Algonkian Retreats and Workshops - Assignments 2024 and 2025

[Frances Reed]

STORY STATEMENT: What’s real and what’s and illusion? And if something looks real and feels real, does it matter if it’s real or not?  DANIEL NAYERI

Living in a universe where hologram illusions are on the rise and flying chairs as transport the norm, seventeen-year-old Clea wishes she was as gifted as her Adept family. Her insecurities prevent her from realizing her own unique talents until she comes across one of the last old Illusion Centers and finds herself in a race to save her world.

 

ANTAGONIST(S)

This story is a race against time involving a group of people (Pure’s) who, four days from now, plan to destroy all illusions and in doing so, in the chaos that follows, take over the Government.

The main antagonists are the current second in command of the Government, David Peterson, the newly appointed Prime Two. He’s planning the coup. Twenty years previously there had been an attempt to topple the government using old style illusions and the perpetrator was never identified or caught. That perp was David Peterson. He has been biding his time to stage a second attempt – this time, one which will succeed. His motivations are power and greed, but he is “politician polished” in his public dealings.

He is aided by Mara Allenby Founder of The Pure’s, and her CEO daughter, Arianne. Arianne is a driving force behind the new coup attempt. Prime Two is her father and she is determined that her family take over the Government and her father’s earlier humiliation be erased. Supremely confidant, she enjoys being in charge and is ruthless in her pursuit of her goals. Not achieving success in anything she wants to do is never a part of her thought process.

Mara Allenby is fixated on Prime Two’s achieving the apex of his career. She’s proud of her daughter, less outwardly aggressive in her dealings, but equally ruthless.

 

BREAKOUT TITLE

ANAMORPHOSIS– Book 1- ILLUSIONS

ILLUSIONS (this is what I have been calling it)

 

COMPARABLES

This one is hard as this is a YA Fantasy, and YA fantasy right now is dominated by Romantasy and somewhat dystopian stories, involving myths, legends, fairy stories and lots of Fae. ILLUSIONS is a pure fast paced fantasy adventure and takes place over only four days. 

 Closest comps:  Brandon Sanderson’s SKYWARD series – he writes terrific fast paced adventures. His stories are not romances although they may touch on that. He is light years ahead of me – but the feeling of his stories is similar. 

The world illusion creation of Ursula K Le Guin's WIZARD OF EARTHSEA,  

And - I can’t ignore the Holodeck on the Starship USS Enterprise in STARTREK.

 

HOOK LINE

In a land where reality blurs with dazzling holograms, an introverted teen precipitates a race against time to thwart a zealot’s planned coup, and discovers she is far more capable than she ever dreamed.  

 

CONFLICT

            PRIMARY – The protagonist(s) must stop a fanatic from destroying all illusions and taking over their country. They have very little time, only four days, and must rely on their own abilities to stop the coup from happening.

            SECONDARY – Rivalry between Zach and his clone Chance

INTERPERSONAL

Main protagonists are Clea Fletcher, Zach Owens and his clone Chance 

CLEA: 

There are many groups of people with special talents in this world but the only one we deal with here are Adepts and Illusion Creators. Clea is part of a family of gifted Adepts, but her talent is Memory Walking which is considered only a minor ability. Her mother, Marguerite, is an Empath and although she loves her daughter, she was disappointed that Clea was not a Foreseer and Clea knows this. She feels overshadowed by her family’s talents and sometimes overwhelmed by her mother’s extreme extraverted personality. Her mother can be exhausting. Her father died when Clea was eight and her brother Naran who is a Time Linker, twelve. She has a stepfather she loves – Anton, a Mind Thrower. Clea lacks confidence in her abilities as she always compares herself to her family and feels inferior.

ZACH/CHANCE

Zach is the grandson of a Master Illusion Creator and has inherited his talent. He sees in Clea how bright she is, and he encourages her participation and input. He is also attracted to her. He is the accidental creator of Chance who is his clone, so Chance has the same feelings for Clea as Zach does – this causes conflict between them. They both have the same memories, habits etc. Only when Chance is created do their life experiences start to. differ.

 

SETTING

Set on a world very similar to ours but in someways more advanced. People no longer use roads as primary transport but travel in air transport lanes – stacked by speed and cost, transport is always some kind of seating. Sofas and couches for families, air chaises for most people, recliners and fauteuils for the rich. For poorer students like Clea, an old kitchen chair works fine.

Above her, the family transit lanes, an hour ago full of plump couches carrying moms and kids on their wayhome from various activities, were down to the occasional flying sofa. 

Her lane, twenty feet above tree level, was reserved for the slower air-chairs––the ones not in good working order, nor pleasing to look at­‑- old chrome kitchen chairs with their green padded seats, elderly wooden rockers, and salvaged bar stools––a lane reserved for students, like Clea, counting their every cipher, and transient workers, old folks, and the eccentric. 

Clea felt right at home there, riding her old duct-taped chair, which barely got her from one place to the next.

Every transport has an invisible weather shield, heat and cooling. Its energy comes from an apple sized power pack hidden under the seat base. Controls on newer transport are holograms. Older models like Clea’s have steering rods and instrument displays. Some work better than others!

 

What sets this world apart though is the use of hologram illusions, all controlled by the government. Here, for a monthly fee, you can rent your illusions of choice from the government’s Automated Illusion Provider’s (AIP’s) found on every street corner and in most shops and eating places. You can choose anything on your wish list. Good looks? Weight loss? Secret fantasy? All yours, if you keep up the payments. Before AIP’s, privately owned Illusion Centers dominated the industry, but that was eons ago before the government regulated the market for safety, national security, and profit.

There are two kinds of illusions. Modern holograms and the old packet illusions which were sold in actual packets by illusion type. Unlike holograms which last as long as you pay the rent for them, packet illusions have a finite life – most only a few days, although there are a few expensive ones that can last for years.

There is growing concern however that holograms are beginning to take over from what is real – more than 50% of government revenue is now from holograms. People carry around small scanners so they can check if what they see is real or is an illusion. The scanner disrupts a hologram, just long enough to know. Modern scanners don’t work on packet illusions because those illusions are considered obsolete.

Communications is mostly through wrist-coms although a user can activate a ‘hook’ which will bring a hologram of the recipient to wherever the call originates, so they can see and participate in what is happening

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[Sylvia Kuzman]

MEMOIR - The Girl, The Physicist and The Beauty of Reality

(1) STORY STATEMENT 

(Memoir) A NASA physicist with paranormal powers steps in when the teenage daughter of neighbors barely survives a car accident and teaches her how to live--in more than one dimension. (Q: Should this be in first person for Memoir?)

(2) THE ANTAGONISTIC FORCE

At a plot/surface level, the antagonist is played by a collective of arrogant healthcare-provider villains who I gave pet names (Dr. Propofol, Dr. Clicky Pen, Dr. Big, etc.). Their often shocking behavior provides opportunities for readers to root for me and openly consider my reflections. A drumbeat of unrelated and unexpected medical events over decades underscores this antagonistic force. 

At the thematic level, the antagonist is the widespread, outdated belief in an objective, Newtonian, deterministic reality—akin to when we believed the earth was flat, because that was how we experienced it. I explore the unnecessary tension between science and the inexplicable, tapping into a growing awareness that those two may not have to tussle with each other anymore. A century of quantum physics research demonstrates that two things can be true at once. 

(3) CREATE A BREAKOUT TITLE

The Girl, The Physicist and The Beauty of Reality - a quantum memoir

Remarkable Happens Everywhere - a story of love, quantum physics—and everything else

(4) COMPARABLES

This is likely too long. I’m ready for feedback.

I think of my literary memoir as most comparable to Stephanie Foo’s hybrid memoir, What My Bones Know. In both, a more academic understanding of something complicated unfolds for the reader through the narrator's dramatic story (Foo-complex trauma, mine-the subjective nature of reality). 

However, the mood in mine is more like Robert M Pirsig’s classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance due to its  reflective exploration of universal truths, but it’s a more plot-driven, female-narrated version for the quantum/AI era. A real-life story for fans of the movies The Matrix and Inception.

And, although firmly a scene-driven memoir, underneath, it reveals a theory that unifies quantum phyics, metaphysics, philosopy and AI theory, incorporating ideas similar to those found in Deepak Chopra’s You are the Universe (metaphysical), Michio Kaku's The God Equation (quantum physics), Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth (philosophy) and Rizwan Virk's The Simulation Hypothesis: An MIT Computer Scientist Shows Why AI, Quantum Physics, and Eastern Mystics All Agree We Are in a Video Game.

If comparables are about assessing the market, there is another element at play for my memoir. 

What AI, consciousness, and quantum physics might mean for our reality and how we see ourselves is a concept catching fire, and my supporting character—Physicist Tom Campbell—is in the thick of it. A sought-after guest on popular podcasts (The Joe Rogan Experience, The Bialik Breakdown and The Telepathy Tapes, amongst others), the audiobook of his 2003, 900-page trilogy My Big Theory of Everything is currently listed on Amazon as Number 1 in Physics. I am scheduled to interview Tom on his YouTube channel in June. I am not sure how to treat this connection to someone else’s rising star. He is an 81-year-old physicist—I did not expect him to be trending when I started to write.

(5) WRITE YOUR LOGLINE WITH PRIMARY CONFLICT AND CORE WOUND

When I was horribly injured and almost died in a brutal car accident as a teenager, a NASA physicist neighbor with paranormal abilities showed me how quantum physics and his Theory of Everything held the key to surviving and thriving through that trauma—and later, what it meant for becoming fearless.

(6) INNER CONFLICT AND SECONDARY CONFLICT

Sketch out the conditions for the inner conflict your protagonist will have. Why will they feel in turmoil? Conflicted? Anxious? Sketch out one hypothetical scenario in the story wherein this would be the case--consider the trigger and the reaction.

FEAR: When I first moved from Queens, NY to the South as a child, I was rejected by my schoolmates as a “Yankee.” As a teenager, I was physically traumatized by a terrible car accident and a long, brutal recovery. My loving mother suffered undiagnosed anxiety which caused her to paint vivid disaster scenarios for me and tell me she would kill herself if anything else ever happened to me. A shy girl with a naturally carefree spirit, I became afraid.

This sets up the conditions for my bedridden self to find power and peace in the philosophies that the supporting character in the story—physicist Tom Campbell—shares with me as a teenager. Further “fear tests” (a near-death car accident, the death of a friend, a difficult childbirth, a scary diagnosis for my child, erroneous fatal diagnosis, aborted surgery, another near-death and, finally, in the last chapter, the removal of the last shard of glass remaining from the decades-earlier accident) force me to cultivate a mindset that transcends fear.

Next, likewise sketch a hypothetical scenario for the "secondary conflict" involving the social environment. Will this involve family? Friends? Associates? What is the nature of it?

CONFLICTED SENSE OF REALITY: As an adult with a Harvard MBA under my belt, I landed the Big Job at one of the most prestigious consulting companies on the planet—a place where my understanding of a larger reality would be considered crazy or, worse, “not academic.” Even though a dogmatic attachment to a disproven Newtonian reality seemed less intellectual or academic than the skeptical curiosity that has always driven science to ask, “What is next?”, this prevailing attitude caused me to keep my ideas to myself. 

A core conflict arises when my son gets diagnosed with physical ailments and learning differences but the most prestigious hospitals in Boston failed to suggest satisfactory solutions, and I had to consider: Would I risk exposing him to a world where healing happens in a more unconventional way? The answer was YES. I decided that if a philosophical approach was going to be a core tool for me and my family, then I had to understand better. This inspired me to reconnect more deeply with Tom and pursue a quest to come to terms with what is real.

(7) SETTING

Given this memoir spans decades, settings are varied.

ONE - CHILDHOOD in Charlottesville, Virginia

• Childhood backdrops in the 1970s—a football game, two schools, a neighborhood
• University of Virginia Teaching Hospital—during my extended stay, protocols, personalities, other patients and the daily physical humiliation of being a bedridden patient build a vivid world

TWO  - TOM/CONSCIOUSNESS

• Whistlefield Farm, 1970s—the estate of Bob Monroe (author of Journeys Out of the Body) where his privately-funded experiments design to test the possibilities of  consciousness took place in a purpose-built lab.
• The Monroe Institute in the 2010s—a leading global center for exploring expanded states of consciousness built on a mountain near Whistlefield farm. Their immersive programs help thousands of participants from around the world experience the benefits of meditation and learn how to travel out-of-body.
• The King of the Mountain Cabin in Tennessee, the site of a retreat with Tom Campbell where he tries to teach others how to access alternate states of consciousness

THREE - ADULTHOOD

• Harvard Business School in the early 1990s
• Central London in the late 1990s--Home, and a hospital 
• Boston in the 2000s--Home, and a hospital
• Maine- Home, and a hospital in the 2010s. The home in Maine appears in the final scene, and plays a role in the denouement.

[Gerl Dine]

This is a memoir.  

1. Gerl Dine is a Midwestern wife and mom who longs to be fully known. So long as she pretends to be fine, she doubts that anyone’s love for her is real. In a dangerous experiment, she seeks to redeem a traumatic past by staging a re-enactment of it, hoping she can show up differently and forgive herself.  When this proves disastrous, she has no choice but to end her suffering from the inside out. 

 

2. Carl has nothing left to lose.  Molested from birth, his cynicism is natural, and he grieves the suffering of the world. His one vanity is his long brown hair, which he pampers with salon shampoo scented with rosemary and mint. He has crooked, yellowing teeth, and he reveals the whole mouthful when he laughs at his own sarcasm.  A pleaser, Gerl Dine is in awe (and envy) of his easy rudeness. She is kind to him, like she has been trained to be kind to everyone whether she likes them or not. Her innocence is the one thing he doesn’t have, never had, and she awakens in him a craving that turns into madness.  After he first hurts her, her sadness infuriates him, and he keeps hurting her more, trying to possess her so he can make it better, so he can prove to her she’ll be ok.  When he burns her apartment down, he is only wanting to give her a reason to need him, to move in with him so he can take care of her and she can see how much he loves her.  He believes she is the one person on earth who would never hurt him, and, as the story will later reveal, he is wrong.  He spends his whole life obsessing over her, even after he marries someone else, and this ensures he never has a real or intimate relationship with anyone.  His obsession is his own protection, even as it leads to his undoing. He can’t truly trust anyone, and because of their experiences, neither can she.  

 

3. Titles:

   1. Man Eater

   2. From Fucked-up to Free

   3. Sukha My Dukkha 

 

4. Comparables: I plan to spend more time reading comparables.  This is a huge void for me.

   1. Leslie Jamison  Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story

      1. My femoir is similar to Jamison’s in terms of its honesty and some of its subject matter (divorce).  Mine presses the ugly truth a little further, in cruder terms, and offers a bit more hope in the end. 

   2. Untamed, by Glennon Doyle

      1. My femoir has some similar subject matter and style. 

 

5. Hook Line: Gerl Dine, a Midwestern wife and mom, hates her husband and her fake life.  Afraid she is doomed to be a man-hater forever, she faces down its roots - her own self-rejection and a secret past - and risks losing everything for the chance to fully inhabit herself.

 

6. Gerl Dine’s inner conflict is with herself.  She hates her body and has been sabotaging her well being since childhood. Raised by unhappy women who scorn any woman who is sexually alive or selfish enough to be happy, Gerl Dine vows to be the first happy woman in her family.  To do so, she must risk making choices for herself, but her mother abandons her for her small rebellion.  Lost, she throws away all the rules and realizes too late how the rules were meant to protect her.  Badly harmed and nearly killed, she stuffs her hate and her shame deep down and embarks on a life of pretending she is fine. She gets married but realizes that both self-loathing and its inversion, man-hating, is part of her inheritance, and she doesn’t know how to shake it.  She tries harmless approaches to healing - medication, meditation, religion, art, but nothing seems to free her of her hatred.  She feels the answer is outside of her—if she can get one person to know everything and still love her, she’ll be ok.  She decides to be vulnerable with her husband and tell him everything, and his response is that he doesn’t want to know.  She cares about him and wants a good life for her children, but her fury at a marriage where sex is required but emotional vulnerability is prohibited makes divorce inevitable. She aches for her past tormentor, because at least he knows what she knows; there is no secret required. She faces down this man who harmed her, fantasizing about a do-over where she can rewrite the story and show up differently.  She thinks that if she can either defend herself well or fall in love with him, she can finally accept herself and be happy. The experience ends in disaster, and she is still left with the mystery of how to connect with and love her body and all its memories.  She wants all of it to belong, but none of it is acceptable.  Determined to heal at all costs, she will try anything, and a gay man grieving his impotence on the night before his death arrives with an opportunity for healing that requires Gerl Dine to silence all the judging women in her head.  She misses her husband and the family they once were, but in order to be free, she has to continue to risk being true and hope she can bear the consequences.  Claiming all that she is creates a complex blessing. Learning to love herself makes her love everyone else a lot better, but it means others may love her a lot less. 

 

7.  Setting

This story has its roots in the rural Midwest, a land where survival is a struggle.  The soil is clay, studded with rocks, and there are no rules against poisoning the the creeks with discarded dishwashers, broken cars, and paint cans.  Despite this, the beauty of this land prevails.  Vines swallow up entire yards full of trash, studding them with purple morning glory.  Fox tiptoe across the fields, birds sing. To survive as a woman, one must buck up and stay resilient in the face of harsh, age-old rules. In this environment, saturated with religious beliefs, social customs, and stereotypes about women and the female body, everyone earns a reputation for friendliness that belies the scorn tainting the very groundwater.  Here, no one hates women more than women themselves.  The message is, How Dare You Be Happier Than I Am. It is a land of fences, and the innocent groundhog who dares to frolic across the field will have its skull nailed to the fence post. 

Part of the story is set in Kansas, where the vast space allows freedom but the wind prohibits any anchoring roots. The harsh gales hurl grit in one's eyes, and it is hard to see clearly.  There is no sheltering tree, no forest in which one can hide.  Everything is stripped down to its most vulnerable, and everything can be blown away.

[R. Atwood]

STORY STATEMENT

Find his lost love no matter what the answer.

The protagonist’s goal is to find his wife, whom he believes to be alive but unable to reach him after a sailing accident three years ago. He must overcome his own fear, doubt, and pain to stay committed to this outrageous possibility of a reunion. Haunted by his nighttime dreams of his wife appearing before him, he is convinced she is speaking to him from the present moment with her cryptic and sometimes direct guidance on how he might find her. He must follow the clues she shares and those he encounters along the way to locate her. He has to sleuth his way through to an answer and overcome many challenges. He will have to endure a certain amount of hardship, personal injury, insult, and navigating deception to locate his loved ones. He will encounter some friendly allies on his journey who are compassionate to his situation. His spirit is both tormented and relentless.

THE ANTAGONIST - 

Our part-time harbor master, part-time dive boat captain, is the main antagonist and the ring leader of the other antagonists who work collaboratively to prevent our main character from reaching their goal, not because they inherently want harm to come to the protagonist but more because of sacred duty and sworn oath to protect the island's secrets including the alien race underneath the ocean of which he has earned their respect. 

As a former Navy sailor, our sea-faring adventurer emulates the mysteries of the ocean with a layered personality, and it is not until vulnerable moments in the story that the antagonist shows us depths beyond the muscle-bound warrior façade that he is most known for. He walks freely among the Atlanteans and so is, by nature, not a racist or bigoted man but guided by a higher sense of purpose and inter-species equality. He has an inner ordering principle that emulates confidence and certainty with seriousness, and somewhere in the recesses of his voice, there are hints of deep empathy for the world and for the pain and suffering of our main character in his quest to be reunited with his family. The boat and docks are the antagonist’s dojo, and so he moves with extreme ease and grace when tending to lines, securing equipment, and giving orders to deckhands or other boat captains. He is masterful at all things nautical.  

CONJURING YOUR BREAKOUT TITLE

1.    The 13^th Pier

2.    Beyond the Waves

3.    Secret of the Deep

Comparables

Admittingly, I need to deepen into my genre more. I just recently started to focus in more on Thrillers\Paranormal from Sci-Fi and it’s feeling right and still a lot of diversity of writers in this genre as paranormal can mean a wide variety of things.

So I will need to choose some hypothetical comparables now and revise as I read the Genre and also get a sense of what is currently the popular new first-time authors.

Recognizing that these authors are too established as actual comparables, I am suggesting these two authors now to complete the exercise and will revise.

Anthony M. Strong’s John Decker Supernatural Thrillers. 

Perhaps more with the protagonist up against the phenomena, less on the monster hunter aspect.

Jeff VanderMeer with Annihilation and his four-book Southern Reach series because of his cohort of characters, including a biologist.  

 

Own hook line (logline) with conflict and core wound

When a missing boat reappears after being lost at sea, a journalist is activated to find answers and reunite with his wife, obscured by the mystery of the ocean and an island that is protecting a supernatural secret.

Conflict

Inner conflict – Sam would feel conflicted that he is putting his own life at risk when his daughter has already lost her mom. He doesn’t want to be reckless and leave her alone in the world and what the answers that he is after is dangerous. So, there are moments where he realizes he is risking it all, and the consequences of failure are so high that he tries to overcome those tense moments with super human strength and when the moment relaxes he is exhausted and embarrassed at the risk that he has taken. The irresponsibility of a parent who is risking their life for a personal crusade that could end up with them dead.  I think he writes her a letter. It's almost like a final letter that a soldier would write on the battlefield, but he does it more often. And it gives a moment to reconnect with why the action is important, the human and tender side. It also memorializes the activity and allows for reflection.

As for the secondary conflict, I can conceive of two that will emerge. The museum director who is an ally to our protagonist, will want to help him find the answers he is looking for. He has a propensity for intrigue and wants to solve riddles as a lover of history, but his inner conflict is fear of losing his own life or being incarcerated again for sharing any information that would jeopardize his own personal freedom. He stops himself, doesn’t give the answers that our charter is looking for and he hates himself for it. He hates the yoke and it makes him sad, depressed and angry. Is there a place in the story for him to take a risk, to 

Setting

The primary setting of the story is the Island of Bermuda but we will want to go beyond the resort and tourist life an get a behind the scenes of the island, and bringing out the gritty side of the island. Beaches, and waves are the backdrop not necessarily the destination. 

Ocean Scene – evokes the danger of the ocean, that things are not always beachy. Introduces our main antagonist 

Mental Hospital – evokes the pain of loss from the patients, but also the protectiveness from sub-antagonists that don’t really want our protagonist to get the answers that he is looking for.

Museum of History – This is the oasis of hope where our protagonist finds an ally. It’s a safer place on the island, and one where our main character learns and unlocks secrets.   

Administrative/City Planning Office – A work-place that is slightly dark and ominous.  

Restaurant – Somewhere where the Museum Director and the Main Character connect 1:1. 

TBD – The main charterer needs a place that he writes to his daughter. Either the hotel room, a café, or some in-between place. 

Off-island settings

Under Ocean Scene – This is climax scene with the whales. It evokes serenity, stillness, and helplessness.

The Interrogation Room and the 8^th Gate – This is the big reveal scene and is eerie, ominous, and we see the cause of the phenomena. 

[Patricia]

 

1. Act of Story Statement

British expat Maurice Symington, who knows the correct way to behave and expects the same of others, comes home to find the grown son of his long-estranged brother on the doorstep of his Washington, D.C., home. How to respond to this unwelcome intrusion threatens to upend Maurice’s predictable, quiet life in the novel “Georgetown and a Basset Hound.”

Good-natured, well-meaning nephew Mike, a recent college graduate, has the smarts to gain acceptance to an elite medical program at pricey Georgetown University near Maurice’s home, but not the means to pay for it. As a last resort, his luckless father, Tom, has sent him from Texas to Maurice in the hope that uncle might be willing to help nephew.

It’s everything that tidy, exacting Maurice doesn’t want. Ten years after a painful parting from his only love, Maurice has walled himself off from the world, contenting himself with making properly brewed pots of tea, walking his clumsy but affable basset Henry, and re-reading the British canon.

He finds himself living cheek-by-jowl with Mike who, in looking for the guidance he never received from hapless Tom, expects wise answers from this new father figure — a role Maurice never wished to take on. When Tom too arrives unexpectedly, the brothers lock horns repeatedly before being caught in an unraveling of secrets and misunderstandings that have crippled both their lives.

Now Maurice must decide whether to keep braving the painful uncovering of past harm  — or simply to send his only relations away and again retreat behind the wall that has offered such reliable and familiar, if uninspiring, safety.

2. The Antagonists

For years, Maurice’s much-younger brother, Tom, struggled to keep a job in Houston while raising Mike alone. Tom has spent most of his life coping, only intermittently successfully, with uncaring parents, a self-centered ex-wife, and a world that has little patience for an Army vet with only a high-school degree. Nevertheless, he’s good-natured, likable and generous — except when it comes to his brother.

Tom was only a boy when Maurice left the family home in London for university, and was still quite young when his father’s oil company transferred the family to Houston, leaving Maurice in England. All Tom has ever heard about his brother since is that Maurice inherited a large sum from an English grandfather that he declined to share with his family and afterward moved to Washington to take a lucrative academic job.

Having received nothing from his brother, an embittered and hurt Tom figures Maurice owes something to his nephew, at least. So he sends son Mike, a recent college graduate who has been accepted for a medical fellowship at pricey Georgetown University, to Maurice’s home in hopes of being relieved of the cost of room and board. Circumstances later send Tom to D.C. as well, and the brothers find themselves reliving old family battles.

Minor antagonists are Mike, who tries valiantly to make himself agreeable but disrupts his uncle’s quiet life nevertheless, and Ken, an old friend Maurice had dropped abruptly years earlier, who is willing to rekindle their relationship but first has some uncomfortable questions for Maurice.

3. The Title

“Georgetown and a Basset Hound”

4. Comps

“Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand,” by Helen Simonson

“Foreign Affairs,” by Alison Lurie

Kazue Ishiguro’s screenplay “Living,” a vehicle for Bill Nighy as a veteran civil servant in London

5. Hook Line

A man confronted with the son of his long-estranged brother must decide whether to aid his young nephew or remain behind the emotional wall he has built to shield himself from memories of a cold childhood and the devastating loss of an only love.

6. Two Levels of Conflict

Main:

Maurice’s cold London childhood has affected him far more deeply than he realizes, making him stand-offish and judgmental — traits that long have kept him from having close friends and serious relationships. He spends years working, playing his cello and caring for a series of much-loved basset hounds until finally allowing one woman past his defenses. A warm and outgoing Italian, she sees him for what he is and does her best to show her love for him, overlooking his inability to connect, until she can take no more, leaving Maurice shattered and even more withdrawn.

Secondary:

Mike enters Maurice’s life having experienced a hard childhood himself. Though his father has done his best to make Mike feel secure and loved after the boy’s mother leaves, Tom himself had done poorly in school and now finds himself losing job after job in a tight economy. The physical insecurity of being constantly thrown into new schools, living in sketchy neighborhoods and seeing his mother only occasionally has left Mike scrambling to keep up his education, make new friends and earn his mother’s approval. Though intelligent, likable and nice-looking, Mike lacks self-confidence and so does his best to make the peace and get along with everyone — until finally pushed to the brink by what he sees as his father’s ineptitude and his uncle’s unbending nature.

Tom too has suffered from the remoteness of his and Maurice’s parents, coping mostly by trying to stay out of the way and not cause trouble. While still a boy Tom moved with his parents to the States, where his father had been transferred, and where he was teased in school for his accent and his poor grades. After high school he enlists in the Army, where his handiness, his team spirit and his ability to follow orders earns him some success. Handsome in his uniform, Tom attracts a shallow, thoughtless woman who moves with him from post to post but eventually finds military life too stuffy and demanding. Tom agrees not to reap and they have their son, Mike. But the civilian world has little use for Tom, as does his self-centered wife, who grows tired of living on Tom’s merely adequate salary and leaves to pursue a frivolous life.

Tom is now doubly embittered by the treatment from his wife and from Maurice, whom he thinks abandoned him to their unfeeling parents and cheated him of an inheritance. Faced with looming financial troubles and the expensive fellowship for Mike, Tom sends his son to Maurice for help, hoping to keep Mike from knowing of their dire situation and reasoning that the world owes him at least this much.

7. Setting

Much of the story takes place in an English basement, a snug place to which Maurice has retreated from the main floors of his Georgetown row house. He has decorated the homey space with books and art prints, and spends many comfortable hours in front of the fireplace with his affable basset hound, Henry. In back is a narrow but lush back yard, where they enjoy gardening (Maurice) and snoozing (Henry). Living in the basement when an entire house can be had directly above puzzles Mike and irritates Tom; still, Maurice remains adamant about the three of them staying in the small space and declines to say why.

Nearby is the local dog park, an open green space with owners and dogs socializing in the area near the entry gate and a small playground  behind it. Far to one side is a lonely bench or two; here Maurice reads as Henry romps with the other dogs. Mike, once he arrives, wastes no time in befriending people and pets alike, thus forcing his uncle into speaking with them as well. In the end, Maurice has to admit that most of its habitues, whom he’d previously dismissed, to be friendly, interested and caring

A small neighborhood garage is where Maurice rekindles a relationship with Ken, the owner, whom Maurice dropped without explanation years earlier. Ken likes to leave the two garage doors open to the street, with a beat-up plastic wicker chair on the sidewalk where he takes breaks and watches the neighborhood go by. Running the length behind the garage area is a separate room with a makeshift kitchen, a few tables and chairs, and a bulletin board filled with photos of Ken’s family, his clients with their cars and children, and postcards from them all.

[Barbara Noe Kennedy]

1: Story Statement

Three remarkable women, each entwined with the history of the Château de Chenonceau, navigate the constraints of their patriarchal eras to shape a legacy that defies time. Centuries later, a modern-day narrator, in search of her own voice, discovers their stories—drawing strength and inspiration to forge a lasting mark of her own.

#2: Antagonistic Forces

Each woman is confronted with social, political, and cultural structures that seek to silence or control them. But also: 

 Beatrice: her mother

 Katherine: her husband

 Diane: Anne (king’s mistress), Cathérine de Médici

 Cathérine: Diane the mistress

 #3: Breakout Titles

The Ladies of Chenonceau

The Women Who Loved Chenonceau

One Château, Three Women

#4: Comparables

The Serpent and the Pearl by Kate Quinn

The Rivals of Versailles by Sallie Christie

#5: Core Wound and Primary Conflicts

A woman whose life has fallen apart returns to a château she once visited in her youth, seeking solace in the wisdom of the remarkable women who lived there—each of whom defied the constraints of patriarchy in her own way.

Note: My story centers on a modern-day narrator whose journey is interwoven with the lives of three women from the past. Through their stories, she uncovers profound lessons and shared experiences. While the central thread follows the narrator’s present-day perspective, each woman’s narrative reveals a common struggle—the fight to have their voices heard in a world that silences them, not only through the people around them, but through the enduring weight of patriarchal systems, both historical and still present today. 

#6: Other Matters of Conflict 

I have sketched out the conflicts and hypothetical scenarios for each of the three women in the story, as well as the main narrator.

Beatrice (modern day): Shy and hesitant to voice her opinions, Beatrice drifts through life, bending to the desires of others while neglecting her own. She struggles to assert her needs, often finding herself drawn to narcissistic men who diminish her sense of self. Deep down, she longs to be heard, to break free from this cycle, and to step into the fullest version of herself. 

Core Conflict: A profound lack of self-confidence and inability to find her own voice.

 Hypothetical scenario: Beatrice falls deeply in love with Mark during college, convinced they are building a future together—until he abruptly accepts a job in Taiwan without consulting her (trigger). He offers a lukewarm invitation for her to join him, and she follows after him, only to eventually realize he has no real intention of committing to their relationship (reaction). 

Kathérine (late Middle Ages): Passionate about architecture, Kathérine dreams of building a lasting legacy through her designs for her and her family. Yet, her ambitions are stifled by her husband, who not only offers her no support for her own dreams but also takes the credit for the work she has done. 

Core conflict: Betrayal and lack of support from her husband.

 Hypothetical scenario: After her husband’s death, Kathérine hears whispers at court that he had been embezzling funds to sustain their extravagant lifestyle—a stark contrast to his claims of inherited wealth when they were betrothed. The truth strikes her: he had never opposed her dream of building a magnificent château out of principle, but out of financial deceit (trigger). He allowed her to pursue it only as long as it bolstered his own image, never once considering the legacy she longed to create for herself or the foundation she hoped to build for their family. Now, with the court poised to seize the château as collateral for his debts, she must act swiftly—and legally—to reclaim what is rightfully hers (reaction).

 Diane de Poitiers (French Renaissance): Privileged by wealth and status yet starved for power, Diane knows she cannot claim influence on her own. To secure her place in the political arena, she becomes the young king’s mistress, skillfully manipulating court affairs from behind the scenes. With beauty and charm as her weapons, she carves out the life she desires—including possession of the château.   

Core conflict: Navigating and subverting the patriarchal system.

 Hypothetical scenario: Henri is set to be married, and Diane knows she must move quickly to secure her influence (trigger). She concedes that Cathérine de’ Médici is a suitable match—if only because, as the daughter of a mere merchant, she poses little threat. This union will allow Diane to maintain her hold on power. She must convince Henri to concur, knowing he is falling in love with her, and she him (reaction).

 Cathérine de Médici (French Renaissance): Trapped in a loveless marriage with Henri II, Cathérine’s unreciprocated devotion festers into a need for control, manifesting in her ruthless, vindictive nature. Unable to win his love, she wields power in other ways—using the château as both a weapon and a symbol of her influence.

Core conflict: The pain of being unloved.

 Hypothetical scenario: The 14-year-old duchess is brought to France to marry the dauphin, and she falls madly in love when she sees him for the first time, a handsome, brooding teenager. But he has eyes for someone else (trigger). She responds by taking her wrath out on the women of his desire (reaction).

 #7: Setting

 The château de Chenonceau in the Loire Valley is more than just a backdrop—it’s a character in its own right, as five different women across centuries build it and leave their marks, shaping its history as much as it shapes theirs. The first woman lays its foundation and the next two expand and refine it. In the present, Beatrice arrives, drawn to their echoes, seeking wisdom from their stories as she arrives to find her own voice. 

 Kathérine: the founder—the courage to begin anew; taking the first step toward change using perseverance and dedication.

Diane: the visionary—ability to claim space and wield power using beauty and love.

Cathérine: the survivor—transforms the chateau into a center of influence using power and force.