed to build a semblance of his own life.

Setting:

The majority of the novel takes place in Solvang, CA, one part  Danish Disneyland tourist trap, and the other rolling hills with conservative wealthy ranch owners who don’t take well to outsiders. The Hans Christian Anderson village is perfect for the antagonist Patty to feel at home in, as she lives in a world of nursery rhymes and fairy tales which she reads like bible stories. The local museum is poorly run until Vivian arrives to help them get accredited and ends up getting tasked with putting on an exhibit featuring the art holdings of the local art collectors. These collectors, rich and opinionated, give outsider Vivian little credence despite her “celebrity” status from her art appraisal TV show.