Zona

1. Story statement: Crazy John wants to die on his own terms with the admiration of his loved ones. 2. Antagonist: Regina, his sister, follows John from Modesto, California to the Alaskan wilderness to make him go back to California and get treatment for his cancer. She has gotten him out of scrapes in the past and is unhappy about having to do it again. The police are also on his trail for smuggling marijuana—action takes place in late 1980’s—and for maybe kidnapping his 17-year old son. She is his Javert because she is heavily invested in being the good kid in the family and the savior. She once adored her older brother but something happened—the core wound—when they were 10 and 12 years old. He turned into a bad boy. She overcompensates by being “perfect.” The problem with being perfect is no one measures up to that standard. She is a lonely, crusading workaholic hiding from her core wound and determined that her brother must behave. 3. Title: Crazy John, The Legend of Crazy John 4. Genre and comps: Upmarket commercial fiction Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens Tortilla Curtain by TC Boyle 5. Logline (1) John’s whole life has been a wildfire. Now that he is dying, can his sister rescue him from an actual wildfire or will he take his son with him? Crazy John propels the reader from the stifling San Joaquin Valley to the wilderness of Alaska in a thought-provoking, textured tale of compelling characters who confront the pain of love and the joy of redemption. (2) Viet Nam vet, “John” Daughtery, is dying of cancer and is desperate for one last chance to gain approval and love of his children, but his impulsive actions trigger a string of poor choices propelling him from Fresno to Fairbanks that leads him and his sister to confront their father’s brutal betrayal and discover the value of family. (3) How old do you have to be to walk away from your family? Brother and sister think they have gone their separate ways, think they have cut the ties with their childhoods, but John’s impending death makes them confront their family’s worst secret. Caught in the middle of a raging wildfire, John and Regina are forced to realize what family really means. (4) Crazy John begins with the heartbreaking need for redemption and ends with a fight for freedom. It exposes the reverberation of the unseen wounds of war through families and the power of nature to heal. The story propels the reader into a world of broken survivors grappling for redemption and love and the apocalyptic beauty and terror of the Alaskan wilderness. John is an anti-hero that you will condemn for his selfish actions and love for his brave and sincere heart. The surprising ending will leave the reader questioning the purpose of justice and the eternal value of family. 6. Primary conflict: When John was 12, his father caught him at his younger sister’s bedroom door watching his grandfather molesting the girl. His father threw the old man out of the house and beat John for “watching” when in fact he had just arrived on the scene because he heard a noise. Dad told both children to never say anything about the incident again. That set up a dynamic where Dad regularly beat John for every transgression and John regularly defied him. John feels guilty that he could not protect his younger sister, who adored him. Regina has repressed the event. Secondary conflict: The wounds of war flow through families like DNA. 7. Setting: The story opens in the San Joaquin Valley about 1990 outside John’s ex-wife’s home. It is everything John hates about his childhood, dry, hot, dusty and conformist. From there he winds up in jail in Modesto, then escapes to Alaska with his 17 year old son, Wiley. One chapter is set in Fresno on his father’s raisin farm with a flashback to a drug deal on the Mexican border, and two are in San Francisco where his sister is a successful lawyer. The rest is in Clipper Creek, Alaska, a one-bar town north of Fairbanks where John has been living for the past five years. The wild Alaska landscape is almost a character in itself, beautiful and terrifying, menacing and graceful. John is at home in the wilderness where he can live as he likes. CHAPTER ONE The old man used to say, “Only the good die young.” John stopped his pick-up at the highway end of the long gravel driveway and thought about that for a minute. Shit, the one time he was going to prove the old bastard wrong, and it didn’t even feel good, Just then, Waylon sang to him from the radio, “I’ve always been crazy, and the trouble it’s put me through.” John nodded in agreement, took a slug of tequila, and put the truck in gear. Algonquin assignments.docx

Tom, great opening. The setting came alive. The fear was real. Terra is dymanic; the conflicts are riveting. I want to read the rest. The only wrong note is "It reminded Terra of a stalker undressing a woman with his eyes as he contemplates the perfect moment to pounce on the object of its leering." This is not a woman's point of view. Women hate strangers undressing them with their eyes. She would be angry or afraid or have a bad memory or a memory of the time she kneed a stalker. Something that reveals her character. Also, consider letting the baby die. I thought that was what had happened and did not believe it when it survived. Don't be afraid of tragedy. Can't wait to read more. Zona Douthit

1. Story statement: Crazy John wants to die on his own terms with the admiration of his loved ones. 2. Antagonist: Regina, his sister, follows John from Modesto, California to the Alaskan wilderness to make him go back to California and get treatment for his cancer. She has gotten him out of scrapes in the past and is unhappy about having to do it again. The police are also on his trail for smuggling marijuana—action takes place in late 1980’s—and for maybe kidnapping his 17-year old son. She is his Javert because she is heavily invested in being the good kid in the family and the savior. She once adored her older brother but something happened—the core wound—when they were 10 and 12 years old. He turned into a bad boy. She overcompensates by being “perfect.” The problem with being perfect is no one measures up to that standard. She is a lonely, crusading workaholic hiding from her core wound and determined that her brother must behave. 3. Title: Crazy John, The Legend of Crazy John 4. Genre and comps: Upmarket commercial fiction Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens 5. Logline: conflict and core wound Viet Nam vet, John Daughtery, is dying of cancer and is desperate for one last chance to gain approval and love of his children, but his impulsive actions trigger a string of poor choices propelling him from Fresno to Fairbanks that leads him and his sister to confront their father’s brutal betrayal and discover the value of family. 6. Primary conflict: When John was 12, his father caught him at his younger sister’s bedroom door watching his grandfather molesting the girl. His father threw the old man out of the house and beat John for “watching” when in fact he had just arrived on the scene because he heard a noise. Dad told both children to never say anything about the incident again. That set up a dynamic where Dad regularly beat John for every transgression and John regularly defied him. John feels guilty that he could not protect his younger sister, who adored him. Regina has repressed the event. Secondary conflict: The wounds of war flow through families like DNA. 7. Setting: The story opens in the San Joaquin Valley about 1990 outside John’s ex-wife’s home. It is everything John hates about his childhood, dry, hot, dusty and conformist. From there he winds up in jail in Modesto, then escapes to Alaska with his 17 year old son, Wiley. One chapter is set in Fresno on his father’s raisin farm with a flashback to a drug deal on the Mexican border, and two are in San Franscisco where his sister is a successful lawyer. The rest is in Clipper Creek, Alaska, a one-bar town north of Fairbanks where John has been living for the past five years. The wild Alaska landscape is almost a character in itself, beautiful and terrifying, menacing and graceful. John is at home in the wilderness where he can live as he likes. The story culminates in the middle of a wildfire. First 5 pages CHAPTER ONE The old man used to say, “Only the good die young.” John stopped his pick-up at the highway end of the long gravel driveway and thought about that for a minute. Shit, the one time he was going to prove the old bastard wrong, and it didn’t even feel good. He took a slug of tequila and put the truck in gear. San Joaquin dust chased him all the way down the drive. As he parked behind a station wagon under an aqua fiberglass carport, the living room drapes snapped shut. The woman in the house shouted at a whining child, and someone slammed the door between the carport and the kitchen. “Some God damned welcome after two years,” he said to himself. Angie’s house was bordered by tomato fields on three sides and an apricot orchard on the other. The house itself was a perfect stucco rectangle: babyshit yellow, babyshit brown trim. A ten­foot Doughboy pool grew out of the front lawn like a hideous blue plastic flower. It was August, and the lawn looked like crushed chow mein noodles. The demon smell of pesticides hung in the valley air. He had tried, but he truly could not understand why Angie thought this was paradise. As he climbed down from his truck, Angie opened the screen door over the four by four cement slab that served as a porch and stared at him. Shorts and a halter top had looked better on her before she’d had her last baby. John was sorry to see her take a scrunchie thing out of her pocket and fasten her long, brown hair into a pony tail. He had always told her she was sexy when her hair was loose around her shoulders. “What are you doing here?” She folded her arms across her puffy mid-drift. “Hi, Angel.” He smiled the smile she could not resist twenty years ago. “Aren’t you even going to say hello?” “I said ‘what are you doing here?’ And don’t call me Angel.” He shifted his weight from his left to his right foot. “I come to see my kids. They around?” “Not for you.” A seven-year-old girl wearing a dirty, pink bathing suit ran from the back of the house toward him. “Daddy, Daddy.” John caught her on the run, swung her in a circle as high as his shoulders and corralled her safely in his arms. Except for his drooping, pirate-red mustache, they looked very much alike. Both had wavy, golden blonde ponytails and navy blue eyes that saw the world as a rollick. It did not matter that he was a six foot, three inch man on the other side of forty and she a four foot girl of seven. They were inescapably the same spirit. “Carly, come here. Right now.” Angie was holding the screen door open. John winked at Carly and set her down. She dragged her feet until she reached her mother’s side. “Go in the house with Dad,” Angie said in a more gentle voice. Carly kicked the screen door with the heel of her foot as it swung shut behind her. A man’s voice inside the house reprimanded her. “I came to see my children.” He had been telling himself for the last five hundred miles that he was not going to get mad. “I want the four years of child support you owe me.” She sounded like she meant it. John was surprised. A wiry man about 5’7” appeared in the doorway behind her. Lonnie had not changed his hair style since his days as a sailor on the make in San Diego. A tattoo on his left biceps, “Subic Bay,” showed just below the sleeve of his undershirt. Lonnie was so stupid he voted to reelect Reagan in the last election even after he’d lost his union job driving a semi. Now he fixed old cars at a gas station for half the money. Lonnie snapped an order to Carly and her nine-year-old brother who were peeking from between the drawn living room curtains. They jumped back from the window. “If you need money, I got some.” John smiled warmly at Lonnie. “Pay up everything you owe me, and I might let you see the kids,” Angie said. “And no tricks. I let you in the last time and never got a cent.” Lonnie nodded. “You and the kids been going hungry, Angie?” “I take a whole lot better care of ‘em than you ever did,” Lonnie said. “Well, friend, that just might be correct. All I ever had to offer my children was my free spirit.” John sauntered over to his truck and reached under the front seat. “Let me see, what have I got here for you? You take credit cards or cash only?” he called over his shoulder. “A hundred and fifty a month for forty-eight months. That’s…uh…uhm…six thousand …no, seven….” “Seven thousand two hundred,” John had to raise his voice because his head was buried under the steering wheel inside his truck. The familiar tickle needled his throat. Not now, he thought, just give me an hour. “Seven thousand two hundred,” Angie said. “It’s almost the first of the month,” Lonnie added, “you might as well pay me next month’s while you’re here. God knows when we’ll see…” John’s hand was on the cigar box under the seat when Lonnie’s snotty whine hit him. He didn’t owe Lonnie a fucking penny. When he straightened up from inside the truck, an old .30 caliber M-14 carbine was cradled in his arms. It was aimed at the conveniently combined target of Angie and Lonnie. The golden sun setting behind him threw his shadow half-way to the porch. John was a big boned man of legendary strength. Even his shadow was intimidating. When he squinted, his eyes disappeared into deep folds of flesh. He made sure his victims felt watched. “Now, I just came to pay a friendly visit with my kids. If you’re holding them for ransom, sounds like I need to defend them.” A lanky, seventeen-year-old boy boldly slammed the kitchen screen door as he ambled through the carport toward John. “Howdy, Pa.” His thumbs were hooked in his jeans pockets like a movie cowboy’s, but his head was nearly shaved except for a wispy fringe at the nape of his neck. Two earrings dangled from the right ear, one a cross, the other a swastika. “Howdy, Son.” John smiled at his eldest son. He took his eyes off Lonnie long enough to glance at Wiley. Christ, kids are dumb, he thought. “Wiley, get back in the house,” Lonnie said. “I’m real glad to see you, Pa.” John didn’t kid himself. Wiley was just glad to be giving Lonnie a hard time. “Glad to see you, too, Son.” He smiled at Angie. “See? My kids want to see me just as much as I want to see them. Now let’s stop all this fussing…” “I’m going to call the police.” Lonnie took Angie by the elbow. Goddamn Lonnie. He could never let one pass. John’s right hand sneaked off the trigger for a moment and into his vest pocket. In one smooth, practiced motion, he pushed the ammunition magazine into the well in front of the trigger guard. Everyone heard the tight, metallic click of the bolt releasing and a round falling into the chamber. “Do it from a pay phone,” John said. “I’m going to visit a while with my kids.” He felt the cough harrying his throat again, fought to swallow it and gripped the rifle tighter to hide his shaking hands. Why the hell hadn’t he taken one of those little blue pills the V.A. gave him instead of tequila. He was afraid he would burst from trying to resist the irresistible. His face was red from the tension. Lonnie froze.