New York Pitch Reviews, Algonkian Writer Conferences, Poetry

ASSIGNMENT 1 - THE ACT OF STORY STATEMENT
Novel – The Nautilus Child
Desperately seeking an escape from his troubled childhood, Samuel Cuffee, a misguided seventeen year old teen, does an unthinkable act to break into a church to steal the communion wine that changes his life forever and leads to a confrontation with his estranged father.
Will he make the same mistakes as his father and grandfather? Will he break the bonds of bitterness & resentment and forgive his father in time to save himself and his family or will he forever be the Nautilus Child?

ASSIGNMENT 2 -THE ANTAGONIST PLOTS THE POINT
The primary antagonist is the protagonist’s father whose absence and belated presence draws his anger and inner struggles with manhood and identity drives him into making worse mistakes when interacting with others, primarily the secondary antagonist.

Secondary Antagonist
Antagonist named Tyberrius “Blaze” Mingo, a low-key member of the Pyros Gang, who grew up in the same community as the protagonist and wants his girlfriend and can’t figure our why she would want to date him. His criminal record and reputation on the street precedes him and many fear him.
However, the protagonist knows little of his gang affiliations and cares even less about him, because he often tries to seduce her every chance he gets to speak to her.
He is introduced toward the end of Part I of the novel, a serious conflict emerges in which the antagonist is knocked unconscious and the as a result the protagonist is lead off to juvenile detention. As we enter, Part II a court case is held to determine the fate of the protagonist due to his interaction with the antagonist and though he is absent, his life hanging in the balance is the driving force of the chapter.
Later, the protagonist Samuel discovers that the antagonist is a gang member of a notorious gang inside the prison that forces him into a proposition to either serve their interests & sacrifice his freedom or jeopardize the safety of his girlfriend and unborn son.
As we enter Part III, the protagonist Samuel is released early and able to escape performing the act requested by the gang and the antagonist awakens from his coma. The rest of Part III deals with the conflicts between Sam’s father, grandfather, and later his girlfriend; all of which act as minor antagonists that push Sam toward the climax of the novel.
But the antagonist re-emerges in the open of Part IV in a consequent drive-by that misses the protagonist, but kills his father and is subsequently arrested. However, despite the antagonist being absent in major scenes throughout the novel; his presence is the over-riding force that pushes the plot forward and leads the protagonist to make some major changes to his life and ultimately break the curse that has been haunting his family for generations.

ASSIGNMENT 3 - CONJURING YOUR BREAKOUT TITLE
The Nautilus Child
A Son of Jericho
Kingdoms of the Sun

ASSIGNMENT 4 - DECIDING YOUR GENRE AND APPROACHING COMPARABLES
Richard Wright’s – Black Boy
Ralph Ellison’s – Invisible Man
These works are strong influences of my novel and contemporary classics that I have endeavored to emulate, by adapting a storyline to greatest issues adversely affecting African-American communities.
Where Richard Wright associated the fatherlessness of his protagonist with American hunger and poverty, I have employed the metaphor of an American fire that is passed down to him from his father through a cataclysmic event that occurs in Part I of the novel.
Where Ralph Ellison’s protagonist struggles with race and identity, my protagonist struggles with race and identity as he struggles with transitioning from manhood into becoming a young father while trying to break free from the generational cycle of abandonment plaguing his family for generations.

ASSIGNMENT 5 - CONSIDERING THE PRIMARY CONFLICT
Conflict Line
A young teen caught in the grips of family curse struggles to break the cycle of abandonment and anger passed down to him from his father is forced to choose between his freedom or repeating the cycle with his unborn son.

ASSIGNMENT 6 - OTHER MATTERS OF CONFLICT: TWO MORE LEVELS
Primary/Inner Conflict:
As the protagonist greatest inner conflict and the driving force of the novel is what many young men bear the fearing of becoming their father and repeating his same mistakes with their children. The protagonist throughout the novel is constantly struggling with his definition of manhood and fatherhood and this inner conflict & fear drives him to make even worse mistakes than his father, which is the ultimate morale of the novel that by failing to forgive our father’s for their mistakes, sons are doomed to repeat them and make even worse mistakes.

Scenario:
The protagonist’s choices to break into a church in an act of escapism, his fight with the protagonist, his journey through the juvenile detention system, and his battles with his father throughout the novel, & the subplot conflict over the arrival of his son with his love interest create the perfect environment for the inner conflict that drives the protagonist.

His grandfather, the pastor, & a homeless man are the minor characters that work to guide the protagonist through his inner conflicts and provide historical background references & setting when necessary. Though his world is limited to exposure to these few characters, they make the story more intimate, accessible, and relatable to the audience for the target reader.

ASSIGNMENT 7 - THE INCREDIBLE IMPORTANCE OF SETTING
The novel opens with the protagonist walking through a rural Georgia town without a name toward a church with hidden wonders deep below in the basement and after sneaking into the bowels of the church and experiencing a spiritual act of divine intervention before a marvelous mirror that transports the protagonist to confront his painful past. He is returned to the future and on a new path that causes him even greater suffering in a juvenile detention center known as the Montserudo Bay or “The Wall.”
However, upon being released he moves into a new apartment with his girlfriend and later has a confrontation with his father at his job, then returns home and his mother’s house, where his father death occurs on the front line.
The story comes full circle when he returns to the church for redemption, salvation, and forgiveness.
As this is a highly intimate novel that delves into the mind and soul of the protagonist, the settings while simple act for and against driving him toward him resolving his issues with his father and ultimately the father that he will become.

1. The Act of Story Statement
Freda Cohen must make it through a series of challenges in the six days before her Orthodox Jewish wedding.

2. The Antagonistic Force
The antagonistic force in my novel is the compulsory religious doctrine that Freda is expected to blindly follow. The antagonist comes in the form of six lessons, bound in a booklet, taught – or rather dictated – by her marriage teacher. The purpose of these lessons is to teach a 19-year-old Freda the rules surrounding sex and the female body. They are aimed at preparing the young Jewish bride for her wedding night (whereupon it is presumed she will lose her virginity) and married life thereafter. The rules are dogmatic. They are not concerned with the individual needs of the bride. They are not tailor-made to fit her experiences. They do not address the fears, interests or anxieties of those studying them, despite the fact that for many, they are an introduction to sex education. These lessons represent the unwillingness of Freda’s insular community to adapt to the changing landscape of the world outside their figurative Brooklyn gates.

3. Breakout Title
a. The Booklet: Everything You Need To Know About Sex Except For the Things You Don’t
b. The Orthodox Girl’s Guide to Love and Sex
c. Let’s Get on with It Already: a Love Story

4. Comparable
a. Cut Me Loose: Sin and Salvation After My Ultra-Orthodox Upbringing
By: Leah Vincent
- A young Orthodox girl becomes enveloped with anxiety, fear and doubt as she struggles to build a life outside of her insular Jewish community.
- The fight to find one’s own voice.
- A young girl grows up too fast, quest for her own individuality amidst a sea of rigid homogeny.

The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion
By: Megan Daum
- An exploration of topics often not spoken about.
- Exemplifies the repercussions of silence.
- Taboos surrounding sex and discussions of the female body.
- Warm, funny personal narrative that almost bordered on satire/dark humor.

5. Primary Conflict
A young bride, flanked by familial pressure and the traditions of her Orthodox community, must navigate her way through the six days before her wedding.

6. Inner Conflict


7. The Importance of Setting

The protagonist is a native of Brooklyn, NY and the novel is contemporarily set. She lives within the unofficial parameters of South Brooklyn, in a community that resides on and alongside Ocean Parkway. What makes the setting interesting is that the community of several thousand Syrian Jews resides within a kind of self-erected ghetto. They have their own fruit stores, butcher shops, retailers, doctors and synagogues pepper the streets.

1. Story Statement
A Boston teen’s search for her lost family reveals that she is the lynchpin in a 15,000 year old war, a war that she first must win within herself.

2. Antagonistic Forces
As the first dew glistened over infant planet earth, the Watchers descended from the heavens. Great and powerful beings, far more advanced than the newly created occupants of the planet, they came offering knowledge and dark wisdom. They wooed us, humbly offering their discoveries and their services. Their strength and intelligence charmed and seduced our forefathers. We mixed with them and gladly bore their children. The floodgate of evil this union unlocked still threatens the survival of mankind today.

In She Who Would’s hierarchy of villains, The Watchers embody the supreme malevolent power lurking behind all of the antagonistic forces. Their goal? Nothing less than world domination. Their half human children, Sarx, Vlavi, and Eris, are the flesh and blood faces of that evil. Sarx is the Uber-villian. He is The Elder and alone has access to The Watchers. His goal is to find his great enemy, the illusive Atlantean Infinity and force her to reveal the location of the Arcadian Threshold, his long sought prize. Vlavi, the bad boy, and Eris, the enchantress, represent the next level of villainy. Their mixed motives and goals provide many of the twist and turns as the story progresses. The remainder of the hierarchy is filled out with Wyman, a human caught between the brothers, the Tide Temptress: a Mer working for Vlavi, and Lathraia: a dream wraith who reports directly to the Watchers.

3. Titles
1. She Who Would Move the World
2. Blue Awakenings
3. Strong in the Broken Places

4. Comparables
I hope my story appeals to young adults of all ages who enjoy strong, supernatural, female protagonists such as Celaena in Throne of Glass as well as the cosmic war, forbidden romance, and magical world of works such as Daughter of Smoke and Bone.

5. Primary Conflict Line:
Two primordial races locked in an epic struggle over the fate of mankind, battle for the heart and soul of a young girl who is the fulcrum upon which the future of planet earth turns.

6. Internal Conflict:
In this tale of trust, forgiveness and belonging, Alira, our protagonist, begins the story like most teens, fluctuating between angsty, angry, and insecure. Her volatile state is perpetuated in chapter one when poor Alira’s DNA comes back from Ancestory.com as from ‘an Unknown Origin’ and in chapter three when she discovers she was adopted as a baby. Trust, always a fragile concept for Alira, is now shattered in the wake of her parent’s lies. Her theme song becomes "I am a Rock". She carries a rock in her pocket to remind her of her vows.

As the story progresses, Alira must come to terms with not only her own suspicious and independent nature but also with the walls of protection she builds to keep people out. Discovering her true origin does little to help her internal state until she comes face to face with her own devastating failures.

When ruthless enemies drive her and her companions to take refuge on Sardinia with other exiles from her Island home, Alira is confronted by the fact that she is responsible for both Atlantis’ demise and the Children of Clietos’ exile. Devastated, Alira must work through the guilt and shame of the pain she has caused her family and her countryman. Chased by the Lightless, Alira leaves Sardinia shaken both by the failures of her past and also by the forgiveness extended to her by a people she hardly knows. Her carefully built walls begin to crumble.

Secondary Conflict
These are many secondary conflicts in the story: Alira’s parents who don’t want her to go to the Mediterranean on Sea-mester, her Atlantean love interest, Rion who confronts her moral decline in Act 3, and Saniyah who reveals her past failures in Sardinia to name a few. However, the most prevalent secondary conflict is with Darius Sokratous, her long lost Atlantean mentor now posing as her high school history teacher. Darius’ urgent desire to reconnect with Alira causes her to suspect his motives and the harder he tries the further she runs.

7. The Setting
‘She Who Would’ paints a rich and diverse backdrop upon which the story unfolds. Act One takes full advantage of the North Shore of Boston with scenes set at Singing Beach, Manchester-by-the-Sea High School, The North Shore Mall, Addison Gilbert Hospital, and of course, Alira Winslow’s home. In a crosscut scene design, scenes also range to The Wall on the coast of Maine and an antagonist’s compound on Corvo Island.
Act two takes our protagonist to the Mediterranean Sea on a school program with scenes set in Athens, Greece, the Acropolis, the Island of Sicily in Italy, and on the Sir Francais Drake, the research vessel that serves as our protagonist’s home for Sea-mester.
Act three explores the streets of Naples, Piazza di Spangna, the Parthenon, and the Sea Life Aquarium in Rome before our protagonist is driven underground into the splendid Atlantean exiled city beneath the Island of Sardinia.
Much of Act four occurs in the Azore Islands- both Flores and Corvo, and upon the Sunray Yacht used for travel between them.

Story Statement
Steve Logan, Ivy League grad turned cop, must try to change the system before the country goes up in flames, save his girlfriend from harm before the captain finds out what he is doing and kills him.


Antagonist
Detective Frank Rizzo and Captain Peter Lynch are determined to break the college boy and protect the system which is paying them well.

Title
Ivy League Cop
Down the Hill
Till the Music Stops

Comparables
Richard Price The Whites – strong cop story with gritty street scenes as well as conflicted protagonist trying to do the right thing in spite of the system.
Conflict

Primary Conflict
Steve Logan, an Idealist college grad. battles the corrupt police department as the country is coming apart in 1970. He finds that as the “college boy” he is stigmatized by rigid Captain who resents his education. He is a good cop and tries to fit in as one of the boys. But then he is partnered with a sadistic officer whose desire to become a detective is fueled by power and money. The captain continues to punish Logan with increasingly dangerous assignments until one night he is confronted with a decision that will change his life.
Secondary Conflict
His battle on the force is creating a chasm with his co-ed girlfriend, Roxy, who resents the changes in Steve. She continues her college militancy until she winds up on the other side of a demonstration from Steve. Each night, he returns from work to the college life which he has long left behind to find friends keeping their distance.
Inner Conflict
Steve struggles to live in both worlds a cop on the street and college student. He can see the corruption around him and knows it is wrong but he struggles on h how to fix it. He feels he is becoming more like the cops he despises driving Roxy further away.

Setting
It is 1970, with the killing of students at Kent State, the nation’s campus erupt in violence and demonstrations. Steve Logan is part of protests in Providence, RI. After being challenge by a New York City cop – an Amherst grad - to do more than protest, he decides to stay in the city with his girlfriend and joins the local police department to try to do some good. He soon learns he doesn’t know Providence, the home of the New England mafia, where the gritty neighbors on the south side or the Italian enclave on Federal Hill are a long way from the protected campus world.

Assignment 1:

Detective Casey Sharp must stop a serial killer before it cost her everything, maybe even her life.

Assignment 2:
The antagonist is a skilled and knowledgeable killer who is well versed in counter-forensic measures that leaves no clues behind. The killer is strong and ruthless. Only interested in making the victims pay for what commandment they are guilty of making.

Assignment 3:
The Neighbors Sin
Sharp Force
Killer of Sin

Assignment 4:
Mystery/Thriller
A secret woman- Rachel Pollack
Home is where the murder is- Carolyn Rogers

Assignment 5:
The main conflict of the novel is Casey hunting a serial killer exacting punishment on victims that have broken one of the Ten Commandments.

Assignment 6:
Casey’s internal conflict is her fear of failure and constantly feeling like she has to prove that she’s good enough to be a homicide detective.
Secondary conflict:
Casey must overcome obstacles placed in front of her by an overbearing and powerful grandfather who wants her to quit the police force and join him in politics.

Assignment 7:
The story takes place in present day historical Richmond, Virginia. From the statues of Civil War heroes on Monument Avenue to the cobble stone streets of the thriving downtown Shockoe Bottom area to the magnificent plantation homes lining the majestic James River. The city offers a diverse charm mixed with modern day high rises not found in many other places.

1. THE ACT OF STORY STATEMENT
A kidnapped CIA agent must elude his rescuers and assist his captors if he is to foil their plans for a deadly bio-terror attack.

2. THE ANTAGONIST PLOTS THE POINT
Yunus Al-Abayed is not your run of the mill terrorist. Sure, he carries a Kalashnikov and wears his beard long but he also has a PhD in virology from Hopkins, speaks fluent English and, unlike the rest, doesn’t hate all Americans. Just the ones he’s met. But when Cullen falls into his grasp, Abayed realizes he might need the Amerikayi more than the Amerikayi needs him. Abayed has every reason to keep Cullen alive.
When the Vector program implodes, Thomas Taylor can’t believe his luck. Two months from retirement, he’s close to cashing in on years of selling its secrets and a Beltway shit-storm is perfect cover. But when one of his senior agents defies orders and goes to Cullen’s rescue, Taylor senses trouble and will stop at nothing to protect his investment. Taylor has every reason to see Cullen dead.
Back in 2007, The Khan was officially pronounced dead in Dushanbe. Since then his life has taken a turn for the worse. If Vector is a web then Khan is its invisible spider. If this was just about money, Khan would have taken it and started afresh a long time ago. But Khan’s life is complicated and he has every reason to stay dead, and that means keeping Cullen alive. For now.

3. CONJURING YOUR BREAKOUT TITLE
9/12
The Chimera Proxy
Carrier

4. DECIDING YOUR GENRE AND APPROACHING COMPARABLES
9/12 is Michael Chrichton meets Richard Preston. Part science fiction, part scientific reality, the book explores the consequences of human failure in the control advanced technology.
Comparable books in this genre are:
The Chimera Sequence by Elliott Garber
Upon a Pale Horse by Russell Blake

5. CONSIDERING THE PRIMARY CONFLICT
When Cullen realizes that a rescue operation could destroy his chances of eliminating a deadly virus forever, he must thwart his rescuers, earn his captors trust and become the carrier himself, but once infected, he knows there is only one acceptable end.

6. OTHER MATTERS OF CONFLICT
When Alfonso ‘Fonz’ Almeida defies his section chief’s orders and goes in to rescue Cullen, he expects it to be a routine grab and go. After all, Cullen has an implanted Vector that will lead Fonz right to him. But when Taylor refuses to activate the Vector, Fonz knows something is seriously wrong and he begins to wonder if Cullen is in on it too.

Robert Cronin, director of the NSA has every reason to make this go away quickly. The Vector program has been a resounding success but he knows that the operation has been undermined since its inception. A couple of dead agents won’t bother him but what will he do when he finds out that Taylor has been using the Vector to buy classified weaponry from the Biopreparat?

Cullen’s decision to side with his captors begins to take an emotional toll on him. First there is the matter of the other American hostage whose life is at stake if Cullen follows through with his plan. Then Cullen learns about Yunus’ story of life in America and he realizes that they have much in common. Is Cullen still befriending his captors to betray them or has he already betrayed himself?

7. THE INCREDIBLE IMPORTANCE OF SETTING
The story moves from Moscow to Washington DC to New Delhi as the web of lies that is the vector program is unraveled but most of the action takes place in the impoverished villages that dot the dirt roads between the Khyber Pakhtunkwa, the lawless frontier provinces in Pakistan and the burning valley of occupied Kashmir.

Story Statement: Preston Burgess, a broadcast journalist, must overcome a childhood humiliation and a deep-rooted desire for revenge. His mechanism is control and power. He obtains the power to control people’s thoughts and lives by rising to the top of media industry and manipulating the news. Or will he deal his emotional wounds by confronting his hatred and insecurity, listening to his wife’s wisdom and helping a mentally handicapped man.


Antagonistic Force: Colleen Bergman, daughter of the CEO of America’s largest bank is determined to make her deceased father proud. Her dogged determination ensures she follows her father as CEO of America National Bank. Her father’s vision of social justice and income equality embeds her soul.

She justifies a culture of control by governing the monetary supply, the media and news as well as politicians in order to achieve this vision. She becomes sociopathic in her need to realize this goal. She builds or destroys businesses, careers and people with the precision of the executioner’s sword. The creation of the Department of Security and Protection (DSP) provides her the devices to control the Federal Reserve, Homeland Security, EPA and the FCC. Immense power, vindicated as the ends justify the means, to eliminate social injustice.

Her plan is foiled as Preston Burgess, his wife, best friend and a private investigator expose cover ups of rape, murder, the manipulation of news and politicians. But more so by her blind ambition as revealed by Preston and his colleagues. Her lack of integrity and forces him to choose between power and virtue.

Breakout Titles:

Broadcast Indignation
News That Kills
The Unbearable Broadcast

Comparable Novel 1: Code of Conduct by Brad Thor explores powerful people and organizations that operate within secret committees and possess diabolical agendas. Broadcast Indignation portrays the power of the media and how an undisclosed group, called The Sculptors determine the news we hear. Their motives can be just as devastating.

Comparable Novel 2: Kane and Abel by Jeffery Archer tells a story of two men from two worlds-colliding. These ambitious, powerful and ruthless men are locked in an unrelenting battle for power. Their goal - to build their own empires. Broadcast Indignation pits the powerful and rich against the ambitious and determined. The gritty story creates a war for the control of the American people’s minds. Both sides are ruthless and fuel grand schemes until the protagonist, Preston Burgess, losses the desire of his heart - his wife Kathleen.

Primary Conflict: An ambitious and ruthless journalists battles with the CEO of America’s largest bank for control of the media and ultimately the thoughts of the American people. He must confront his motivation of revenge with the true desire of his heart.

Secondary Conflict: A childhood disgrace scars Preston Burgess for life who becomes morally bankrupt. His goal is to never again be humiliated. With the broadcast journalism world at his feet he is torn between control and power and losing the love of his life as the sins of his past catch up to him.

Social Setting Conflict: Preston’s blind ambition is confronted by a legendary football coach and his desire to help a handicapped young man. He witnesses the positive attributes and recognition of genuine character and the healing sensation of helping another human being in need with far greater challenges than his own.

Setting: Charleston, South Carolina is the initial setting and provides the backdrop for Preston’s humiliation, initial revenge and first date with his wife Kathleen. Charleston is also the setting for Preston’s first job as a journalist and the host of a news show.

Washington, DC affords Preston to become a nationally known broadcast journalist as host of Firm Speech. He learns the ropes, takes significant risks but also meets the individuals who will change his life.

Manhattan perches Preston at the top of the media world. The center of power, control and influence. The grand city also provides the setting for his demise and ultimate revenge.

Finally, Charleston becomes the refuge for a new life, one of selfless giving verses egotistical gain and revenge.

Assignment #1 - Story statement: (Memoir)
Heroine must survive the expat world of Iraq’s Green Zone, without losing life, mind or heart.

Assignment #2 - Sketch Antagonist force (goals, background, reaction to world)

It isn’t possible to work and live in post-Gulf War Iraq without immersing oneself in a pool of antagonistic forces. My memoir about working and living in the Green Zone is no exception; nothing about that experience was easy for me, personally or professionally.

Antagonist A
The protagonist's boss was brilliant but sadistic. His short, hyper muscled physique screamed “over compensation.” Peak performance, he believed, could be extracted through humiliation and bullying, the later of which was the heroine's kryptonite. If she is to succeed, she will have to master not only her job, but learn to stand up for herself, a showdown that would end up taking place on top of a roof with armed guards standing watch giving a play by play on their walkie-talkies.

Antagonist B
Nasaif was a dark, brooding Iraqi with heavy-set eyebrows. He was arrogant, hated Americans and was disdainful of women. Neither his bosses nor the heroine could get him to perform his job, which he actively sabotaged. The situation igets even trickier when the heroine learns Nasaif is a terrorist and she was on his kill-list.

Antagonist C
Gordon, her Scottish bodyguard, was heroic and Superhero handsome. He would fall madly in love with the heroine (and she with him) despite rules against client-bodyguard fraternization, rules he -- as the head of security -- was supposed to enforce. Their relationship would become a battle ground between love and a solider's desire to uphold the honor code.


Assignment #3 - : Breakout title
Don’t Date Your Bodyguard: And Other Life Lessons from Iraq’s Green Zone
Baghdad Barbie
Hunk, Chunk, Monk or Drunk


Assignment #4 - Comparables
1) “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” by journalist Karen Barker
2) “Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone” by Andrew Thomson (Author), Heidi Postlewait (Author), Kenneth Cain


Assignment #5 - Conflict
Primary Conflict:
An inexperienced American woman lands in Baghdad on an impossible assignment made worse by a sadistic boss and sabotaged by an Iraqi terrorist.

Secondary Conflict:
Despite clear rules forbidding fraternization (with the threat of job loss) the American woman and her heroic Scottish bodyguard fall madly in love and hope their secret romance won't be discovered.


Assignment #6 -- Inner Conflict
The heroine has long felt she wasn't good enough, and that goes for just about every measurable category -- looks, brains, sports. With self-doubt her long term companion, it is hard to imagine a worse environment than a job for which she has no prior experience, a boss who belittles her, in a country where everything that can go wrong does. It is the perfect environment to reinforce her every insecurity and she wonders how she will ever master her job and help the Iraqis who work with her.

Sketch Scenario for Secondary Conflict:
The security team decides to bring their expat clients to the gun range to give them a demo of tactics they will use if there is a hostage situation. They also want to let the clients try firing various weapons. The heroine has never before held a firearm before. She tentatively takes aim at the target which has the face of Bin Laden taped on the front. To her surprise, she is a natural.

After firing her gun over and over and hitting the target easily, she turns to see a Clive Owen look-alike watching her. If there was a casting call for a man that would meet every critera for what she would think is a gorgeous alpha male, he would be it. Black hair, blue eyes with a paratrooper tattoo on his tanned muscled arm. He's the kind of man that usually would be looking right through her to catch the eye of a pretty blond standing behind her. But he wasn't. He was looking at her. As she walked back from the target, she overheard someone saying that this man was the new back-to-back project manager for the security company that oversees her project. She doesn't dare assume there is any interest on his part.


Assignment #7 Setting
The Green Zone in Baghdad, a neighborhood in Baghdad surrounded by T-walls and security. It is where all the Embassies are and Iraq government offices.

Most of the action takes place in 4 locations.
1) The large, concrete villa where the heroine, co-workers and bodyguards live.
2) The Iraq election commission, a dreary government building next to Iraq's parliament.
3) Various embassies for the party scene.
4) The US military gym at one of Saddam's palaces

Citizen Me

John Chrys (Maurice Ewing)

Assignment 1: Simple Statement

Chicago, 1924: 9-year-old runaway, Orson Welles must anonymously lead police to the murderers of Bobby Franks before becoming their next victim.

Assignment 2: The Antagonist

The main antagonist is Nathan Leopold, the mastermind of the Bobby Franks murder, and the main antagonistic force in the novel is eugenics, or the idea that racial superiority is brought about through selective breeding. Widely accepted in the 1920s by scientists, intellectuals as well as the middle- and upper- classes, the danger of eugenics is manifest in Nathan Leopold and his actions, as well as in the way society reacts to the Franks murder. Leopold’s IQ is above 200 and his partner in crime, Richard Loeb, is also extremely clever: they, and even Orson, are the near-epitome of the eugenics ideal. Yet, Leopold and Loeb's intelligence, coupled with their wealth and privilege, also leads them to believe they are superior to everyone around them. This includes their Jewish neighbors, such as Bobby Franks, despite their own German-Jewish backgrounds. Eugenics, after all, ultimately spawned the Nazi ideology a decade later. Leopold, however, takes this one step further. As a psychopath, he lives in an Nietzschean fantasy world where he believes he and Loeb will ultimately become “Ubermensch” through the act of murder. Lacking empathy or emotions, Leopold assumes killing Franks will either make him mortal, should the act awaken regret within him, or make him superman if it does not. He is unmoved by the murder. Thus, when Orson and his friends start interfering with Leopold’s plans for concealing the crime, it is not anger but blood-thirst for new victims that excites the killer.

Assignment 3: Conjuring a Breakout Title

1.Citizen Me
2.Citizen Me
3.Citizen Me

Assignment 4: Deciding Your Genre and Approaching Comparables

Most historical fiction of late focuses on romances, espionage or Nazi Germany (the latter of which is not technically historical because it is not quite 80 years behind us). My novel, however, combines history with murder, mystery, suspense and coming of age. For that reason, two recent novels come to mind:

1. The Wiregrass—Pam Webber. Teenage cousins come of age during a Southern summer and find themselves wrapped up in a dangerous mystery. This is similar to a theme in my novel in which some pre-teens runaway and get caught up in a murder mystery.

2. Ordinary Grace—William Kent Kreuger. A young boy in 1961 encounters the unfortunate realities of life and is forced to “grow up” faster than he would like. This theme is also similar to what confronts young Orson Welles in my novel.


Assignment 5: Conflict Line

A precocious, 9-year-old Orson Welles risks life and limb in a battle of wits with the genius and psychopathic killer, Nathan Leopold.

Assignment 6: Secondary conflicts

Inner conflict: Welles wants to runaway from the task of growing up: particularly with respect to taking responsibility for his alcoholic father. However, wanting also to bring the murderers of Bobby Franks to justice, he realizes that taking responsibility is inevitable.

Secondary conflict: The parents and guardians of Orson and his companions are obviously worried sick about them, especially in light of the string of recent child murders and disappearances in Chicago and Milwaukee. They agonize, without knowing Orson's motivations, about why the children ran away and what they might have done to cause it. Orson and his companions, however, do not want to be found, for they know that, despite their parents's love, they cannot give them what they need--more time as children. Thus, their aim is to help the police anonymously or risk being apprehended and sent back home to "adulthood".

Assignment 7: Setting

Setting 1. Kenosha, WI. Cold, boring and unappreciative that it gave birth to Orson Welles.
Setting 2. California, 1975. The deathbed of Orson's older brother, Dickie. Gloomy and dark at first, in contrast to the California sun.
Setting 3. Chicago, 1924. The deathbed of Orson and Dickie's mother, bright and cheerful, despite the circumstances.
Setting 4. Chicago suburbs. The Waspy, wealth of Orson's father and guardians. A life of expectation, private schools and intrigues.
Setting 5. Chicago streets and train yards. Orson and his companions run away and experience the reality of life in the real world. Hopping an empty railway car, the meet a case of interesting characters, one of whom eventually helps them in their ultimate quest.

Setting 6. Black Chicago. Orson and his companions come to the neighborhood of a newfound friend and are exposed to the world of Black Chicagoans. The sites and sounds are completely in contrast with the world Orson and his companions are used to.

Setting 7: (affluent) Jewish Chicago. In Kenwood, we see the neighborhood of Leopold, Loeb and Bobby Franks and we see the more conspicuous nature of immigrant wealth contrasted with the Waspy affluence of Northern Chicago. We see the dysfunctional homes of Leopold and Loeb, but also the loving and ultimately tragic home of Bobby Franks.
Setting 8: The police station. We are shown the world of good and evil in confrontation, through the barrage of police, criminals and the investigators of the Franks murder.

Empire of the Damned: The Systematic Undoing of Chloe McDonald

Story Statement
Chloe McDonald must do whatever it takes to break the glass ceiling at Deutchen Bond Advertising. But first she must break her self-imposed limitations, expectations, and stereotype to realize, she was the only one holding herself back. And then break out of jail.

The Antagonist:
Ten years in the making, Chloe McDonald is just about to get a big promotion. Proud she’s done it by simply doing the hard work, Chloe has spent her career forging the façade of a tough New Yorker that can steel herself for any corporate storm while constructing a body of work to take her to the top.

A week before the big pitch that will seal her promotion, her fiancé breaks off their engagement without explanation. Chloe’s façade begins to disintegrate; collapsing, and the career she worked so hard to build is on the brink of ruin. Just when she hits bottom, wallowing in self pity, the floor falls even further and she finds herself in jail on charges ranging from assault and kidnapping to racial discrimination.

The truth is, Chloe McDonald is a terminal good girl, unwilling to break rules. No good deed goes unpunished and she finds herself in court, out of a job, and under her domineering mother’s roof. Finally, when she is stripped of her façade fully, she can stop wallowing in the “Why me?” mentality and instead ask, “Why not me?” to turn her devastating personal, professional, and legal state of affairs into her biggest success to date.

Breakout Title:
Empire of the Damned: The Systematic Undoing of Chloe McDonald

Options
Everything’s Great! (And other lies I tell my mother.)

Love. Loss. And Louis Vuitton

Branded: Confessions of a Charlatan

Comparables:
Popular fiction
Women’s upmarket fiction

Matthew Norman
We’re all damaged
Finding the comedy in the pain of loss of love, career and self respect.


Stephanie Danler
Sweet Bitter
Finding one’s self in the crush and rush of NYC to find a foothold, a community, and a sense of home.


Conflict Line:
A rising star on Madison Avenue is posed to be anointed the first female creative director at a five-star old-school boutique, but when her fiancé breaks the engagement days before her mentor dies at work, and the big pitch that will cinch her promotion, she must find her way through the cut-throat agency gauntlet alone.


Inner conflict:
Being nice and being taken vs. taking care of business.
Everyone can hear Chloe coming from a mile away. It’s not uncommon for her male counterparts to steal her work, her best team members, or her taxi. She doesn’t seem to care, she’s a team player. And she’s really talented. However, her partner decides she’s a little too good and sets out to set her back when a position opens up that she will most likely get, but he really wants. The office, the salary, the bonuses, and the cachet are much more important than his integrity and a game well, and fairly, played. Unfortunately, Chloe doesn’t realize she’s being played until it’s almost too late. Blake would much rather lose the account at Chloe’s expense than lose to a promotion.


Secondary Conflict: Social Environment
Chloe’s façade is cracking and she’s falling apart, for all eyes to see. The more her resolve is damaged by her former fiancé, her work, and her bizarre arrest, the more she begins to lose her tough exterior. Her clothes are held together by safety pins and staples, she breaks out in hives, and she ends up with a face frozen in a scowl after getting a bad Botox treatment that was supposed to give her self confidence. Where once everything Chloe touched turned to gold, it’s all turning gray and she is scrambling to turn her luck around and get back to the life she thought she wanted.

Setting:
Who can resist falling in love with The City, when leaves turn golden, gloriously falling in Central Park.  Rooftop parties with friends as the sun sets are imprinted on your heart. Rockefeller Center is dressed in her holiday finest. Charity galas and awards dinners fuel the passion to keep working late into the evening and on into early morning. City lights twinkle like a child’s eyes in wonder at a magical table set for a fantastic feast.

Taxis blare. They blame each other for the clogged arteries of Mid-town. Sirens howl back.  Sixth Avenue: Disney, Starbucks, M&Ms and American Girl shops are introduced by flowers, park benches, and picnic tables in the middle of Times Square. Gone are the seedy hawkers urging lonely men, aching teens and wide-eyed tourists down the dank basement steps of worn out movie palaces. Now a showplace, 42nd Street has been transformed.  
Anxious tourists, noses pointed the Empire State Building—sighing, and giddy. Veteran New Yorkers are obligated to suppress those same feelings. Yet layers of grey settle onto crisp, once-white shirts.  What’s this smog doing to your lungs?  You wonder why everyone smokes in Manhattan when the rest of the country has quit?
You can't ever retire and still pay rent.  May as well live hard. Fast. Free.

Work!  Cobble together a brilliant punchline built on a tight strategy and wrap it around a target market with a big red bow—all while balancing a team of naysayers on your shoulders ready to stab each idea in it’s precious beating heart, happy to watch it bleed out. Brilliance is mandatory.

City lights blink one more time and buildings grow dark just after midnight.  Even the nocturnal cleaning crews have turned in their dust rags and heaping trash bags, now.  Eyes grow weary as the thudding at the base of your skull pounds harder, the deeper you think.

It’s 5 am and someone calls Pack's Deli for coffee and egg sandwiches. Then it's 6 am and you practice the pitch.  Then it’s 7 and you salvage your day-old hair, dig in your drawer for deodorant and toothbrush and pull out a crisp white shirt tied in a neat square and tissue paper by the Chinese laundry downstairs; you must be client-ready. Spit-shined and glimmering you are ready introduce your latest brain-child.

Close your eyes, take a deep breath and drift to your childhood: the sweet fragrance of Orange Blossoms, the rhythm of waves cuddling you into an afternoon nap. Wake to the warm afternoon sunshine. Your grandmother in her garden, hanging shirts on the line, whitened with the juice of a lemon you picked from her tree. Calm, clean, fresh.

That’s not your memory, it’s mine. I can make you yearn for it. I am an adman.

Assignment 1 - Write a one line Story Statement

A soul trapped in a jar seeks vengeance on her killer

Assignment 2 -- in 200 words or less, sketch the antagonist or antagonistic force in your story. Keep in mind their goals, their background, and the ways they react to the world about them.

Jason is obsessed with unnaturals, to the point where he wants to become one. In his mind, they're creatures of power, always on the media, always in the spotlight for some tragedy or other. Despite all the evidence that says unnaturalism is a genetic trait, that he can't just magic himself into a vampire or a unicorn, and even if he could he'd probably just end up one of the harmless ones the media ignores, Jason finds a spell on the internet he thinks will grant him unnatural powers. He murders a random girl in a Target parking lot, stuffs her soul in a jar, and tries to sacrifice her for the spell. It doesn't work. He decides to try again with a different soul, and sells the one he has on the internet. But he begins to regret selling the soul, because it might incriminate him, and he sets out to frame the person who bought Aya's soul for her murder.

Assignment 3 -- create a breakout title (list several options, not more than three, and revisit to edit as needed).

Aya's Jar
Jar of Soul


#4 -- Develop two smart comparables for your novel. This is a good opportunity to immerse yourself in your chosen genre. Who compares to you? And why?

X-Men
The world building is similar, in that the supernatural abilities of people in the story are explained through genetics, not magic.

The Summoning, by Kelly Armstrong
As with Aya's Jar, this novel is a YA urban fantasy narrated by a female protagonist. There are also similarities in voice and tone, and while Aya's Jar is about a soul in a jar, the Summoning is about a girl who can see ghosts.

I often bill Aya's Jar as: If Alan Moore wrote the Last Unicorn from the point of view of the soul of a 17-year-old girl trapped in a jar.

#5 -- write your own conflict line following the format above. Keep in mind it helps energize an entire plot line and the antagonist(s) must be noted or inferred.

After Aya's murdered and her soul stuffed in a jar, she must use her words and wits to escape and get vengeance on her killer before he strikes again.

#6 -- 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.

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?

Inner conflict: Aya has just been murdered, and her soul stuffed in a jar for some loser's fake spell he found on the internet. She searches desperately for a body, a form that can hold her rogue soul that's not a jar. But ultimately, she must come to terms with the fact that she is dead, and will never have another body. She must learn to live her existence inside a jar.

Secondary conflict: Luc has just murdered his girlfriend with a kiss. He's discovered in the worst way possible that he's got the recessive genes to be a soul-eating unicorn. Real-live unicorns were only proven to exist 2 years ago, when a virgin-soul eating serial killer was caught. With no reference for what he is except a serial killer, Luc must try and figure out how to not become a murdering monster -- or if that's even possible. Buying a soul online sounds like a good plan until he actually receives it, and realizes it's still a thinking human being. He must come to terms with what what defines a person, body or soul, and learn that while he may be a monster by genetics, he doesn't have to be one by action.

#7 -- sketch out your setting in detail. What makes it interesting enough, scene by scene, to allow for uniqueness and cinema in your narrative and story? Please don't simply repeat what you already have which may well be too quiet. You can change it. That's why you're here! Start now. Imagination is your best friend, and be aggressive with it.

The novel takes place in two locations, a small midwest town where Aya and Jason live, as well as the French-Canadian city Montreal, where Luc lives.

However, this world is quite different than our world. 'Unnaturals' have been around forever. Often warped versions of them appear in folktales, but the realities are often quite different. Unicorns, for example, are humans who eat unstable -- usually virgin --- souls. The horse legend came about because past unicorns would often 'mount' victims and pierce them with their 'horn.' Raping them caused sufficient trauma that the soul became destabilized from the body, and easier for the unicorn to consume.

Unnaturalism is a series of genetic traits that can identify people from Aurs (bioluminescent people) to vampires. However, corruption in the classification system has lead to conspiracy theories that people are paying scientists to identify certain creatures as unnaturals. This way, a country can more easily conduct a genocide on a minority, with less international sanctions. Several fur companies were exposed last year for bribing a scientist to publish a series of papers stating chinchillas were unnaturals to try and get PETA to stop bothering them.

Racism against unnaturals has been a large issue that affected Aya and Luc's life differently. Aya's mother was an unnatural activist whose spirit was broken when a hate group burned down he apartment with herself and her daughter inside it. Aya volunteered at the dact (a type of unnatural, similar to a tribble) shelter, until it too was burned down by hate groups. This creates a divided atmosphere of intolerance in her small town.

Luc, on the other hand, is the son of 2 unnatural hate group leaders in liberal Montreal, where hate isn't tolerated. Passing out flyers and protesting unnatural-positive litigation have been his life, until he realizes he is an unnatural, the exact thing his parents hate. This leads him to run away from home.

Assignment 1 - Write a one line Story Statement

Shakespeare Bloom must transcend the comfort of the life she once knew in order to save her mother and the unfamiliar world of her heritage from the genocidal dictator, Count Vasil.

Assignment 2 -- in 200 words or less, sketch the antagonist or antagonistic force in your story. Keep in mind their goals, their background, and the ways they react to the world about them.

Count Vasil is a psychopathic narcissist with a penchant for fits of emotion and rage, yet with the capacity to be charismatic and demure. He is motivated by resentment and revenge against the race of the Fairies in Fallili. He is a half-breed whose mother was a Mystic and whose father was a Fairy. His father was cruel and abusive to he and his mother, thus fueling a misguided rage towards all fairies and a thirst for power over others to compensate for his feelings of inferiority. When he was 11-years-old, his family was killed in a world war between the races, and the Fairy King of Fallili took pity on him and raised him with his two sons. This fueled the fire even more, as he felt that the privileged sons of the King were treated better than he by the Court. His goal is to carve out the world of Fallili for the Mystic race and to have his final reckoning with the Fallilian Fairies.

Assignment 3 -- create a breakout title (list several options, not more than three, and revisit to edit as needed).
Shakespeare Bloom and The Cosmic Guild
Shakespeare Bloom and the Rise of the Black Sea
Shakespeare Bloom and the Mechanical War

Assignment 4- Develop two smart comparables for your novel. This is a good opportunity to immerse yourself in your chosen genre.

Who compares to you? And why?
The Trials of Apollo: The Hidden Oracle by Rick Riordan-
Rick Riordan’s “The Trials of Apollo” compares to me because both of our stories are focused on a young protagonist trying to survive in an unfamiliar world by fighting evil forces that want to see them perish and forming alliances with those who can help them reach their goals.

The Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare-
Cassandra Clare’s “Clockwork Prince” compares to me because both of our plots involve a young heroine who must battle supernatural entities and sinister obstacles to save someone she cares about, while also saving her world. Both of our novels contain humor and emotion with a dark undercurrent.

Assignment 5- write your own conflict line following the format above. Keep in mind it helps energize an entire plot line and the antagonist(s) must be noted or inferred.

Conflict Line:
After discovering her mother is missing, a young girl must transcend the comfort of the life she once knew in order to save her mother and the mystical world of her heritage from a genocidal dictator.

Assignment 6- 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.

Inner conflict-
Shakespeare leaves the only world she knows through a magical portal with her Uncle Jude. She lands in Fallili by herself and separated from Jude. She meets an elf named Boris who pulls her from the focus of simply finding her mother to a more complex problem at hand in his world; the genocide of the fairy race and anyone disliked by, different than, or perceived as a threat by the Mystics. The elves are loose allies with the Mystics and Boris is a spy for the Elven faction who mistrusts dictator Count Vasil and the National Fallilian Mystic Worker’s Faction (Nafal).
Boris shows her a world where pollution pit workers, once happy to have jobs and food on the table under the Nafal banner, now feel oppression and fear as they are forced to help the Nafals churn out hundreds of Mechanical Men run on fairy blood and used as powerful war machines in Vasil’s army. Should Shakespeare ignore her horror and compassion for the atrocities going on around her? Does she use her newfound friendship and disguise to befriend Vasil and the Nafal army to track her mother as quickly as possible, or should she join the Fairy clans of her bloodline to do what she can to save them from mass extinction?

Social Conflict-
When Boris first meets Shakespeare he is unaware that she is half fairy. In fact, she looks very much like his elven mother, which makes him feel instantly fond of her. They both learn of her half fairy/half human heritage through General Solak of the Cosmic Guild (a religious guild of all ethnicities) who tries to convince Shakespeare to come with them to be protected and harness powers that could stop Count Vasil and the Nafal Faction.
Boris is an elf, and the elves are seen as allies of the Mystic Nafals. However, the elven leaders no longer trust Count Vasil who has taken some of their own into custody and imprisoned them in camps near the pollution pits to be killed or labor away to their deaths. They have secretly begun to infiltrate the Mystic Nafal high court with spies. Boris is one of them.
Boris has fallen in love with Shakespeare, despite how dangerous her presence could be to his cover. Yet, if he can keep her in disguise as an elf, he can still be with her and also use her youthful beauty, charm, and leverage fear for her mother to get in further with the Nafal command and get to know their weaknesses.
While there is conflict in the high courts, where Boris belongs, turmoil is going on behind the scenes at the pollution pits. Instead of bonding together, racial gang leaders called “Pit Bosses” have added another layer of violence and arbitrary despotism. The gangs come out at night to slaughter anyone stupid or unlucky enough to be out in the mucky streets once the work day is over and the Nafal guards have retired to their outer wall towers to feast and make love to their wives and mistresses. In the mornings, the victims and dead rival gang members are found stripped of anything that can be traded, even if it is a last thread of clothing.
The racial and political tension between all species and all factions will come to a head, but who will come out on top?

FIRST ASSIGNMENT: write your story statement.

In a post-apocalyptic Upstate New York, a wandering mercenary and his small band of allies must stand against an army of living corpses and the malformed, maniacal man who leads them, as the strange sword that the young man wields is the only thing that can stop them from destroying the Green Lands.

SECOND ASSIGNMENT: in 200 words or less, sketch the antagonist or antagonistic force in your story. Keep in mind their goals, their background, and the ways they react to the world about them.

The titular antagonist of the story, the Undead King, is a twisted despot named Plaguewind who has raised a large army of corpses under his command. While his motives are mysterious, his purpose is clear: to destroy all life in the Green Lands, the only fertile area left in the known world after the collapse of civilization. The Church of the Bleeding Christ view Plaguewind as the prophesied fourth rider of the Apocalypse, Death. They gift him with the Sceptre of Jai Lin, a weapon capable of channeling dark energy and enhancing his control over his corpse army.

The secondary antagonists in the story are the two leaders that head the opposing forces facing off in the coming War of the Green Lands. Lord Commander Indio is the leader of the Fort at Kingston, the strongest military power in all the Green Lands. He’s ruthless and his vision for the future leaves no room for compromise. Dusty Yen, the leader of the mercenary army east of the Hud, is a mysterious man who has somehow gathered a hard-scrabble army of thousands under his command, promising them land and great wealth should they fight for him.

THIRD ASSIGNMENT: create a breakout title (list several options, not more than three, and revisit to edit as needed).

-The Undead King (current self-published title)
-The Emperor of Scabs & Sorrow
-Of Crowns & Corpses

FOURTH ASSIGNMENT: Develop two smart comparables for your novel. This is a good opportunity to immerse yourself in your chosen genre. Who compares to you? And why?
Grimdark/post-apocalyptic fantasy

Joe Abercrombie’s “The Blade Itself” - A novel that brings together several characters from different backgrounds in a richly realized, albeit bleak, fantasy world.
Stephen King’s “The Dark Tower” series - Several characters band together to go on a journey to the Dark Tower. Most of civilization has crumbled, or “passed on,” as King’s characters say, leaving them to wander through ruins of once great civilizations. Much of the magic they encounter is merely advanced technology from the long ago that still works, and many of the strange beings they meet have merely been deformed through radiation or scientific experiments. Many of the characters are unaware as to why things are the way they are… it’s just the world they occupy.

FIFTH ASSIGNMENT: write your own conflict line following the format above. Keep in mind it helps energize an entire plot line and the antagonist(s) must be noted or inferred.

With a dark sword that only he can wield, a young wanderer is the only one who can stand against the Undead King and his army of ravenous corpses.

SIXTH ASSIGNMENT: 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.

Mercer Crane’s father, Willis, gave him one task before he left for Ithaca: take care of his Nan and sister. But Mercer failed. He woke one morning to find the two women he was to look after being torn apart by a ravenous horde of undead. After slaughtering the corpses with his father’s longsword, Mercer took to wandering the wilderness, tormented by his guilt and shame at having failed his family. Mercer finds redemption in the offer by Dusty Yen to join his army. He wants to start his life over again, and will do so at any cost, even if that means destroying the civilized cities to the west, which is Dusty Yen’s objective. Meeting Brook is a major turning point for Mercer, however, because in her he finds someone who recognizes him as an actual human being.

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?

Mercer and Brook, after finding out certain truths about Plaguewind and the Sword of Jai Lin, begin to distrust Solloway and the objective of his mission.

FINAL ASSIGNMENT: sketch out your setting in detail. What makes it interesting enough, scene by scene, to allow for uniqueness and cinema in your narrative and story? Please don't simply repeat what you already have which may well be too quiet. You can change it. That's why you're here! Start now. Imagination is your best friend, and be aggressive with it.

The Undead King takes place in a post-apocalyptic Upstate New York, approximately 150 years after the collapse of civilization. The Green Lands, as Upstate NY is now called, is a varied region of hills, mountains, rivers and scrubland. The Hud and the Ferik Marshes are at the easternmost border, while the Aderon Mountains are to the north. The Borderlands and the Blight beyond it are to the south, while the Krab Grass Prairies lie to the west. For the most part, technology has reverted back to the dark ages, and people live in fairly primitive conditions. In the northwest are the few remaining civilized cities, including the domed city of Ithaca, the Fort at Kingston and the farming community of Lazarus Township.

Story Statement
A modern day story aimed in raising overall human human consciousness, through a correlation of events which tap into intuition, dreams and ultimately lead to the protagonists, life purpose. 


Antagonist:
Antagonists are seen throughout the book, in multiple different formats. Various people dependent on which event is occurring are the antagonists. All help along her journey, some are the people in the plane, who end up on the island with her. Mostly though the biggest antagonist is the protagonist herself, as well as the setting, and series of events. She must accept the signs along the way, dreams to find the ultimate treasure. She overcomes adversity and triumphs.


3)Title

Le Reve (french, for The Dream)
The Intuitive Journey
Is this Really Happening?


Comparables
The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho
Santiago is the protagonist of this novel. It is his story and his maturing and learning about life that composes the plot. Through his trials and tests, we also learn about life. Amanda is Santiago, however the only difference is she is female, the setting is present day, the journey albeit different is similar because of the intuitive signs along the way.

The Greatest Salesman in the World, by Og Mandino
This books serves as a guide to a philosophy, and success, telling the story of Hafid, a poor camel boy who achieves a life of abundance. In a similar way, my book, finds treasures to life which contain scrolls which are the secrets to life. The reader finishes the book with the sense that he/she can live better and obtain a higher level of understand to life.


Conflict Line
Amanda, the protagonist, journey to listening and/or hearing intuitive, ‘gut’ feelings, which leads to an interesting correlation of events and ultimately finding a treasure of wisdom.


Inner Conflict
Amanda, feels perplexed by her initial dream of a cave and a radiating light. She brushes it all off as just a dream however, she’s a part of the plane crash, once Colleen (her co-passenger) awakes, from being unconscious, shares her near death experience, Colleen also shares that Amanda will find a treasure and to be patient. All of her struggles are listening to the intuitive signs and making sense of them.

Secondary Conflict
Amanda’s involved in a plane crash, stuck on an island with 5 different strangers, dealing with loss of life, survival, and falling in love.

Setting.
The setting initially is a current day female who is juggling a career, living in San Diego, California, trying to find love however perplexed as to life’s real questions. The setting then changes as she is in involved in an airplane crash, which results in her and five others being stranded on a remote island, in the Atlantic Ocean.