Ruby

Que Serà, Serà

STORY STATEMENT: 

An aging, retired con artist tries to reclaim the family jewels that were ripped from her decades ago.  

THE ANTAGONIST: 

Frankie Aces was the greatest female con artist of her time. You name it, she stole it. She took in a 16-year-old orphaned girl to collect foster care payments, forged a birth certificate to make the girl 12 so she could collect payments longer, renamed the girl Sugar, and trained her  as an accomplice; she signed up Sugar and other young women for paid medical trials (she kept the dough) and never disclosed to the women exactly what the trials were for; she is now 85 years old and writing under the pen Wallie Kingsman. Her best-selling novel series "Sugar the Lady Gangster" is based on Suzannah’s real life who she used, abused and stole everything from in their 25-year relationship. For extra dickery, she made Sugar the antagonist in her books while she wrote herself as "Ruthie" the heroic, loving, selfless mother figure. 

SECONDARY ANTAGONIST: 

“The Father” – a geneticist and pioneer in assisted reproduction. He ran a “faith-based” NGO that was the front for a human trafficking operation. The Father and his council ran medical trials in Madrid to harvest eggs from unknowing young women and then sold them to the highest bidders around the world. Frankie Aces worked in the Father’s operation for several years. The Father is still alive at 95, living in a luxury villa in Malaga and still using disadvantaged women to propel his genetic and human reproduction experiments. 

 BREAKOUT TITLE: 

Que Serà, Serà

Will I be Pretty, Will I be Rich? 

Sugar's Family Jewels  

COMPARABLES: 

Woman of a Certain Rage by Georgia Hall

If Tomorrow Comes by Sydney Sheldon 

Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn

 LOGLINE: 

A new shot at revenge is the only thing keeping an aging, retired con artist from taking her own miserable life. 

PROTAGONIST INNER CONFLICT:

Old scars, traumatic memories, and regret haunt Suzannah. At 63, she discovers that her 85-year-old ruthless, abusive, and conning foster mother is still alive and has become wildly rich and successful writing a series of novels based on Suzannah’s real life. Suzannah is going to kill the old woman and take back everything that was stolen from her. 

PROTAGONIST’S SECONDARY CONFLICT: Before Suzannah can get down to the business of brutally murdering her former boss, a young chef named Vesta arrives at the yoga center. Secrets, danger and misunderstandings abound!  Suzannah and Vesta will discover that Frankie Aces ties them all together. 

SETTING: 

The story is set in Andalusia in the South of Spain land of flamenco, mystery, romance and really fucking hot sun. The story begins at the Las Almas yoga center, near Tarifa, that Suzannah, an American, and her much younger and hunky Australian yoga guru boyfriend Nick, established twenty years ago. When she finds out that Frankie is still alive and living in Spain, Suzannah must return to her former stomping grounds in nearby Costa del Sol, ground zero for the rich, powerful, and unscrupulous.

EXCERPT SETTING AS CHARACTER 

By then, dawn was breaking and Suzannah saw where they were. They were nowhere. There had been nothing here. No bungalow, no bunkhouse, no garden, no solar panels, no latrine, no pagoda. There had not yet been wind turbines on those hills where she and Frankie had marooned the cadaver. No yoga compound. Suzannah spotted a solitary tree, walked to it, and touched its lovely, twisted trunk. To the west was the Atlantic with its sapphire blue cape draped from Punta de Tarifa, the southernmost point of continental Europe, to the African coast. To the east a kilometer or so, was a camp with its firelight burning against the backdrop of the rising sun. Figures huddled around the waving flames. Music - oh the music. The people, they were still called gypsies then, sang with such passion and anguish. That was real flamenco. Not the carefully orchestrated hit lists they tried to pass off in Sevilla, worse Madrid, or the worst, Barcelona, as “una auténtica fiesta flamenca!” Their poems swept over the morning desert and drove a stake through her soul into the dusty, rocky earth beneath her feet. “You’re ours now,” the hills of Andalusia whispered. “Veng."