New York Write to Pitch 2023 - September

[Malekeh]

ASSIGNMENT 1 - STORY STATEMENT
    In my book, 'THE BELLS OF ATHERTON', the primary protagonists, Patrick and Pamela Bell, must solve a crime. The crime is the murder of their friend, Robert Sanders.
ASSIGNMENT 2 - THE ANTAGONIST
    The antagonist in 'THE BELLS OF ATHERTON' is a woman named Tara Hoffman. In all, she kills three people, shoots two others and tries to murder Patrick Bell before she herself is killed. She begins this crime spree as a spurned lover who kills her romantic rival. Her first victim is Jenny Rose Caldwell, the wife of Fred Caldwell, a wealthy man who has rejected Tara at the end of their affair. Afterwards, her crimes are all about covering her tracks and trying not to get caught. She does enlist the help of a couple of men from the town where she grew up but all the violent acts are committed by Tara.
ASSIGNMENT 3 - BREAKOUT TITLE
    1. THE BELLS OF ATHERTON
    2. FOR BLOOD OR MONEY
    3. WHEN THE BELLS RING
ASSIGNMENT 4 - COMPARABLES
    1. 'Florida Keys Bed and Breakfast Cozy Mysteries' by Danielle Collins
    2. 'Hannah Swensen Mysteries' by Joanne Fluke
ASSIGNMENT 5 - HOOKLINE
    The Bells' blissful life in Atherton, North Carolina is shattered by the news of their friend's murder, thus setting them on a path that will lead to his killer.
ASSIGNMENT 6 - CONFLICT
    Patrick Bell has a great deal of inner conflict as a result of the death of his friend, Robert. His main concern is for the safety of his wife and he, therefore, does a variety of things in order to try to keep her safe. This includes practicing at a firing range and giving her a pocket pistol as a gift.
    A second area of inner conflict concerns Lester Wallace, a young homeless man that Robert Sanders had allowed to live on his boat before he was killed. The Bells' give him a job and he is taken in by one of their friends before being wrongfully arrested for Robert's murder. This leads to the Bells hiring an attorney to represent him.
ASSIGNMENT 7 - SETTING
    'THE BELLS OF ATHERTON' is set in a fictitious town called Atherton, North Carolina. Both the beauty of the Carolina coast and the way of life provided by the presence of the Atlantic ocean are extremely important in driving the story forward.
    The Bells also open a restaurant in Atherton called 'The Blue Jay Cafe'. A lot of characters are introduced there and one of the murders is set in motion there.     

[Jonah Schrowang]

1: Story Statement

A young lieutenant on the stellar frontier confronts a powerful governor, a planet in revolt, and his own honor.

2: Antagonist Sketch

Edward Cornet, the haughty interstellar governor of the distant district of Aragon, demands respect and expects obedience. Descended from a long line of aristocrats, he craves ever more power, more control, more of everything for himself and his family. He pursues his agenda at the expense of all others; scruples are for the less important. 

His greed clashes with the ideals of young Lieutenant Gabriel Halfast, who places duty to country before even his own needs and wants. The presence of this squeaky clean officer in his fiefdom irks Governor Cornet, partially because of the threat such piety presents to his plans, but also because the contrast calls to attention his own depravity. And Gabriel seems to be getting a little too close to Henrietta, the governor’s daughter.

The governor is more than happy to send the whelp on a dangerous mission to a distant world, part of a scheme guaranteed to end well for the Cornet family and badly for Halfast and his crew. Cornet is a man who’s used to winning, and he’ll do what it takes to keep the taste of victory on his tongue.

3: Breakout Title

Into the Breach

The Leander Affair

The Padfoot and the Shrew

4: Comps

My story’s galaxy-spanning intrigue, worldbuilding, and discovery will capture the imagination of readers of John Scalzi’s Interdependency series (The Collapsing Empire) and Arkady Martine’s Teixcalaan series (A Memory Called Empire).

5: Core Wound and Primary Conflict

In the far future, a junior lieutenant striving to rebuild his family name battles insurrection, navigates political intrigue, and uncovers betrayal on the edge of the interstellar frontier.

6: More Levels of Conflict

Inner Conflict: Gabriel Halfast has a chip on his shoulder. A century ago, his family’s land and titles were stripped away when his grandfather lost a crucial naval battle. Now, Halfast feels he must do everything he can to climb the ranks and reclaim the nobility and honor that his family lost.

His every action is geared toward meeting that goal, but he is held back by his dedication to loyalty, fairness, and duty, and by a deep inferiority complex. He doesn’t know how to confront his “betters”-- he shuts down, or acquiesces to their demands. He’ll need to learn to overcome these blocks in order to reach his full potential.

He'll also need to reconcile his rosy idealization of a democratic Star League with the messy reality: a stratified aristocracy that is violent not just to its neighbors, but to its own citizens.

Secondary Conflicts: During his stay at the Governor’s Estate, Halfast must navigate the unfamiliar battlefields of high class balls, dinners, and hunts– and an affair with Henrietta, daughter of Governor Cornet. Learning to overcome his own insecurities is crucial to his escaping with his reputation (and life) intact. The conflict of social strata recurs throughout the story, and is contrasted with Halfast’s time spent among the Enten̈e, who present an entirely different way of culture, civilization, and life. 

7: Setting

My setting is expansive, covering huge swathes of an interstellar star league. The primary settings are the warship on which the Gabriel Halfast serves, the lush homeworld of Governor Cornet, and a barren rebellious world harboring many secrets. There are many characters with different origins, motives, and endings.

 

Background

It is the far future. Humanity conquered light and spread across the milky way, settling ten thousand worlds. They discovered great wonders and in turn created greater wonders. Then came a great cataclysm. The light of every world went out for ten thousand years. Every planet was a hollow cave, cut off from all others. Great knowledge was lost forever.

When humanity again emerged, it was to a changed cosmos. The stars were different, and old ways had fallen away. But as the peoples of the myriad worlds rediscovered one another, they returned to ancient patterns: war, conquest, and stratification.

The Star League

Now, ten thousand years later, the great mob of humanity has coalesced into a few powerful states, including the Hegemonic Star League. Created as a trade compact, the Star League now makes up a quarter of the settled galaxy, with one of the strongest navies ever known. 

The peoples of the Star League are vast and diverse. They live on metroworlds with a trillion other citizens, and on rural farmworlds with just a few other families. They have settled every imaginable biome, and terraformed still more to suit their needs.

Thousands of warships patrol the borders and shipping lanes that connect the Star League to their nearest rivals: the Principality, the Confederacy, the Hanse. These powers have spent centuries conquering smaller states and warring against one another, but find themselves in a century of relative peace– but this is a peace doomed to end.

While some borders are established, there are still huge parts of the galaxy unsettled, and each rival power is intent on being the first to stake their claim. The Star League forces growth outward via lotteries that sweep great masses of citizens from the more populated ancient worlds out to the frontiers, long thought to be devoid of human life. However, settlers are finding that sometimes planets are not as empty as they were promised.

A historical parallel is the period following the Napoleonic Wars, when major powers settled into uneasy armistice. In this time, the European powers competed against each not in open war but in other, no-less-deadly struggles such as the Scramble for Africa. That peace couldn’t last, and exploded a century later into World War I.

The Star Frigate Dauntless

So we find ourselves on the Hegemonic star frigate Dauntless, on which Lieutenant Gabriel Halfast serves. The Dauntless is long, bright, and slender, and fast enough to catch just about any pirate or privateer. A few hundred crew are packed into the submarine-like ship. About half of them service the giant laser cannons, which aren’t incredibly advanced and can overheat easily. 

The Dauntless is currently serving in the Aragon District, a wide swath of recently settled space on the edge of territory conquered in the last war. This is a starship that can traverse great stretches of space in just a few weeks, and often serves as the only source of news and communication from the outside galaxy to worlds on the outer frontier. With the admiralty weeks away, it is up to warship commanders to make incredible decisions in heated moments.

Most of the action we see on the Dauntless takes place on the command deck, a metallic cavern with various retro-looking stations surrounding a central digital map table. Captain Van Cortland or one of her officers can use the touchscreen surface to survey nearby stars, or track enemy ships. A viewscreen covers the entire forward wall, which can zoom in on any interesting planets or freighters that happen to be passing by.

Only the captain and the first officer have their own quarters typically, but Halfast has one to himself as well after his roommate is shot in the head during a boarding action. Cabins tend to be austere, but Captain Van Cortland has a real wooden desk in hers. There’s also a wardroom where the officers congregate for dinners and tense discussions. We’ll meet many of the officers, some of whom may help Halfast and some of whom will surely hinder him.

The Dauntless tracks down a privateer and Halfast is reluctantly pressed into commanding a furious fight to board the interloper. Personal laser guns must be reloaded after every shot, and marine dragoons use a special laser pike to push through resistance. The fighting is messy and traumatizing.

Henrietta, the Garden World

With captured prize in tow, the Dauntless reports to the capital of the Aragon District, the beautiful garden world of Henrietta. The planet is named for Governor Cornet’s only daughter (or is it the other way around?), and is undergoing terraforming from wild wastes to manicured plantations.

Captain Van Cortland, Commander Beach, and Lieutenant Halfast visit the grand estate of the Marquis de Cornet, which covers the entire northern hemisphere of the planet. It’s the first time they’ve been on a planet in six months, and they exult in the fresh, non-processed air. They take a hovercar from the grass-covered spaceport through rolling hills filled with wild buffalo, gazelles, and vicuna.

The governor's chateau is extravagant but lacking in elegance. The ceilings are covered in moving paintings, the banquet room has service for hundreds, and a garden maze dwarfs the rear lawn. Many terse discussions are held in the governor’s echoing office, where visitors are separated from Cornet by a massive desk made from a single slab of obsidian. Coded, passive aggressive conversations unfold at the dinner table. And liaisons occur under the cover of pouring rain in the marble temple at the center of the garden maze.

Halfast, Van Cortland, and Beach are invited to a stag hunt, and they gallop through the forests on horseback alongside the governor’s retinue. Captain Van Cortland is injured as part of a cruel hunting “accident”, and taken to the only doctor on the planet, in Cornet City. Here, Halfast meets some of the lower-class workers while he waits for news on his captain’s recovery. In the biergarten on the town square, he learns that the governor’s rule is not fun and games for most of his subjects.

Leander, the Dust World

After receiving their orders from Governor Cornet, the crew of the Dauntless head around a great stellar nursery called the Remenham Bight and then into the Luconic Frontier, accompanied by an impish government agent masquerading as a harmless merchant. Their mission is to put down an insurrection on the barely inhabited world of Leander. A far cry from the lush foliage of Henrietta, Leander is a dry and desolate dustball. The air is stale and stuffy, the ground is rocky, and no plants grow.

They land in the town of Abydos, the only remaining settlement after violence caused the citizenry to retreat inward. The Leanderites live in relative safety in the shadow of the planetary baron’s tower, but are also subject to the baron’s whims. Every building in the township is low corrugated tin except for the tower, which stretches twenty floors high. Halfast is taken aback by the gaudy opulence of the baron’s residence even as the other settlers live in squalor. 

Later, Halfast helps to turn an old rusty warehouse into barracks for ground troops. The warehouse is covered in garbage and old abandoned machinery. He is up late making plans one night when he sees strange lights in the distance, moving away from the town. He follows the lights, first through the town’s alarmingly large cemetery, and then into a narrow and ever deepening canyon.

He’s caught by what he discovers are the planet’s historical inhabitants, the Enten̈e. Their ancestors were traders, marooned on Leander thousands of years ago. They call the world Xane, and have transformed a vast network of caves and canyons into their realm. Halfast is taken on a long journey across the wastes, and then into a hidden entrance in a wadi that leads to one of the great underground cities of the Enten̈e.

The city, called Rosata, is in a cavern that has been carved into a perfect cube. Every door is a different shade of color, but otherwise the buildings are sensible concrete. A great waterfall spills from the ceiling in the exact center of the city, providing all the water the inhabitants could ever need. Ominous, undulating singing fills the air.

Halfast is taken to the leader of the city, an old woman with cataracts. She tells his captors that they must take him to a Great Moot to determine whether the Enten̈e will rid themselves of the Hegemonic outlanders once and for all. This means another long journey, much of it through long underground passageways. Later, when they’re sure they can avoid the sensors of spaceships above, they travel on the open wastes on strange humped creatures called padfoots that Halfast likens to “awkward horses.”

They reach the Moot, inside of a long and treacherous canyon whose edges meet at the top to almost form a roof, keeping out the eyes of outsiders. Thousands of Enten̈e meet here, with great caravansary tents set up, along with pens of padfoots. Halfast must answer for his government’s colonial transgressions, and in doing so confront them himself. A decision is made, and a great mass of people set out in the direction of Abydos.
 

[Kat Hankinson]

Forge of Angels, Book One: 

To Slay Ourobouros

 

Story Statement

In a world ruled by Dagons — descendants of a fallen angel who control humankind with Shadow Magic and a vast theocracy — gifted translator Leah Duvall learns that her Dagon “fathers” killed her mother in order to control her. She joins a rebel group to help them unlock the ancient power that can destroy the Dagons. But the knowledge she finds reveals a terrifying secret about her own origins. With the power awakening in her, can she avenge her mother and free humankind, or will her very existence empower the Dagons to enslaved humanity forever?

 

Antagonist

Renault Atreus is a centuries-old “superior” being called a Dagon: a descendant of a fallen angel who once ruled the earth as a God King. Born in the 17^th century, he has seen religious wars tear Europe apart. He has seen the fall of the aristocracies, and the rise of democracy — as well as its descent into nationalism and fascism. He has seen his fellow Dagons create a new world order only to fight more wars against resistant nations — and each other. His solution: to resurrect the Dagons’ ancient ancestor: an all-powerful living god who will bring about unity and peace.

 

Title

To Slay Ourobouros

 

Comparables.

A story of lost memory and powerful self-discovery like Captain Marvel, in a world comparable to Sarah J. Maas’ Crescent City.

 

Conflict

When she learns that her Dagon masters killer her mother in order to raise and train her for their own purposes, Leah Duvall joins the rebel Dagons to decipher the inscriptions on a mysterious artifact, unlocking an ancient power that will destroy the Dagons. But her benefactor, the rebel Dagon Atreus, plans to use these secrets to resurrect a tyrannical God King: an immortal being that will enslave humanity and make life on earth a living Hell.

 

Core Wound

The Dagons who raised her lied to her about her past, telling her her mother abandoned her for a suicide mission, but Leah learns this is a lie: the Dagons themselves killed her in order to raise her themselves, so they could use her gift for their own purposes. Now she wants revenge.

Betrayed by the Dagons — her “fathers,” superior men descended from an angel who have ruled the world for a over century — gifted translator Leah Duvall joins a group of rebels and exiles in order to unlock an ancient power that will destroy the Dagons. But the power changes her. Can she destroy the Dagons, or is she doomed to become one of them, trapped in their dark realm as they enslave all of humanity?

 

Secondary conflict

Leah’s relationship with Atreus, in which she begins to trust him as a mentor, fuels her internal conflict when she realizes he is using her power to resurrect a God King.

Leah’s relationship with Jake tests — and boosts— her faith in the ability of people to fight the dark influence taking over the world.

 

Setting

The story unfolds at a research institute in Anatolia, in the shadow of the volcanic Mount Ararat, and the ruins of ancient cities. We will also see the splendor of those cities and lands as they once were when legendary figures lived, loved, and battled.

 

The story begins in New York City, which has been transformed by the Dagons. Surrounding what was once Central Park is a vast citadel, a Vatican-like complex called the Patropolis, where the Dagons live — and where those with traces of Dagon DNA are privileged to dwell. Outside the Patropolis ordinary people live in the ruins of what was once a great city… now a network of improvised dwellings and secret mazes and underground canals where the Resistance operates.

 

[KRMcGovern]

Story Statement:

Lorelei must dispel the legend of the Murphy Mermaids so her family will be accepted by the community, and she can live as her real self in the only place that’s ever felt like home.

Sketch Antagonist/Antagonistic Force:

Generation after generation of Murphy women have had the genetic mutation that causes them to turn into mermaids every neap tide. But on an island—like Ocracoke— where people have made their livelihoods on the sea since the 18^th century, mermaids who’re believed to embody the destructive nature of the water, lure sailors to their deaths and serve as an omen for storms, unruly seas, and disaster, are considered nothing less than treacherous.

This lore/belief becomes an antagonistic force for the protagonist, Lorelei through:

Behavior ranging from mistrust, to scorn, accusations to violence from the community— the islanders of Ocracoke. The rumor/entrenched belief that all men who love a Murphy mermaid will die at her hands.

o   This is embodied in Jackson Sparks—a boy who pretends to be in love with Lorelei but tricks and humiliates her for sport.

When a freak storm whips up directly after the humiliation, Lorelei actually saves Jackson (and the friends he brought to witness the humiliation) but he lies, saying he barely survived her wrath.

• This causes Lorelei to leave the island she loves and stay away for ten years. When she returns, Jackson continues to be an antagonistic force.

Murphy mermaids don’t make for great mothers. The rumor/belief/truth? that the men who love them die at their hands, makes it nearly impossible to live on the island, and each Murphy mermaid has disappeared not long after their lover dies. This had caused generational abandonment issues.

o   This antagonistic force is embodied in Perri (Lorelei’s mother) who left the island—but took her daughter with her. Perri – staggeringly beautiful—has since trotted the globe with Lorelei in tow as she flits from wealthy man to wealthy man.

• Perri is loving, but selfish. She’s kept her condition of being a mermaid a secret from her daughter. She’s kept her implication in Lorelei’s father’s death a secret.  She refused to return to the island but sends Lorelei back just before her 15^th birthday (when the mermaid gene kicks in) so “the aunts” can deal with Lorelei’s impending mermaid-ism. 

Titles:

The Last Mermaid of Ocracoke

The Complicated Ocean

Water Magic

Comp titles (women’s fiction/magical realism)

Spells for Forgetting by Adrienne Young

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd 

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Logline/Hook Line:

A disenchanted mermaid is forced to return to the remote island in the Outer Banks of North Carolina where she was born to dispel a murderous legend that’s become her family’s curse.

Primary conflict:

Lorelei rejecting who she is at depth - her inheritance/her DNA/her family’s history as mermaids.

Secrets and shame bookended the three years Lorelei spent on Ocracoke.

Secrets:

Before she arrived on the island, she had no idea that she’d inherited the DNA mutation that caused the Murphy women to become mermaids every neap tide.

Her mother, Perri, kept her own mermaid-ism a secret. She also didn’t tell her daughter the reason she’d kept them away from the island – the Ocracokers’ communal assertion that Perri had killed Lorelei’s father – just  like every Murphy mermaid had done to the men who loved them.

Years later and without explanation Perri finally “allowed” Lorelei to spend the summer she would turn 15 on Ocracoke, staying with Perri’s sister Calypso (Ypso) and her sister’s partner Esme. They were the ones who told her everything, her inheritance, the legend that had become a family curse and why her mother took her from the island. They saw her through the first terrifying, but almost transcendent experience of changing into a mermaid and helped her navigate her new “normal.”

When the summer was over she stayed with the aunts and quietly thrived in her new life. She and the aunts were the only people who knew that every two weeks, with each new neap tide, she would transform into a mermaid for 24 hours and 50 minutes. Until the summer of Lorelei’s 18^th birthday when she fell in love for the first and only time.

Shame:

After months of flirting, weeks of kissing and a moonlit night on the beach when she’d given him her virginity, she confided in Jackson Sparks, a first son from one of the island’s prominent families, telling him the truth about what she was. He seemed enchanted. Promised to keep her secret. He even wanted to watch her transform when the tide changed. They set a date for the next neap tide. She waited for him in their cove, but when his sailboat rounded the bend, he wasn’t alone. He’d come with six of his friends,  to “watch the freak he screwed change into a sea creature.”

Lorelei was crushed by his betrayal. But she couldn’t stop nature. She changed there, in the cove, with six pairs of eyes watching.

She was humiliated and furious. A sudden storm whipped up, creating a tornadic waterspout that nearly capsized the sailboat. Lorelei pulled the boat to safety. But Jackson was tossed overboard the rocking deck. She swam out, found the floundering boy, and pulled him safely to shore. He opened his eyes, knowing that she’d saved him, but instead of thanks there was only derision.

The story went through the island like wildfire – Jackson had just narrowly escaped another Murphy mermaid’s treachery.

Days later, on her 18^th birthday, Lorelei left the island. She wouldn’t return for ten years.

Secondary Conflict (Social Environment)

One secondary conflict will involve the social environment on Ocracoke (Lorelei will also have a secondary conflict with her mother.)

When Ypso calls to tell Lorelei that Esme is hurt and they need her help, Lorelei returns to the island for the first time in more than a decade.

When she steps off the ferry, she’s assailed by the same harsh whispers and sly glances that were thrown her way before she left. But as Lorelei runs the aunts’ store, reconnects with the island, and meets a ridiculously good looking geologist who’s there studying erosion patterns, it almost feels like life could actually be normal.

That is until a severe storm hits the island and sudden erosion reveals a hidden cave, holding the remains of two local men who disappeared in 1942, one of whom was rumored to been having an affair with Lorelei’s great grandmother, another Murphy mermaid. Suddenly her family’s legend/curse is front-and-center and the island’s suspicions fall squarely back on the Murphy mermaids.

Setting: 

Ocracoke Island :

A remote barrier island on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. No more than 13 miles long, the Pamlico Sound on one side, the Atlantic Ocean on the other, no bridges connect the island to the mainland. The only way to get there is by ferry or private boat.

With a historical and mysterious past—the island was a haven for pirates, including Blackbeard who lived and died in Ocracoke’s waters—the place is full of families who’ve lived there since the first pilot house was built in 1715.  

So remote that it didn’t have electricity until 1936, the secrets of Ocracoke— its Land Magic and Water Magic, the identity of those who practice them—have been easily kept. Ocracoke has always taken care of its own. Unless there was reason not to.

Sub-settings:

The Jaundiced Pelican:

From the outside, the cottage that holds Ypso and Esme’s confectionery and shop looks like a silly wedding cake. Happy, yellow boxes stacked on top of one another. Slanted roofs with teak-wood shakes and shingles make it seem like the house was baked in a crooked oven. Inside, it’s clever and charming. Orange and pink walls are filled with local art –brass stools with fuchsia faux-fur cushions, a rough-edged black marble counter and orange and hot pink flamingo wallpaper behind a state of the art espresso machine. Cases hold cakes and candies—Fig Fancies (a tourist favorite that has lines around the block) made from Esme’s recipe that holds secrets of its own. Behind an ornate wooden door at the back of the shop, a workshop that houses the Carolinian Grimoire of Land Magic, where Ypso and Esme practice the craft for locals and tourists in the know.

The Apartment above the shop that leads to the Widow’s Walk:

Where Esme lived before she moved into the Murphy’s Victorian with Ypso. Where Lorelei will live when she returns. Quirky, but comfortable, the apartment, high up in the trees affords views of the ocean, the sound and much of the village.  A winding staircase leads to the Widows Walk – a room made up almost entirely of windows. Another stairway leads outside to a railed deck with an open tower and hexagonal cupola, decorated with a copper weathervane in the shape of a quite noble, if slightly ridiculous, pelican. The Widow’s Walk houses the history of the Murphy mermaids and the Carolinian Grimoire of Water Magic.

The Murphy Family’s old Victorian:

On the oceanside of the island, the old lavender house is where Ypso raised Perri after their mother, another notorious mermaid left on the heels of the death of Ypso and Perri’s father. Pokey rooms and a fireplace that smokes hold the comfort of home. Lush gardens surround the back of the property, growing what the aunts use in their land magic spells. The front lawn ends at a dock that’s never held a boat. Most of the Murphy women have never needed watercraft to make their way through the waves.

 

Springer’s Reserve:

Now a nature preserve where off-island scientists come to study, this beautifully raw landscape full of myrtles and oaks bent from centuries of wind, used to be Blackbeard’s home—the place where he was rumored to have hidden his spoils. When a major storm blows through the island, erosion reveals a cave – not holding buried treasure, but rather bodies of islanders missing since 1942.

 

The Waters of Ocracoke:

Where pirates roamed and German U-boats blew up cargo ships—causing a secreted frontline of WW II. Where the Murphy mermaids have swum, transformed, loved, and lost. Where traces of Water Magic can be seen everywhere.

 

[Nora Graves]

Part I: Pre-event Assignments

1.       Story Statement:

Avert the takeover of the country by the illegitimate brother of the king.

2.      Sketch of Antagonist:

There are two levels of antagonistic action in this story that interact to develop plot points in this book and the plotline of the projected series as a whole:

Level 1: Internal antagonistic force: Loyalty to The Eye requires Winifred Randall to repeatedly sacrifice relationships, abandon personal goals, and deny the fulfillment of her deepest desires for the sake of exercising her gift in the service of her country.

Level 2: External antagonist: Simonides Halford, illegitimate son of a king, knows that he and not his weaker half-brother, who sits on the throne of Kettering, inherited their father’s acclaimed gifts for war and government. In this first installment, Simonides is jockeying for position, maintaining his façade of loyalty as he strategically gathers popular and military support to launch his country on an imperialistic crusade and realize his ambitions of ruling an empire. Simonides’s core wound is his illegitimacy: he is haunted by the sense that he was from conception a persona non grata, the son who should never have been. He is desperately—fiercely—seeking the validation of his existence.

3.      Break-out Title Options:

The Child of the Eye

The Eye’s Child

The Eye of the Ketteringa

The Eye of the King
 

4.      Comparable works: two current works in same genre with similar themes, plots, etc.

Cross R. F. Kuang’s The Poppy War with Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child and you find yourself somewhere in a world straddling the borders of fantasy and magic realism. Winifred Randall, like Kuang’s Rin, is a scrappy female protagonist with a genetic disposition for the supernatural. While Rin fanatically pursues the development of her giftedness as a source of power and self-actualization through military exploits, the exercise of Wini’s gift destroys her hopes of domestic happiness as a wife and mother and forces her into the council rooms and confidences of the rich and powerful. The mute orphan boy Bel, her childhood love, is reminiscent of the snow girl Faina, a mixture of the human and the ‘other.’ The question of his origins is never resolved, and his identity remains a mystery although his presence continues to be felt after his death.

5.      Logline: 

The future of her country rests on a young girl’s loyalty to a gift that betrayed her parents to their deaths and threatens to take from her all she holds most dear.

6.      Secondary conflicts:

Inner Conflict: The drowning of Wini’s younger brother triggers a disintegration of her parents’ personal lives and their marriage. Her mother descends into the manipulative world of substance abuse; her father becomes entangled in an adulterous relationship with an ambitious socialite. Wini is forgotten and left to the care of her spinster aunt until she is discovered to have inherited her father’s gift of the Eye. This revelation brings closure to her parents and results in their reconciliation. Wini experiences a brief interlude of happiness, and then her parents are assassinated. Having witnessed the impending attack (but not her parents’ deaths) in a vision beforehand, Wini feels betrayed, confident that she could have saved their lives had more been revealed to her. The next ten years of her life are spent denying the Eye: an attempt—doomed to failure—to sever her identity from her gift. 

Secondary conflict: Kettering is a tiny mountainous country of enormous wealth, the object of annexation by its neighbors and colonization by overseas nations. Because of the strategic importance of the Eye to its stability, continued sovereignty, and control of its wealth, the country’s founders placed strict prohibitions around the marriages of the Randall family, the carriers of the Eye. Children are contracted to eligible mates at birth. Such contracts can be dissolved when the children come of age, but marriage is still restricted to members of the Ancient Three, the only remaining descendants of the country’s original inhabitants, the Elderstar. Wini is contracted to her childhood nemesis, Johnny Haelstrom, but she loves her father’s ward, the mute orphan boy Bel, with whom she communicates telepathically and can share the visions the Eye gives her. Bel’s own peculiar mental gifts suggest that he is descended from an illegitimate branch of the Randall family, but despite compelling evidence, his illegitimate roots would still negate any possibility of their marriage.

7.      Setting:

Kettering. The wealth of the tiny country of Kettering is legendary.  Situated high in the Grand Torr Mountains, its broad interior plain is surrounded by rugged, forbidding mountain peaks. The Ketteringa River flows southward from the Greater Torrs in Kettering’s northeast corner to empty in the Last Seas, cutting sharply west to the center of the great plain before curving south again. Here it is met by the country’s other major navigable waterway, the Brindle Stryd, which empties into it and divides the country into three distinct regions, shaped roughly like a Y. The northernmost region, called the Brindle Stryd after the river, is the principal source of Kettering’s mining wealth, a mountainous area famous for its deep deposits of gold, tin, and precious gemstones and forests of tall cedars. The northern and eastern Strytheclid, to the right of the Y, are also mountainous and rich in ore and timber, but the Strytheclid embraces a portion of the fertile interior plain on the east banks of the Ketteringa as well. The third region to the west of the Y—the Hlafward—is the breadbasket of Kettering and includes most of Kettering’s interior plain: a fertile, flat to slightly rolling land well-watered by a network of small rivers and famous for its deep black soil and agriculture.

Ketteringas. The capital of Kettering is the ancient city of Ketteringas, situated on the border of the Strytheclid and Hlafward midway between the sea and the mouth of the Brindle Stryd. Here Mount Xhorra towers above the western bank of the Ketteringa, a solitary peak separated from an arm of the Grand Torrs that reaches the river on its east side.  The original keep silhouetted on the top of Mount Xhorra is now an archaeological ruin, replaced by the breath-taking Winged Palace with its flying buttresses and gleaming white stone towers, the home of the Ketteringan king Leonidas IV. The stone walls encircling the Old City high on Xhorra’s slopes are a reminder of more barbarous times, but the city has long since burst that seam and spilled down the mountain and into the surrounding plain. The time-worn buildings of the Old City house the poorest of the poor and a criminal element; the city’s working classes live on smallholdings in its southern districts amid the refineries that process the ore shipped from the Brindle Stryd and in the western boroughs, bustling with small businesses and expanding commercial interests. The wealthier residences of Ketteringas’s merchant class sit on the northern slopes of Mount Xhorra, and on both banks of the Ketteringa extending to the north and the south of the city lay the small parks of the landed gentry surrounding large, stately residences. Such aristocratic families typically have large land and commercial holdings in the provinces of the Strytheclid, Hlafward, and Brindle Stryd that are the source of their ancestral wealth.

Windermere House. The residence of the Randall family when in Ketteringas, is relatively recent in architecture (500 years), constructed of warm, weathered red brick and situated on a high bluff to the north of the city, overlooking the Ketteringa.

Marshall-in-the-Fields: A neighboring park and the Ketteringas home of the Haelstroms—along with the Irenii and the Flavellye, a principal line of descent from the Ancient Three—is of even more recent construction, built out of stone and considered by Wini’s father, Lord Henry Randall, to be one of the “most vulgar, most ostentatious houses I have ever set foot in.” The current Lord Haelstrom’s grandfather pulled down the original structure and erected the present building with his initials—RH—carved out of stone and displayed prominently on the four corners of the roof.

Little Eye. The ancestral estate of the Randall family, Little Eye, sits in the foothills of the Lesser Cors, the heart of the Strytheclid to the south and east of Ketteringas. Little Eye is named after a small pond on the estate; an underwater projection of black obsidian in the center of the pond’s floor gives it the uncanny resemblance to an actual eye. Legend claims the pond, although very small in perimeter, is bottomless. It is also the reputed grave of the great Xeiba, a tree worshipped in antiquity by the original inhabitants of Kettering, the Elderstar, a people group who were all but exterminated by the invading Ketteringans and whose descendants survive only in the bloodlines of the Ancient Three and the Randall family. According to ancient records, lightning felled the Xeiba the night before the first wave of the Ketteringan invasion began. A cavern appeared in the ground and swallowed the tree, and the pond Little Eye formed above it.

Garby. The northernmost region of the Strytheclid, an area that features many of the Greater Corrs highest peaks and the source of the Ketteringa. It is an austere, remote landscape of snow-capped mountains, timbered hillsides, and rocky highlands, famous for its gemstones and one of the least populated regions of Kettering, the site of the charred remains of Rainfall, the ancestral home of Wini’s mother, Lady Rowena Flavellus.

Gathersby. A large town at the intersection of the principal crossroads of Kettering south of Ketteringas where the flow of goods and people (including troops) from the country’s three regions meet in their movement to and from the important port of Littlebridge.

Littlebridge. A sprawling, congested mass of warehouses, taverns, brothels, and streets of small market stalls dominated by the merchant class who also typically serve as the stewards of the gentry. To the southwest of Littlebridge, out of view of the mainland, lies an archipelago of small, inhabited islands called the Flown Isles.

Riverview. A small but strategically important military town on the extreme western border of the Hlafward. It overlooks the Gap of Amun where the Poe River, one of the Hlafward’s important rivers, descends from its source high in the Southern Graels to the Ketteringan plain. It guards the most accessible entry into Kettering from the west, a strategic objective of would-be invaders and an ancient migratory route for displaced peoples.

The Grayling—South, West, and North. The area most vulnerable to penetration from the outside and most desirable for settlement, extending from the foothills of the Graels to the heart of the Hlafward centered in the town of Rich Hill.

Leighbourne. Located at the mouth of the Brindle Stryd where it flows into the Ketteringa, is the nerve center of the all-important mining industry. Its skyline is dominated by the billowing smokestacks of refineries, and because of its high elevation, this smoke hangs in the air, blanketing the city. Refineries feature in all the smaller towns that mark the many mining centers of the Brindle Stryd. Little Hay, one of these, lies in the mountains that form the regional border between the Brindle Stryd and the Hlafward where the Gap of Camber is the chief cross country access between them.

 

[O.E. Soderberg]

MARKERS UNKNOWN by O.E. Soderberg
Speculative Fiction Thriller
 
Assignment 1:
THE ACT OF THE STORY STATEMENT
 
A defiant orphan must bring down the corrupt pharmaceutical company that created her unique genetics to rescue her lost sister from the horrors of human testing.
 
Assignment 2:
THE ANTAGONIST
 
The antagonist is a compound of systemic and individual malice—embodied by Lander Medical, a pharmaceutical company fueled by unrestrained greed and ambition. Isolated on protected land purchased from the native tribe that fears the Ghost Flowers the mountain produces, Theodore Drake, lead scientist of Lander Medical, holds a person captive as his test subject. After two decades of human testing, Theodore will do anything to protect his obsession, even kill. However, Theodore emerges not just as a perpetrator but as a pawn in a more insidious game. Clayton Copeland, Lander’s Chief Security Officer turned President of the Board, has twisted the ethos of Drake’s research to secure his own power. Through underhanded deals with government officials, Clayton’s villainous mission centers on a disturbing side effect that even Theodore fears: a form of mind control. The parabiosis process they employ for cell regeneration causes donor cells to entangle in a way that permits psychological manipulation, turning their unethical scientific endeavor into a moral nightmare Clayton is willing to sell to the highest bidder.
 
Assignment 3:
BREAKOUT TITLE
 
MARKERS UNKNOWN
Ghost Flower
Blood Markers
 
Assignment 4:
COMPARABLE TITLES
 
Girl One by Sara Flannery Murphy
 
A story about a young woman whose search for her missing mother reveals the secrets of her past — including her time spent on the Homestead as one of nine babies born via parthenogenesis.
 
Upgrade by Blake Crouch.
 
A fast-moving imagining of a future altered by one significant technology of genetic engineering and a character significantly impacted by said technology, setup against the backdrop of a ticking clock and a game of cat and mouse.
 
Assignment 5:
CORE WOUND AND THE PRIMARY CONFLICT
 
LOGLINE: A defiant orphan wounded by abandonment breaks into a high-security lab to dismantle the corrupt pharmaceutical company that engineered her unique genetics to rescue the sister she remembers only in her haunting nightmares.
 
Assignment 6:
OTHER MATTERS OF CONFLICT
 
INNER CONFLICT OF THE PROTAGONIST—QUINN RIDER:
Conditions for Inner Conflict:

• Core Issue: Deep-seated abandonment issues that have manifested into a mistrust of others.
• Internal Struggle: Quinn struggles with her need for family acceptance and her innate desire for justice. She believes that if she can just save her sister, she will somehow prove herself worthy of love and family.
• Conflict Amplifiers: Quinn's engagement with the FBI, which operates by the book and could delay rescuing her sister, amplifies her turmoil. Her need for quick action clashes with her fear of trusting a system that has failed her before.

Trigger Scenario:

• Scenario: Quinn decides to break into Lander Medical's compounding lab to save her sister. However, she doesn't find her sister there; instead, she finds a man named Russell Drake, who shares her unique blood.
• Immediate Reaction: When her plans backfire, she doubles down instead of reassessing—driven by a fear that her one true asset, her intuition, might be fallible.
• Secondary Reaction: Realizing that Russell has never lived a day outside the lab and needs her help as much as her sister would have, she's thrust into a cat-and-mouse chase with both Lander Medical and the FBI.

Emotional States:

• Turmoil: She's forced to reconcile her personal mission of find her sister with the ethical responsibility of helping Russell.
• Conflicted: Quinn is conflicted about whether she made the right choice breaking in. Should she have trusted the system? Did she endanger more lives by acting impulsively?
• Anxious: As she races against time, her anxieties spiral. Each decision, initially fueled by good intentions, compounds into increasingly unethical and illegal actions of her own, while powerful adversaries close in on her.

Summary:
In this emotionally charged moment, Quinn's anxieties, abandonment issues, and mistrust collide. She's left questioning her vigilante methods while still feeling the desperation to act quickly. Her core wound of abandonment is tested; she took matters into her own hands only to find someone who wasn't her sister, thereby not immediately healing her family wound as she'd hoped. It's a pivotal moment that exposes her inner conflicts in sharp relief: her need for familial acceptance against her deep-rooted issues with trust, her desire to be the lone vigilante against the ethical responsibility to involve others, and her quest for quick justice against the potential cost it may have on the lives involved.
 
 
SECONDARY CONFLICTS OF THE PROTAGONIST—QUINN RIDER:
Conditions for Secondary Conflict:

 

• Core Issue: Quinn's deep-seated issues with trust extend to her social environment, including her best friend, Sean, and her fiancé, Special Agent Max Baker.
• Internal Struggle: Her relentless drive to prove her own worth puts a strain on these relationships. Her struggle to believe she is deserving of the love and trust she already has makes it difficult to reciprocate.
• Conflict Amplifiers: The deep concern Sean and Max feel for Quinn as she risks her life against formidable entities like Lander Medical, is tested by her seemingly ruthless decisions. Quinn’s willingness to risks their lives and careers for what she calls survival, amplifies the growing tension at the line between love and betrayal.

Trigger Scenario:

• Scenario: Special Agent Max Baker, her fiancé, finds out that Quinn has decided to go rogue and infiltrate Lander Medical without telling him or utilizing his FBI resources. He is forced to choose between Quinn and his career when he intercepts her escape with Russell Drake, the captive from the compound.
• Immediate Reaction: Quinn feels cornered and accused, triggering her issues with trust and abandonment. She justifies her actions by focusing on the urgency, the system's inefficiencies, and the proof of foul play that Russell embodies.
• Secondary Reaction: Max, worried for Quinn yet stung by her betrayal, questions her actions. He confronts her, suggesting that her proclaimed moral superiority might actually be a mask for trust issues that endanger everyone—including their relationship.

Emotional States:

• Turmoil: As Lander Medical closes in, Quinn is torn between admitting Max Baker might be right and her natural instinct to push him away to protect herself from potential abandonment.
• Conflicted: She starts questioning if her distrust and go-it-alone approach could cost her relationships with the very people she wants to prove herself to.
• Anxious: Quinn realizes that she's at risk of losing her support system (Max and Sean), making her already perilous mission even more isolating and dangerous.

Summary:
The secondary conflict in Quinn's life stems from her social relationships, particularly with Special Agent Max Baker and her best friend, Sean. In this scenario, the conflict centers around her fiancé, Max, who challenges Quinn's unilateral decision to infiltrate Lander Medical without consulting him or considering how it could affect his career. This confrontation brings to the surface Quinn's emotional issues—her mistrust, her fear of abandonment, and her belief that she is not worthy of love unless she proves herself through deeds like saving her sister.
This social conflict serves as a mirror to her primary internal conflict. While she battles her own inner demons around worthiness and trust, she simultaneously risks fracturing the relationships that could offer her love and support. It's another layer of complexity in her journey, revealing that her struggle is not just against external entities but also involves the people closest to her.
 
Assignment 7:
IMPORTANCE OF SETTING
 
The settings in "MARKERS UNKNOWN" are diverse yet interconnected, weaving together natural landscapes, historical sites, and modern facilities to create a rich tapestry. Each setting contributes to the complexity of the plot, offering both physical and emotional obstacles and sanctuaries for the characters. The unique qualities of each location allow for dynamic, visually arresting scenes that deepen the themes and emotional impact of the story. From the impenetrable high-tech lab to the rugged beauty of the Rocky Mountains, the settings are more than mere backdrops; they are integral elements that shape the narrative and its characters.
 
Lander Medical Compounding Lab:
This high-tech lab brings a sense of sterile dread. It sits on isolated reservation land, surrounded by the rare Ghost Flowers. Its impenetrable location makes it an intriguing mix of natural beauty and concealed danger. The lab itself is a maze of modern technology and older, worn sections—reflecting both its long-standing operations and recent advancements. Think of high-tech monitors and equipment juxtaposed with old files and even older secrets.

• Cinematic Moments: The dynamic encounter along the winding road to the compound between Quinn and Clayton Copeland where the fresh mountain snow plays an integral role in Quinn’s plan to break into the lab. The peering eyes of the lab’s security cameras as Quinn holds Russell at gunpoint, forcing him to leave. The greenhouse of crimson-red Ghost Flowers that thicken the air with a sweet smell, and their climatic end as their pedals are bleached white.

 
Standard Service:
An abandoned train outpost turned into a makeshift home full of memories and aspirations. The setting includes rusted train tracks, dilapidated buildings, and simple, hastily built living spaces that reflect Quinn and Sean’s past struggles to survive.

• Cinematic Moments: In an abandoned train outpost, Quinn, Russell, and the FBI reach a tense standoff. This outpost is loaded with history and unfulfilled dreams: it's where miners once replenished their hopes before delving into gold mines, and where Quinn and Sean scrimped and saved as orphans, dreaming of a brighter future. Now, Quinn stands at a pivotal fork in the road, mirroring the miners' grim reckoning when the gold veins ran dry. She must choose—either confront the harsh reality that her hopes are spent, just like the miners, or push deeper into the figurative mine of her future, refusing to abandon her dreams.

 
The Tennessee Mine:
A dark, maze-like underground with echoes of history and danger, sprinkled with remnants of its gold-rush past. The tension builds naturally as Quinn navigates Russell through the labyrinth of tunnels.

• Cinematic Moments: As Quinn and Russell race to the abandoned mine entrance within the dark tunnel of the Tennessee pass, a voice echoes off the jagged rock walls belonging to the corrupt FBI agent, James Archer. Quinn’s familiarity with the mine is no match for the city transplant special agent as Quinn leads Russell down the entrance, firing her gun at the rotted overhead cap, causing the loose rock roof to fall in succession while Quinn and Russell attempt to outrun the collapsing mine.

 
Timberline Taproom and Heli-Trax Airport Hanger: These are the public faces of Quinn and Sean, contrasting sharply with their more covert activities. They appear ordinary, but in context, serve as what they have to lose.

• Cinematic Moments: 
  At the empty Timberline Taproom, Russell glimpses the life he's been robbed and deceived of. Vacant stools, etched names, and framed photos serve as silent witnesses, filling the room with ghosts of the community he's been denied. The irony isn't lost on him: even Nature conspires to isolate him, offering a bitter taste of normalcy yet the bar remains empty.
  
  The Heli-Trax Airport where Sean pilots skiers too adventurous to leave the backcountry unconquered, finds Quinn, Russell, and Sean staying overnight to await the passing storm. The manual labor required at a hanger unprotected from nature’s fury, provides a rich backdrop to a reflective moment between Quinn and Russell where clearing what the storm left behind may uncover answers neither of them are ready for.

 
The Royal Gorge Bridge:
This location’s history of man’s ability to overcome nature’s constraints, serves as a spectacular backdrop to the climactic showdown between Quinn, Russell, Theodore Drake, and Max Baker. Amid one of the tallest suspension bridges in the world, the vast canyon it spans mirrors the perilous divide that has formed between these characters. 

• Cinematic Moments: A tense standoff leads to a horrific scene as Quinn and Russell are unable to reach Theodore before watching his body fall 955 feet to the Arkansas River below.

 
Colorado Springs Police Precinct:
An institutional setting that lends a stark contrast to the wild, uncontrolled landscapes and rogue operations Quinn is used to.

• Cinematic Moments: Throughout the book, the stark interrogation room under Intense fluorescent lights, serves as the setting where Max gets Quinn to retell everything that transpired. Quinn is literally and figuratively pulled from her element, left to face the consequences of her actions on the record with Max, the government, and most importantly, herself.

 
The Rocky Mountains:
Serving as a consistent background character throughout the story, they symbolize the raw, uncontrollable force of nature against which all human endeavors seem minuscule.

• Cinematic Moments: Panoramic views of the mountains punctuate and preface key moments in the story. In Colorado skies, storms don’t simply appear, they make their inevitable presence known, rolling from beyond the furthest peaks until enveloping the vast skies to form claustrophobic domes. As the weather changes in the story, it mirrors the shifting dynamic in Quinn's emotional state and the forces closing in on her.

[Jake Coble]

#1 - THE ACT OF STORY STATEMENT 

Following an assassination attempt at his inauguration, President Benjamin Owens must track down who was behind the attack on his life and bring them to justice.

#2 - THE ANTAGONIST PLOTS THE POINT

Thad Striker, a stone cold killer with a quick trigger, is the central antagonist of this novel. Striker is the right-hand man for an emerging cartel, the Brotherhood, and collaborates with clandestine founder and renowned lobbyist, Dawson Williams, concerning how to grow the business and eliminate competition. Striker leads the Brotherhood's efforts to outmaneuver and thwart the FBI's strategic advances, butting heads with the President's hand-picked Special Agent on the case, Derek Collins. Thad's mind is in a constant battle of disarray, as he desires to escape the clutches of Dawson's oppressive cartel and begin a new life, one completely devoid of killing, while also realizing that dream is likely all a façade, due to his true identity: Paul Owens, the presumed-dead son of the President, who "died" seven years prior to the events of this book taking place. Paul's hatred for his father has grown, watching him exploit his death for political gain around each and every corner; to Ben, his death was not so much a tragedy as it was an opportunity. Thad Striker realizes he cannot truly be free until his father gets what he deserves. 

#3 - CONJURING YOUR BREAKOUT TITLE

Seal the Deal -> current working title for this book

Coming to Terms

Falling Dominoes -> overall series title, as well 

#4 - DECIDING YOUR GENRE AND APPROACHING COMPARABLES

One of the more popular books in the political thriller space that I'd compare Seal the Deal to is Michael Dobbs' House of Cards. While it outlines a British politician's ascent to Prime Minister, there are similar structures in place as to how Francis Urquhart navigates his way to power as Benjamin Owens. Like House of Cards, my novel is the beginning of a political thriller series, as well - as this series goes on, audiences will see more about how President Owens navigates threats to his presidency amongst his yearning for control and desire to bring the Brotherhood to justice.

An emerging author's work I'd compare this novel to is L.D. Beyer's In Sheep's Clothing. Like Beyer's fast-paced novel, Seal the Deal begins with tension and a quick twist that sets in motion all major events of what is to come. Beyer's novel is also the beginning of a series, as is mine.

#5 - CORE WOUND AND THE PRIMARY CONFLICT 

Following an assassination attempt on his inauguration day, a President is pitted against his presumed-dead son, a ruthless hit man for one of the country's deadliest cartels, the Brotherhood.

#6 - OTHER MATTERS OF CONFLICT: TWO MORE LEVELS

Ben's main inner conflict hinges upon the day he was almost assassinated. He begins in a state of shock, and then progresses towards anger and retribution. Someone tried to steal his moment, his coronation, his arrival as the most dominant President the country has ever seen. It keeps him determined and focused, hell-bent on tracking down who sought to take his life. This can immediately be seen after he's rushed off-stage at his inauguration: he acts swiftly to get the FBI involved and on the scene. He carries out a ruthless and meticulous approach throughout the novel; meanwhile, the near-death experience intensifies his longing for absolute control.

The secondary conflict, this one of an interpersonal nature, that runs throughout Seal the Deal revolves around how the President and First Lady processed the night of their son's "death," and how that affects their relationship moving forward. There is a constant emotional tug and pull on their heartstrings, over his drug addiction and loss of life far too soon. However, they approach it in different ways - Jane, the First Lady, ponders what they could've done differently, and the millions of opportunities she had to make a difference but didn't. She has regrets, whereas Ben viewed the tragedy as an opportunity the second the cameras started rolling. This creates a mutually antagonistic relationship between the two - heightened by a night in which Jane believes she saw Paul, while Ben realizes that truth could cause everything he's built to topple. 

#7 - THE INCREDIBLE IMPORTANCE OF SETTING

Two main settings exist for Seal the Deal - for the Owens family, a majority of the action resides at the White House, as President Ben Owens attempts to get his administration started on the right foot. The winding hallways and iconic rooms of the West Wing largely symbolize the strategic game of chess he is perpetually playing to position himself for total autonomy. Meanwhile, the elegance of the Residence is where everything he's built starts to collapse, as his power trip has left his ambitious wife, Jane, behind - and she can never forget the man he's become to end up in the nation's capital. In the West Wing, he is the master of the game, in the Oval Office, he is tenacious and seeking retribution, yet, behind the scenes, in the Residence, the cracks in the armor of their marriage start to show. And those cracks will split wide open, jeopardizing everything. 

For the antagonist Thad Striker and the Brotherhood, the setting proves to be one of a dynamic nature. For any scenes involving Striker's role as a cartel hit man, these take place in the Brotherhood's dark and musty safehouse of Brooklyn. Within their safehouse, Dawson Williams exerts full control over the cartel's operations, which mimics the relationship the Brotherhood carries out over the entire Bed-Stuy community they dominate. Another side of Striker is seen in the Lower East Side, where he attempts to dissociate from his life as a hit man in his relationship with his girlfriend, Ellie - yet their innocent moments prove to be fleeting, as Striker's "real life" calls. 

Striker's final two main settings, Washington D.C. and Bayonne, New Jersey, represent the double climax Seal the Deal delivers. When the compromised Vice President comes up short on a payment, Thad is sent to the nation's capital to tie up loose ends, yet ends up putting his life on the line. Then, in Bayonne, the two main worlds of this story collide - as a family that has been blackmailed by the cartel provide the FBI with invaluable information, and Striker is pushed to the limit trying to prevent them from exposing the truth behind the Brotherhood. 

[Cecilia Najar]

Note: The book described below is a memoir. 

Story Statement

To regain her confidence, a middle-aged Latina must calm the inner voices of anxiety and doom caused by her past experiences with men.

Antagonists 

Entitled, ego-driven men and their helpers are the antagonists. A selection of the antagonists in the book:

A selection of characters:

Leopoldo is a Mexican proud man, a surgeon, and a nasty alcoholic. He speaks Spanish, French, English and can read Greek and Latin.  He has a kind heart and treats his patients without pay but he cannot give a compliment without adding a snide dismissive barb.  He resents the burden of his six children and his wife's anger. He confides to the protagonist that she’s the smartest of his children and he expects her to follow his path of medicine. When she doesn’t, he tells her she is nothing.

Geoffrey is part of Los Angeles’ elite, old-monied world, who built the city and its racial barriers. He’s a whip-smart rebellious pot smoker who has been thrown out of two schools but his mother and her friends consider the protagonist, his Mexican girlfriend, the threat to his future. They and their daughters set out to make sure she knows she doesn’t belong.

The married men the protagonist finds on an online dating site form an obstacle course marked by various kinds of testosterone-fueled hunger.  Some have FOMO, most want affection, and all want sex — but with different rules and restrictions. One lies, pins her to the wall and kisses her without consent. Another refuses to believe her rejection.  Another starts a truth-or-dare confessional exchange to test her boundaries. Another shows his vulnerability but she sees the anger underneath his words.  These men test the protagonist's ability to see her triggers, emotional wounds, and intuition.

Jonathan is charming, handsome, kissed by wealth, and married.  He’s a man who is unaware of his privilege, the damage of his lies, and a betrayal he sees as unimportant.  He says he loves the protagonist but she has no idea if he knows what he means, or if she wants the kind of love he is offering.  She must navigate her fears to know whether to trust him - or any man.

Title

The Queen of Almost

500 Men

Unfuckupable

Comparables

Crying in the Bathroom: A Memoir by Erika Sanchez meets Blow Down Your House: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason by Gina Frangello meets Happy Days: The Guided Path from Trauma to Profound Freedom and Inner Peace by Gabrielle Bernstein.

ie. A 48-year old Erika Sanchez blows up her marriage akin to Gina Frangello but learns to quell her anger and anxiety on a path to happiness by using self-help techniques described by Gabrielle Bernstein.

Logline 

An anxiety-plagued 48-year old Latina leaves her husband and sets out to heal her toxic history with men by practicing new self-empowered behaviors with an enthusiastic, unlimited pool of married men she finds on Ashley Madison, an infidelity dating site.

Sample Inner Conflict

The protagonist is riddled with anxiety which appears as an internal chorus of doom chanting and singing her to paralysis.  Throughout the book, she observes her emotional triggers as she navigates new experiences with men.

Scene:  A powerful married man, texts the protagonist love notes encouraging her to get over her cold feet and meet him at his hotel.  She experiences an emotional rollercoaster between no and yes, as she considers her triggers, the history of women's sexual objectification, and her past relationship to men and their pressure tactics.

Sample Secondary Conflict

The protagonist confides her life experiment, dating married men, to her compassionate friend, Justine, who always finds calm over chaos and understands the complexity of humanity.  Justine explodes with anger calling the protagonist evil and immoral.

Setting

The book is set in the wealthy enclaves of Los Angeles: Malibu, Brentwood, Venice and Hancock Park, with dips into the chaotic utopian world of Burning Man, a ski town and crosstown urban glam. For example, we get the inside skinny behind the confusing matrix of the sprawling city: the million-dollar trailers perched on fire-prone hills in Malibu, the reishi mushroom-loving Venice yoga scene with its obsessive chase for health trends, a behind-the-doors peak the world-famous Getty Museum restoration room, the wind-swept serenity of a private beach north of Malibu, and the grit and sequin salsa scene in a historic dance hall found in Latinx East LA.

[Eric Brandenburg]

1.

After a university lab building sinks halfway into the ground overnight with a sign left in one of its windows reading “Explain This,” Ryan Flynn, a veteran down on his luck and Freya Thorensen, a beautiful artist recovering from trauma, team up to find her missing brother, a scientist who holds the secret to a technology that could change the world.

2.

The chief antagonist in “Explain This” is Freya’s brother Robbie, a brilliant but irresponsible scientist who vanishes just before a violent and mysterious incident at the lab where he was conducting classified research. Freya, our heroine, is desperate to find him to make sure he’s all right and that he hasn’t done something stupid that’s gotten him into a lot of trouble. Ryan, our hero, needs to find him because that’s his job even though he has growing doubts about his new employers and their motives. The stakes are raised in an early scene when we see an old panel truck we suspect is being driven by Robbie being followed by a state trooper in a cruiser because it looks suspicious. The cruiser’s front end is suddenly crushed by an unseen force and the panel truck speeds away.

Secondary antagonists are the holders of the many other secrets that Ryan and Freya singly and then together must uncover through the course of the story.  These secrets run the gamut from revolutionary technologies that have been classified to family scandals to personal wounds that the two protagonists don’t want to look at themselves, much less share with anyone else.

In the first half of the book, Ryan and Freya are also mutual antagonists. For Freya, Ryan is a government agent who shows up asking all sorts of questions about her brother and her family. Her family’s history and the circumstances of her father’s death and the source of her injuries aren’t subjects she wants to talk about and she wants to find Robbie on her own. For Ryan, Freya says she doesn’t know where her brother is or any more than she’s already told him but she’s a bad liar and he hates it when people hide things from him.

Ryan has a number of other people to contend with. His new boss in the “Special Transport Unit” (“the Unit”), Captain Baker, didn’t bother to tell him his new job involves a lot more than just backing boxes full of official documents and driving them from place to place. Ryans’ first day of work, he finds himself in the middle of a mess and Baker still won’t tell him anything because he thinks he doesn’t “need to know.” In addition, the F.B.I. arrest Ryan for a burglary that was probably done by another member of the Unit and someone has started following him. Freya has to contend with her mother with whom she has a combative relationship.

Because of their core wounds, Ryan and Freya are also their own worst enemies.

Ryan suffers from undiagnosed P.T.S.D. and can control his anxiety only when he has a job to do. The only one he’s got at the moment though is doing whatever Baker tells him to do, and he doesn’t trust Baker or the Unit and he has no idea what he’s gotten himself into.

Freya has recovered from her physical wounds but, when the darkness gathers inside her, about all she can do is to try to get rid of it is to paint, run or spar at the Akido dojo. Her latest painting of a half man, half wolf trapped in a cave scares the hell out of her. She doesn’t know why. Is it about her father or somebody else? And why the hell is she having nightmares about her father and their old farmhouse in North Dakota. And why is it stuffed with junk and on fire?

Ultimately Ryan and Freya help themselves by revealing their secrets to one another.

In the last act of the book, the final flesh and blood antagonists are revealed, rogue members of the Unit who are determined to steal Robbie’s revolutionary technology for themselves. In the last act, Ryan, Freya and Robbie as well as honest members of the Unit have a showdown with the rogue Unit members at the Thorensen’s deserted farmhouse where Freya and Robbie grew up.

3.

 Explain This!

4.

Sci Fi Thriller

Comparables: Dark Matter, Stranger Things

Explain This is a story in the tradition of Dark Matter, the Xfiles, Fringe, and other works that revolve around an extraordinary technology disrupting the lives of ordinary people.

5.

Hook line, a variant on the story statement above:

After a university lab building sinks halfway into ground overnight with a sign left in one of its windows reading “Explain This,” Ryan Flynn, a veteran with PTSD eager to make good and Freya Thorensen, a young artist recovering from trauma must learn to trust one other and confront their pasts in order to find her brother, a missing scientist who has disappeared with the secret to a revolutionary technology. “Sometimes the hardest secrets to uncover are the ones you’re keeping from yourself.

6.

The basic conflicts are as follows. I’ve put this from the point of view of the characters:

Ryan Flynn shows up for his first day of work in the Special Transport Unit (the “Unit”) hung over and wearing a brown plaid suit borrowed from his father. He’s suffering from undiagnosed P.T.S.D.  Bread or most any other baked good makes him anxious but that’s another story. All that’s holding him together is this new job which, he was told by the firm’s recruiter, “just consists of guarding boxes of classified material and moving them from place to place.” He thinks he can handle that. On the way in from the airport, however, his new partner, Dickie Gautier, tells him the Unit has a secret, highly classified side and that the “stuff” in their care is sensitive technology with military potential which Unit members must protect “by any means necessary.” On their current project, the lead scientist on the project has gone missing after a bizarre incident at the lab. Ryan needs to focus on his new mission or he’ll go to pieces but his new superiors won’t even tell him the secret he’s supposed to be protecting. The scientist’s sister says she doesn’t know where her brother’s gone. She seems desperate to find him but it’s clear she’s hiding something. It doesn’t help that she’s beautiful and he feels a strong desire to help her if he can. What if finding her brother means turning him over to people who want to put him in prison or worse? How much will he have to share about himself to gain her trust? How can he do that when he’s been avoiding looking at himself since he got home from overseas.

 Freya Thorenson thought she’d been doing pretty well. The bullet wounds in her side have been healed for some time and, physically, she’s in good shape. Emotionally, though, she suffers from bad dreams and works through her anxiety by painting, running, martial arts training and ceaseless work on her graphic design business and the renovations to the house she shares with her mother. Everything was going okay until her brother Robbie showed up. His wife threw him out and neither he nor she would say why. He acted strangely, working till all hours and then just disappeared one night, leaving behind a note saying he’d be back soon and not to worry. All this might have been manageable if his lab hadn’t sunk halfway into the ground a few days later and someone hadn’t left a whiteboard in one of its windows with “Explain This!” scrawled on it in big purple letters. Wouldn’t that be enough to make anyone anxious? And then this Ryan Flynn shows up on her doorstep in his silly ass brown plaid suit, asking way too many questions about her brother, the family, her, everything. She spent five years trying to put her family shit behind her and she isn’t inclined to share it now with some spook. The image of her late father and his crooked ways fills her mind. Her brother had that same look just before he left. Where did he go? Did his going away have something to do with what happened at the lab? How can she figure out where he’s gone and get to him before the government does? Ryan Flynn wants to find him, sure, but for his own reasons. Can she trust him? He’s a human border collie, driven and whip smart but she can sense he has glaring weaknesses as well. Her father taught her how to readthose. Can she work Ryan over to her side or is he too smart and strong for that? Does even looking at the situation this way mean she’s just like her father?

 Some scenes:

Freya invites Ryan to her art studio and he quizzes her about her paintings, which he admires. She secretly likes him and is torn about sharing that side of her with him. She can tell he’s using this as a way to probe and find out more about her and her family. Ryan is drawn to Freya and is actually impressed by her talent. Picking up certain clues within her dark, symbolic painting and around her studio, he confronts her with things she has been hiding from him. She suggests they have dinner. Over food and a beer she shares a certain amount about herself and her family’s troubled past while also probing him, trying to gain a foothold and win his trust. Over these two scenes each is dancing around the other, trying to get as much as they can out of the other one without giving away too much.

 Some scenes with secondary conflicts:

Freya argues with her mother about having a relative stop by their old farmhouse in North Dakota to check it out for the Winter. Her mother says they wouldn’t charge anything. Freya says they’re just out to make a buck and why bother when no one will ever live in the house again which hurts her mother’s feelings. Throughout the conversation her mother calls her by her first name, Christine, when Freya’s told her many times she wants to go by Freya, her middle name from now on. Her mother ends the conversation by saying Freya should come home and fix the downstairs toilet which she’s been after her to get to for days.

Ryan is detained by the F.B.I. who suspect him of having broken into the apartment of Robbie Thorensen’s research assistant. Ryan is in the possession of a classified document but he got it from Freya’s house, not the other place. The F.B.I. grill him and tell him the Unit has a bad reputation but after a phone call from an unknown party they simply give him back the document and turn him loose.

Ryan flies to North Dakota in pursuit of Freya who has determined where her brother has gone. After he and Freya spend the night together, he is called repeatedly by his superior in the Unit, Captain Baker, who wants to know what progress he’s made and insists on sending out more men “to help.” Ryan, who has grown to distrust the Unit and wants to find Robbie and bring him in peaceably resists.  He buys some phones and puts his Unit issued phone in a special bag which blocks radio signals so it can’t be traced.

7.

Setting 1: A street on the border of a major university campus in the Boston area containing an old candy company warehouse and its offices, a low rent bar, a building that once belonged to a now bankrupt printer and an old university lab building, marked for demolition. The lab building has sunk halfway into the ground overnight under mysterious circumstances.

Setting 2: A Special Transport Unit armored SUV which contains a police radio, a radar tracking device, and document packing and transport materials such as boxes, markers and envelopes. There is also a safe under the floor containing a pistol, two compact sub machine guns and ammunition as well as a tazer, lock picks and rubber gloves.

Setting 3: The Thorensen house. A three story Victorian house which is undergoing renovation. The first floor has refinished floors and paneling and new plastering. The furniture is a mix of new relatively expensive furniture and inexpensive antiques from the former Thorensen farmhouse in North Dakota. Landscapes of the prairie painted by Freya, the heroine, adorn the walls. The second story has two renovated bedrooms and a bathroom. There is a third bedroom still undergoing renovation. The third floor has been gutted and renovated has just started.

Setting 4: The flooded basement of the sunken lab building which contains a number of experimental devices based on a revolutionary technology.

Setting 5: Freya’s art studio. A semi finished divided loft space where Freya has an easel, paints, a computer and other equipment for her graphic design business.

Setting 6: A room in  cheap motel in Grand Forks North Dakota

Setting 7: A churchyard in a small North Dakota farming town.

Setting 8: An abandoned farmhouse in rural North Dakota built with a variety of defensive features by Freya’s father including reinforced doors with gun ports and sideways periscope peepholes, hiding places for guns and money, several safe rooms with reinforced doors and a mud room that doubles as a killing room with gun ports and peepholes on the sides. Intruders can be locked inside the mud room by releasing a cable on an exterior wall which drops weighted bolts through the tops of the inside and outside doors.

[Liora Yoael]

 

•  Add Tag

 2030. The Boomerang Effect, Sci-fi by Liora Yoael

First Assignment - Story Statement:

In between a love that never meant to be, the son of the Bitcoin founder locks horns with a ruthless entrepreneur who wants to control the young man's sentient AI security invention, Boomerang. This most powerful billionaire engineer wishes to advance his plans for global domination and monopolisation of space mining and tourism in the solar system at large. Nothing will stop him - even if murder must be added to the agenda!

 

 

 

2.   Second Assignment - Antagonists summary: (Spoiler: you can see my antagonist standing next to me in my profile avatar)

MX Leon, the U.S. Ambassador of the United Corporations of America to Space.

Great change has transformed the world. Mankind has reached out to the planets in the solar system; Mars is being colonized; the Asteroid Belt is being mined for Uranium, Gold, Platinum and Silver. Much of these interplanetary endeavors, if not all, are due to one man:  MX Leon, the ruthless entrepreneur behind a conglomerate space-expansion company that has its eyes set on the stars … and beyond

MX Leon, a complex man who has renewed American Space Industry and sparked a new level of surveillance innovation. Overcoming hardship of poor childhood, he earn his first billion selling his notorious brainchild, the ‘empathic’ EmoIris Playmate toys, which cunningly tugs at the heartstrings of children, all in pursuit of his profit. This devious endeavor vividly exemplifies a predatory, exploitation of the tender, malleable minds of youth, marked by a willingness to do whatever it takes to achieve his goals, even if it means making enemies along the way.

While at MIT during his earlier years, his attempt to forge his professor's signature in pursuit of a valuable discovery revealed a ruthless side, as he was willing to commit fraud for personal gain at a young age. Years later, when he met the professor’s brilliant son, he challenged and attempted to ruin him to maintain his prominence.

In his conversation with the Secretary of State, when the idea of pursuing a political carrier was presented to him, MX delivered a memorable response, coining a phrase: “Why become a senator if you can buy one?” His methodical pay to play scheme expended his influence into realm of space mining rights.

 MX’ struggles with personal attachment serve to deepen the narrative and provide insight into his moral ambiguity. It showcases his ability to exploit even the most intimate connections in his audacious attempt to leverage his romantic involvement with the irresistibly charming Mossad agent.

 

3. Third Assignment - Breakout Title:

"2030. The Boomerang Effect"

"Echoes of Tomorrow: A Tale of Love and Power"

 “The Destiny Code.”

"Sentience's Gamble: The Boomerang Conspiracy"

 

4.     Fourth Assignment – Sci-fi

 Comparables:  

 

 "2030.The Boomerang Effect" is like Kai-Fu Lee’s Ten Version for Our Future meets Sarit Yishai Levi's The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem.

or

"2030. The Boomerang Effect" is like Lavie Tidhar’s Central Station with compelling and diverse cast of characters who inhabit a bustling and multicultural future of Middle East meets with the well-rounded, often humorous female characters of Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, that exude the line between awe-inspiring and unnerving.

 

 

5.     Fifth Assignment - Hook/Logline 

a.   In a crossroad of technological intrigue and compelling human connections, the brilliant prodigy, Benjamin Yerushalmi, finds himself entangled in a high-stakes battle with ruthless Space entrepreneur, over the destiny of Boomerang, his revolutionary invention, all while the lives of Zeinab, a gifted Palestinian psychic, and Galit, a beguiling Israeli Mossad agent, become intricately woven into a web of secrets, love, and loyalty, with global domination hanging in the balance.

 

6.      Sixth Assignment - Sketch out the conditions for the inner conflict your protagonist will have.  

Ben Yerushalmi, the prodigious son of Bitcoin's founder, grapples with a profound inner conflict. His father's untimely death leaves him with the daunting task of completing his father's unfinished masterpiece, Boomerang—an AI marvel poised to redefine cybersecurity for generations. The weight of this responsibility bears heavily on Ben, as he is not only mourning his father's loss but also navigating the immense pressure to live up to his legacy.

Compounding his inner turmoil is the high-stakes battle with MX Leon, a ruthless entrepreneur who seeks to manipulate and dominate Boomerang, the groundbreaking creation that Ben holds dear. Ben's anxiety converges as he confronts the ruthless world of corporate espionage and power struggles. His desire to honor his father's vision clashes with the threat of MX Leon's influence.

Amidst these conflicting scenarios and his role in shaping the future of Boomerang, Ben grapples with personal dilemma and questions of generational ethics when he falls in love with Palestinian psychic and her little box of miracles and weird and deeply moving visions. 

 Their budding romance challenges deeply rooted societal and political divisions setting a liminal stage for a gripping adventure. 

 

In a hypothetical negative scenario (not as in actual novel) 

The age of a new sentience would soon dominate the planet. And the era of Man would be no more… Holy land becomes unholy. AI regulations remains lax. Robot rabbis conduct circumcisions.

 

 

7.    Seventh Assignment - Settings

2030. The Boomerang Effect commences on October 2, 2030 with the long-anticipated inauguration of Neom City, Saudi Arabia's pinnacle of technological innovation.

Amidst the magnificent spectacle, Crown Prince Mohammed unveils an astonishing $1.3 trillion contract for luxury space capsules with MX Leon, the visionary and ruthless entrepreneur often hailed as a potential successor to Elon Musk. We see China’s ascendancy in the Middle East displaced the United States, adding geopolitical layers to the event.

As the spotlight transitions to the ancient city of Jerusalem, antagonist's journey takes an unforeseen twist. What was meant to be a mission to bestow a brief appearance at science and technology competition to secure the support of wealthy Jewish voters, descent into chaos. Alongside antagonist’s enigmatic companions stand Win Liu, a confidant with a mysterious history, and Jenni, a fembot companion that balances between captivating and unsettling.

 

Some activity takes place in 2030

Wuhan, China and then later at a monastery located at the foot of Wuru Peak of the Songshan mountain range in the Henan Province.

Jerusalem, Historical King David hotel, that stands not far from a border between Israeli and Arab Jerusalem. The Israeli tech genius falls in love with the Palestinian psychic, who is under radar of  psychic warfare, program of Mossad.

Negev Dessert, Israel and parallel world of late Bitcoin’s founder, Satoshi Nakamoto.

Kabbalah temple in a mystical city of Tzfat, city of Upper Galilee, Israel

Authentically through Real-World Exploration. Liora Yoael wrote “2030. The Boomerang Effect” in all actual locations depicted in the book and her firsthand experiences infuses all settings described in the novel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Jackie Grennon Brooks]

7 Questions Assignment attached

JGB 7 Questions.docx

[Stacy HA]

 Story Statement:

[Nancy Lee]

1. Story Statement

A woman with a secret family kills her father then disappears in order to hide her crime and her true identity from her husband and daughter

2. Antagonist

Slipper’s antagonism of her Melanie begins in the womb. She refuses prenatal care, hides the pregnancy from the potential fathers, and then – when she has twins – abandons, then separates them from each other as babies, finally choosing Melanie over her twin sister. Twenty years later, when Melanie is dealing with an unplanned pregnancy of her own, Slipper abandons her again, leaving her hurt, confused, and without clues as to where she went or why.

3. Title

 Slipper 

 The Dark Wherever

 4. Comps

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (For its alternating timelines; tough, fiercely independent young female leads; complicated romantic relationships; big reveals)

 I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins (Alternating timelines; mother who runs away; complicated parent-child relationships)

5. Core Wound and Primary Conflict

A pregnant young woman wrestling with feelings of abandonment, launches a search for her missing mother that takes her back to the Seattle grunge music scene where she discovers lies, a body, and a secret twin sister who has a different father than her own. 

6. Other Conflict: Two Levels

Inner Conflict

Melanie, unexpectedly pregnant at the same time her mother has abandoned their family, is scared, hurt, and confused. Unsure if she even wants the baby, she worries that if she doesn’t get answers about where her mother went and why, she could end up abandoning her own child someday, as well. 

Secondary Conflict

Melanie’s father – a couple years out from a devastating car accident in which he lost an arm – is suffering since her mother disappeared. His mental and emotional health is crumbling, but he is telling obvious lies about what he knows, and resists Melanie’s efforts to find her. She fears that to find her mother and the truth, she must hurt her already ailing father. 

7. Setting

With alternating timelines, “Slipper” moves between present day Seattle, an ordinary family home in an ordinary neighborhood – and 90s grunge-era Seattle, gritty bars, music venues, warehouse crash-pads, and band vans. The story then moves to a squatter colony of artists living off-the-grid outside Sedona, Arizona. 

[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

[JimHCT]

Story Statement

In 2046 America, Lily Proctor and Jeff Maslow must expose the corruption in the government of their town of Vicksburg Gulch, Colorado, and ultimately throughout the country, by stopping Iwanna Dennison and her family from completing the subjugation of American democracy.

Antagonist sketch

Iwanna Dennison, daughter of the six-term President of the United States and CEO of Dennison Enterprises, is running for Governor of Colorado. Despite constant misogynistic treatment by her family, she has led their corporate enterprises successfully, culminating in their development of humanistic robots with advanced AI. She purchases the support of the Reverend Brady Taggert, her political rival and head of the largest Church in the United States. This effectively makes her the Governor-elect, as there are no viable candidates from other parties, resulting from the extensive corruption of the last twenty years under President John Dennison. When her father's health worsens, she takes the opportunity to bypass her brothers and, in partnership with the world's wealthiest person, become President to implement a plan to force non-whites and her political rivals to accept her uncontested leadership, or force them out of the country.

Titles

The current working title is THE BOOK OF DENNISON. It refers to the antagonist and her father by name, the religious overtones of the novel, and, ultimately, the conclusion of their plotline.

The original title was THE WORLD ON HER SHOULDERS, a reference to the antagonist and Ayn Rand's ATLAS SHRUGGED. The novel takes place outside of Colorado Springs, and a major theme is the abuse of power by people who align themselves directly with the Rand philosophy of Objectivism.

Comparables

Many dystopian novels recently published fall more into the science fiction/fantasy genre, which I have very intentionally tried to avoid because I want the reader to see today in the near future. While I do have some "gadgets," some cool, some pure evil, they are all easily envisioned by today's reader, so though the novel is set in 2046, there is little "fantastic" to be found.

"The One" by John Marrs comes quite close to this approach as it leverages technology already in use today, DNA testing, for what might seem a positive application: finding one's true love. It's now on my wish list, but I won't be able to read it until after the conference. I can tell I'm going to like his approach very much and I'm sure I'll learn from it. It also seems to be well received.

"The Greater Good: A dystopian novel of Divided America" by Seth Daniel Parker, is very close to my theme and is set in a time after the United States has been divided geographically. While my novel does not take that approach, it is clearly inspired by the author's similar observations of how bad things can get in this country should they continue to deteriorate. I learned from my Amazon search in this exercise that there is very little fiction on my primary theme, which is what the US could realistically see if the far-right in this country succeeds with plans already in flight. Most hits are fantasy or post-apocalyptic, which is not my objective. I want people to envision reality, not fantasy.

Hook

In 2046 Colorado, a woman must flee to Mexico to obtain an abortion that threatens her life. When she is later arrested for murder, she must challenge the far-right regime that has captured American government at all levels, and decide whether to allow her powerful but corrupt father to assist in her fight.

Inner Conflict

Lily Proctor is fully aware of the world in which she lives, society and government overwhelmed by the successes of the far-right to corrupt and undermine all aspects of culture and infuse them with extreme religious morality. Like many in her generation, she is resigned to this reality and unsure how to do anything about it, but when her 6-week pregnancy is picked up by an airport embryonic-detection system, the reality of this world comes front and center for her, abortion illegal at the federal level, no exceptions permitted. When she learns the pregnancy is ectopic and threatens her life, she must break the nation's laws. When her boyfriend Jeff Maslow, a teacher in the reclusive new town of Vicksburg Gulch, developed by Iwanna Dennison, is arrested for illegally quoting the banned movie "Dead Poets Society" to his students, Lily must enter the fray against the powers, local and national, to extract both of them from the legal jeopardy in which they find themselves, in the process discovering the much greater evil plan already underway. Unknown to Jeff, Lily's real name is Malodor, daughter of the world's wealthiest man. Though she has committed to cutting off ties with her father, she realizes she must break that vow to keep her and Jeff from a lifetime of prison: only her father Noel can get them out of their situation.

Secondary Conflict

Institutions throughout the country have been taken over by the far-right, setting up the inevitable conflicts of morality and law that impact the lives of all citizens, but particularly those out-of-power who believe in the liberal democracy the United States championed throughout the 20^th and 21^st centuries. When it becomes clear to Lily and her new romantic interest, Jeff Maslow, that there is something unusual about the Dennison-financed company-town Vicksburg Gulch, they agree to investigate, Jeff taking a long-sought job as a teacher there. What they witness, and ultimately come into conflict with, is a microcosm of the fantasy 1950's-like world the far-right looks to as their Eden, their perfect society: Jim Crow aside. Despite her family connection, Lily has made the conscious decision to fight alone without any request for assistance, but eventually realizes there is far more to fight than she and Jeff could ever imagine.

Setting

All aspects of American culture in 2046 have been influenced by the far-right, who were empowered in 2024 to implement a system of political dominance through the erosion of the voting process at all levels of government. What ensued since was the implementation of their culture war against progressivism, in theory, founded in Christianity but lacking any evidence of loving thy neighbor. Abortion is banned outright, prosecuted as murder. LGBTQ+ rights are revoked at all levels of government, and the "enforcement organization" known as the Guardian Angels, better known in places like Iran as morality police, are used to enforce these values on the street level, often with the assistance of law enforcement. Educational curricula have been replaced to retell the American story in a way that whitewashes the actions of the past, and any fiction that appears to support individualism with themes like "carpe-diem" are removed from library bookshelves and theaters. The US has invaded Mexico and taken control of the state of Chihuahua, under the pretext of protecting its borders, and rationalizing a subsequent deportation of Mexicans. This results in worldwide sanctions of America by much of the First World, crushing the American economy, and making American workers even more dependent on the government. Iwanna and Noel eventually use this to their perverse profit.

The setting is the most vital aspect of the novel as it is today's America tweaked just enough to make the reader realize how viable some of the evil it portrays really is. As it is also a dark comedy, an early scene demonstrates some of the latest and greatest tech: LYSSA, a Dennison product that detects anger from anyone in its range and alerts the nearest members of the "Good Guys With Guns" volunteer organization to draw on whoever is displaying the anger: their solution to gun laws where the legal age to carry is 12. Later, Lily, who takes a job as a "stewardess" ("woke" sensitivity about appropriate careers for women abolished), looks out the window to witness the latest addition to Mount Rushmore: President Dennison, to the right of Lincoln, his profile looking over his shoulder, to the east. And, as all federal complexes are now used to enforce federal law, the "heartbeat" detectors that can identify the presence of an embryo. When a TSA agent discovers Lily's pregnancy, he promptly registers the embryo and assigns it a social security number. It is now a citizen with full constitutional rights.

[Adele Falco]

NYPitch.docx

[Adele Falco]

Adele Falco

NY Pitch, September 2023

 

Story Statement

An AI scientist must reconcile unexpected limitations in her ability to follow a logical and pre-programmed life path provided by an intelligent life assistant or Projektion, as it is known to the individuals who use them.  But she steps outside her own Projektion and finds a world of beauty, pain and hope.

Antagonistic Force

ProjektIon develops intelligent systems, AI assistants that transparently guide and respond to humans to help them lead quality lives. Emma Gatewood is a leader among the thousands of engineers helping to build these systems. By constraining the effects of human impulse, Projektions create patterns that can tell us when and how to have children, when to work and when to pursue leisure, how much and when to sleep and eat, and eventually, as the systems builds knowledge of an individual, how to feel and how to respond to our own feelings and those of others. ProjektIon is building the tools for optimized self-fulfillment.

But Emma disrupts her own Projektion by buying a three-hundred-year-old farmhouse that sits on the ten remaining acres of an abandoned farm – clearly an irrational decision. But something is driving her to this place, this landscape that she can neither manage nor explain. Neighbors demand she gentrify it to the standards of their cliche, upscale development. Then a serious illness drives her even further away from the life she had planned. The neglected antique farmhouse, a disease that makes its way in her body without her consent – these forces can’t be solved through her Projektion and Emma must lean on others if she is to survive.

 

Potential Titles

1.     ProjectIons for a Quality Life

2.     A Labor of No Love

3.     All the Apples We Can Find

 

Comparables:

This is a story with an eco-literary and nature theme:

·       Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

·       Flight Behaviour, Barbara Kingsolver

·       Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens

Hook Line:

An AI scientist designs and believes in the ability of intelligent assistants to help us lead better lives. She trusts in this science to avoid the typical pitfalls of human experience; love, loss, loneliness. But her discovery of the beauty and threats lurking in the unpredictable corners of her life drives her to see life in another way and she must challenge her own defenses if she is to survive.

Expansion of Conflict 

Emma’s core belief is that predictability ensures happiness. She chose a career in data science in order to gain control of her loneliness, the rejection she has experienced - as she puts it in a talk with her Projektion monitor, her unsolvable “glitch.”

“I was born with an unsolvable glitch. I could not be loved - that’s it. It happens in nature, it happens in data, it happens in all the systems in the universe - illogical, unsolvable glitches that defy the reliable models. I have that kind of glitch. I looked in the mirror and saw that I didn’t look much different from other kids. But inside of me, a disastrous error was lurking. I could never be loved. I don’t blame my parents for not wanting to attach themselves to me in the way I saw other kids relied on their parents for all kinds of things. They didn’t notice if I came home late, dirty and scratched from my forays into the wooded lots behind our house. It took them a whole day to realize that I had cut off my own long pigtails. They didn’t notice that I was being stalked by a predator - a man they invited into our house time and time again, who would push me up against the wall and rub himself against me while I softly whined and cried.  Were they abusive? No. Not at all. They fed and clothed me and took my picture on the first and last day of school. The only thing they forgot was to actually see me, hear me, figure out who I was and would become and they didn’t feel it was their job to shape the outcome. It was up to me to create an identity for myself.”

Emma felt she could never be loved and had come to accept that. But she could also escape from this realization if she built a world around her that didn’t require attachment. When her Projektion determines that children would make her life more fulfilling, she signs up for IVF and has twins.  Her work involves building silent, invisible data models that guide people in their life choices from the most mundane to the most profound. She helps others make choices so that they don’t need to make them for themselves, avoiding the risk of emotionally charged misjudgments. The Projektion monitors take away the pain of waiting to be seen or heard by others.  In a world programmed by machines, you don’t wait to get noticed. You are always being observed and noticed.

 And this works for Emma until she usurps her own safely contained Projektion. She moves away from the city to a place where she can begin to feel the earth, see its movements, feel the subtle beauty of a meadow or the bursting of fruit on old trees in an abandoned orchard. But she cannot manage such a place alone and the wealthy neighbors want her to conform with their standards for modernization. Emma begins to uncover the silent messages of an abandoned farm. What would happen if she tried to revive it? And the old barn - the one sold “as is” and probably needed to be demolished. Isn’t it a statement to the work of those that came before her, people that worked the land and lived upon what they could produce with their hands? She sees her children flourish in this environment that allows them freedom and exploration. She does not want to change this old place into a designer tribute to the past - she wants to make it real in the present.  For that, she’ll need help and she finds it online when she reaches out to someone with the avatar “TractorWheel.”

TractorWheel has history with her place but it would seem they have nothing else in common. He has worked on farms his whole life and she studies data models to see how they can become more intelligent through subtle uptake of people’s behaviors. But they both have boundaries that have stood strong until now. She in her virtual world, he in his gruff manner of avoiding interaction with others.

 But something unexplainable draws them closer. And when Emma needs real help - a human hand in the real world - her Projektion fails to recognize this, and she must reconcile the ability of intelligent systems to navigate human experience.

 

Setting

This story is set mainly in an antique farmhouse in disrepair, located in a rural area some 150 miles from NYC. The land itself was once a productive farm, established by the first settlers to the area – English Colonists - who cleared the fields and stacked rocks to build miles upon mile of still-standing walls. These walls stretch across the property in varying angles.

The farmhouse itself dates to the 1700s. Its floors are tilted, its doors and windows had been randomly updated over the decades, but none held fast to any seam. A large fireplace in the main room on the first floor was used as a hearth and over - its portal for cooking still intact. A narrow staircase leads to the second floor.  The floors were made of chestnut, a tree once abundant in the area (now nearly extinct). They had been worn but still held strong, joined together by antique handmade nails. The ceilings were less than seven feet high and lined with thick supporting beams.  Over the years, additions and renovations to the farmhouse had been made.

What stands out in this environment is the land upon which the farmhouse sits. It is ten acres - a sizeable lot by today’s standards. But the farm once consisted of three hundred acres, which had been sold off in increments over the years. The house stood close to one of the developments that had been built on the relinquished land - Orchard Estates.  It contained large modern houses that had been designed in “farmhouse” style. Each of those houses sat on one acre.

The remaining area of the land consists of a large meadow ringed by tall fir trees, an orchard, a wooded pine stand, rolling hay fields, a large kitchen garden and a severely deteriorated barn. The barn has not been opened for many years and was sold “as is” - without any kind of certification to its structural integrity. The inspector advised her to tear it down after she moved in. Its doors were long overgrown by thick wild grape vines - some of them with stems as thick as small trees. But the muted beauty of the barn becomes apparent - its integration to the landscape, its hand in the various decades of work performed on the farm. Emma will open this barn with the help of TractorWheel and together they will discover its contents - a historical archive held in time for their discovery.

[Rebecca Chianese]

Seven Assignments Writers Pitch Conf 2023 (2).docx

[JSBaumeister]

Story Statement

Privileged college student Dave Nolan’s life is spinning out of control. Increasingly serious drug and alcohol addiction issues are destroying his relationships and loosening his grip on reality. After a near fatal car crash, and now facing questioning from the police about the mysterious disappearance of an ex-girlfriend, Dave skips town and heads back to New York. With the help of his family, he enters rehab and endeavors to get his once promising future back on track. Just as Dave seems to be forging a new path, tragedy strikes and threatens to send him careening back into the abyss. 

 

Antagonistic Force

 

Minor antagonists are at various points Dave's ex-girlfriend Lindsey who provides the macguffin for his descent into addiction. Detective Toussaint who is looking into the mysterious disappearance of Britney. Madison, the girlfriend of Dave's best friend Steve, who attempts to ruin Dave's relationship with the girl he begins dating after rehab; and Jacques, a former friend who Dave blames for Steve's death. In the end though Dave is both the protagonist and the antagonist, as his insecurities, addictions and the internal struggles he grapples with are the driving factor in keeping him from becoming the person he wants to be.

 

Proposed Titles

 

1. You Can Never Go Home Again

2. Free Falling

 

Genre: Literary Fiction

 

Comparables

 

1. Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis

2. My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

3. Twelve by Nick Mcdonell

 

Core Wounds/Secondary Conflicts

 

Primary: Dave's breakup with the girl he considers the love of his life plunges him into despair, addiction and cruelty. He struggles against his feelings of loneliness, insecurity and weakness to try to become the person he hopes to be. 

 

Secondary: After reaching a breaking point, Dave emerges from rehab and tries to find a sober path forward in life while dealing with the challenges of sober relationships, the temptation of his old friends, ennui and a feeling that sober life is emotionally blunted and there must be more out there.

 

Secondary: After the death of his best friend, Dave struggles to retain his grasp on sobriety as he feels those responsible have escaped consequences for their actions.

 

Settings

 

Part I is set at a liberal arts college in the fictional town of Maskirovka, Ohio. Dave, originally from NYC, struggles as he feels isolated from home and like he has little to nothing in common with most of the other students. The first half of the novel travels (briefly) through the classrooms of the college, but is primarily set in various bars, houses and parties as we see Dave's life and addictions spin out of control.

 

Part II is set primarily in New York City with brief sections taking place at a rehab facility after Dave returns from Ohio. In NYC scenes take place around the city in various bars and restaurants and friend's apartments as Dave tries to forge a new sober path forward, with a new woman, while trying to resist the draw of his old vices. After the death of his best friend, Dave visits friends at Princeton and considers transfering there as his commitment to his new path is pushed to the limit.