amyms

First 10 pages per Part III assignment: Chapter One Tristan crouched in darkness. The outdoor storehouse smelled of mulch. Onions lolled around at his feet, having spilled from a sack sitting atop the oak barrel that served as his cover. He looked again in the direction of the shed door, breath hitched in his throat, but his gaze couldn’t penetrate the pitch-dark blackness. What would he do if the field expert, his assigned partner, never showed up? All day he had been imagining what lies he would tell if some fourth caste servant caught him trespassing. His eyes strayed to the elongated boxes tucked on the shelves among the stores. They were hidden in darkness now, but he knew what was in them. He checked the time again on his Reader. The light from the screen on his wrist pushed the gloom into retreat, but only by an inch. 10:33 pm. The party started at nine. He took a deep breath, shaking his shoulders to ease the tension and practicing disarming grins at nobody. If he was caught, he could talk his way out of trouble. He’d done it before. He just had to— The door opened. There was just enough light outside for him to see a man in a gardener’s uniform before he shut the door. For a moment, Tristan imagined taking advantage of the darkness to knock the interloper out. But light radiated from the screen of a Reader embedded in the young man’s left arm, and Tristan saw his face. He hadn’t met him in person, but he recognized him from his profile: Ryo Arden. They regarded each other. Stories of Ryo made the guy sound like a grizzled veteran, but the man standing before Tristan was several years younger than himself, eighteen to twenty if he had to guess. Worse: He didn’t look like a gentleman. He looked like what Tristan knew he was: a soldier—and a hostile one. If Ryo glared at the upper caste party guests the way he was glaring at Tristan, he was going to attract the wrong kind of attention. “Hi. Ryo? I’m Tristan Martin.” He held out his hand to shake, but Ryo walked right past Tristan’s extended arm and over to the shelves with the boxes. Ryo opened one of the boxes. From inside, he withdrew a zipped garment bag and a small container, which was filled with chemically engineered plastics capable of tricking weapons detectors. He opened the container to reveal the disassembled parts of a pistol. Tristan watched, stunned, as Ryo assembled the gun in less than ten seconds, using only the light from his Reader. He tossed the second package to Tristan. Tristan opened it, but took his time putting his own gun together, distracted by Ryo fishing a sealed plastic bag from his box and a scalpel from the pocket of his gardener’s uniform. Without hesitation, Ryo laid the scalpel against the underside of his left arm, away from the main artery, and made a small, precise incision near his embedded Reader. Bright red blood welled from the cut. Ryo slid a tiny glittering piece of metal from the plastic bag under his skin. He then covered the wound with a viscous, translucent liquid from a tiny vial. In a few moments, the skin looked as if it had never been cut, if oddly shiny. Ryo tucked the scalpel back into his jacket pocket and rolled his sleeve down. His expression never changed. Tristan counted sixteen 9mm rounds into the magazine, each bullet slender and sleek, and then slid the magazine up into the well until it clicked into place. He didn’t look in his box for a plastic bag like Ryo’s. He wouldn’t have one. The tiny metal square that Ryo had inserted into his arm was a caste chip. While he knew it was done on occasion, Tristan had never actually seen anyone cut their arm and insert a fake caste chip like Ryo just had. Caste chips were essential pieces of bio-ware assigned at birth. The one Tristan received as a baby dissolved nanotech into his bloodstream, altering his DNA and marking him as second caste. His caste status was calibrated to his Reader profile, which enabled everything from purchases to postings to his Lifestream to access through monitored doorways. The old, physical caste chips inserted the way Ryo had just done could mask the underlying marker and fool some scanning security, but Tristan had been under the impression they wouldn’t have to rely on that tonight. “I thought Rider was going to send someone in the upper castes,” Tristan said. “What—” “You’d better get changed,” Ryo interrupted. “I didn’t mean to offend you.” Ryo’s face showed no sign of offense, but there was an intensity in his gaze that made Tristan want to back up. “I am against the whole caste system obviously,” Tristan said. “I just thought—” “I’m not what Central needs to be concerned about.” Ryo eyed Tristan suggestively. “You’ve got field rookie written all over you.” Grimacing, Tristan opened the zipped garment bag. He was not a field rookie, but it was true that his training hadn’t focused on combat situations. Until recently, Tristan’s primary function had been to build social capital and identify potential assets Central could work for information. He supposed that was what Ryo meant. Still, he knew why he had been chosen for this mission; he deserved to be here. Ryo had already opened his own garment bag. Both bags contained the same thing: sleek black trousers, black satin-lined swallowtail jackets, white starched dress shirts with wing tip collars, white pique waistcoats, white ruffled neckties, thin black socks, shiny black shoes, and expensive cufflinks. Fingering the jacket, Tristan wondered if his rude, unfriendly partner even knew how to put on formal evening attire. But before he could do more than wonder, Ryo proved he was comfortable wearing whatever clothes he had been assigned to wear. By the time Tristan was shrugging into his vest, Ryo was tucking his gun under the back of his jacket in the waistband of his trousers. Tristan struggled with his cufflinks, thinking miserably about how he had grown up in a household with valet to dress him and how smug he had been to hide that fact when he joined Central. “We’d better get going,” Ryo said. Tristan tucked his gun against the small of his back. “Are you always like this?” Ryo’s face remained expressionless. “Am I always like what?” “Never mind.” Tristan dropped his smile. Grins and friendly banter weren’t working on Ryo. Tristan wondered if the fellow knew how to smile. His face didn’t look practiced at it. “You have the invitations?” “Yes.” Tristan reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and withdrew two cream colored crepe paper envelopes with WH monogramed in gold. He handed one to Ryo. Tristan broke the seal on his own invitation and pulled out the shimmery gold card: His Excellency, President Sabin Whitehall, and the First Family, requests the pleasure of your company by special invitation at the New Year’s Eve Ball, to be held at the Presidential Palace, Saturday December 31, at nine o’clock in the evening. # Sanna stared at her reflection in the mirror above her vanity. Her gown was clamshell white, the satin sleeves soft on her pale, slender shoulders. She stared hard into her eyes, greenish blue like polar ice, and battled with her own expression. “Not so forceful.” Her mother watched Sanna disapprovingly, a shimmering champagne shawl looped over her elbows. Her mother’s beautiful face looked carved from alabaster, pale blonde hair in a crown of curls. “Sanna, please. If you look at gentlemen like that, they will think you are challenging them. Remember: You are the prize, not the competition. Soften your eyes. Softer.” When all thought melted until Sanna’s eyes resembled still, reflective pools. “There you are.” Her mother graced Sanna with a rare, soft smile. “Perfect.” That word—perfect—had once meant everything to her. Sanna had strived to hear it every time she did anything. Now, nearly three years after her humiliating breakdown, the word nettled. She did not let agitation show on her face. Her mother would not understand; she had her own set of facts when it came to what was upsetting Sanna. Tanesha returned to Sanna’s vanity with jewelry options draped over her slim, dark hands: a sapphire pendant the size of a gull’s egg and a long, double strand of rare, natural pearls. Sanna met Tanesha’s eyes briefly in the mirror, wordless understanding passing between them. “I think I’ll wear my cross tonight.” Sanna fingered the platinum pendant around her neck. It was the last gift her father had given her. She had just turned sixteen and was inconsolable and unable to comprehend that such a charming man in the peak of health could die so suddenly. If fifth caste rebels had really poisoned him, as had been reported, why hadn’t God saved him? Weren’t the Whitehalls God’s agents on Earth? Her father had believed that and talked of it often. At the time, she believed he’d become an angel. She understood how deluded that thinking had been now, but she had not thrown away the cross. “Very good, Sanna,” Tanesha said. Sanna’s mother didn’t say anything as Tanesha returned the fine jewelry to the cabinet. By her icy silence, it was clear she wanted Sanna to choose the pearls. “Would you like me to put your hair up now?” Tanesha swept Sanna’s wheat blonde locks to one side and gathering the long layers underneath to show how it might look. “Half up, half down?” “Perhaps with pearl pins?” Maybe that would appease her mother. “That would be lovely.” Tanesha went to work with her usual deftness. Sanna sat patiently, hands folded on her lap as Tanesha curled, twisted, and pinned half her hair in a complex arrangement of elegant loops and curls. Her mother stood in silence, watching with a hawk’s eye until the last lock had been rolled into place. All the while, her mouth drew tighter and tighter until it was a thin pink line. By the time Tanesha finished her Sanna makeup, her mother projected a lady’s regal countenance so severe it bordered on fragility. “Tanesha, dear, would you excuse us please?” Tanesha’s eyes flickered to Sanna. She exited the room, closing the door softly. Sanna turned to face her mother. “Your Uncle Mathias wants to introduce you to his particular friend tonight. Would you be inclined to indulge him?” “Certainly,” Sanna replied automatically, not knowing how she could refuse even if she wanted to. Even before her husband’s death, Lady Selene had very specific notions about Sanna’s upbringing. Only in the years since her breakdown had Sanna become aware of how much control her mother exerted over every aspect of her life. But discovering that hadn’t changed their relationship; if anything, it had made it worse. “Do you know him?” she asked, meaning Mathias’s special friend, who could only be a suitor. “I know him a little. The young James Amberton. He is very handsome and close to your age.” She smiled as if this bit of information should please Sanna. Sanna supposed it should, given the alternative, but she felt nothing. “I believe you met his grandparents when you were younger.” “I think I remember.” The Ambertons were first caste, of course, a wealthy and prominent American family with several generations of loyalty to the Whitehalls and expansive estates in the west. If she remembered correctly, they were proud of their vineyards and particularly the expansive AI drone-powered irrigation system they had built to rescue California from drought, which had won them a seat on the Council of Lords. She did not remember much about them personally, and she had never met a young, handsome member of the family named James. No doubt he was set to inherit the title of Lord Representative. Her mother would not come right out and say that, but it had to be the case; she would not have agreed to the match otherwise. Her mother looked Sanna over expertly, scanning for stray threads, loose buttons, or hairs out of place. She found none, of course. “Are you sure about wearing your cross? It’s a little understated for the occasion.” “I chose it because it is a little understated.” Her mother paused. “Perhaps it is better not to seem overeager.” Sanna did not like this concession. When her mother allowed Sanna to make a choice she disagreed with, however small and insignificant, it boded some other, more important decision she had already made. That decision might be James. Her stomach tightened, but she walked herself through her mental exercises to ease anxiety, interrupting negative thoughts with positive ones and reimagining her circumstances. She had always known her marriage would be a political arrangement, but her grandfather, Sabin Whitehall, was president, and believed Sanna ought to have a say in her marriage partner. Sanna had missed out on a debutante ball. That would have been the same year her father had been murdered, the year she suffered a mental breakdown. Her mother forbade Sanna any social parties during that time. When she turned eighteen last May, she asked about it, but her mother demurred, saying that Sanna was too immature and fragile to be formally presented to society. Almost a whole year went by when Sanna did not leave the Presidential Palace at all. Her grandfather had intervened on her behalf. He told Selene that Sanna was a woman, and that if she wanted her daughter married, she had to be allowed to meet men. As such, the New Year’s Eve Ball would serve as Sanna’s official coming out party. All the first caste families would be in attendance, and Sanna could wear white and be presented to dozens of eligible suitors while their fathers sipped champagne and hobnobbed over their various business interests. With so many gentlemen in attendance, perhaps Sanna would meet someone she liked that her mother would not object to. Sanna was dubious that her mother would accept anyone Sanna chose for herself, but she appreciated the opportunity and was eager to make the most of it. Learning her mother had handpicked a suitor for Sanna before the party even started filled her with dread, however young and handsome he might be. That, and the knowledge that he was also the choice of her Uncle Mathias, whom she did not much like. “How soon do you hear wedding bells?” Sanna ventured. “I mean, if I like James Amberton.” “Within the year would be ideal.” A chill passed through Sanna. “That’s very quick.” She was careful to modulate her tone. “Women benefit from being settled young.” Her mother said it as if she had not been responsible for delaying Sanna’s coming out. “Queen Victoria met Prince Albert when she was seventeen, was married by twenty, and had her first child at twenty-one. Time moves quickly, Sanna.” The Whitehalls were forever comparing and modelling themselves after royal personages in historic England, a tedious exercise in Sanna’s opinion, with many false equivalencies. “Surely a few years wouldn’t—” “Sanna, please. You have been pestering me about this nonstop. Now that you are allowed to come out, you object?” “I want to be recognized as an adult. I want to meet men. I’m just not sure I’m ready to marry.” Her mother looked scandalized. Sanna pivoted. “Shouldn’t the pressure to marry be more on Mathias? He is over forty and still unwed with no heirs.” “I don’t manage Mathias. I want to see everything properly arranged for you. It is my duty to see you are protected and provided for. God knows I have concerns about you, but your grandfather has convinced me that marriage may be the answer. Your father and I married at nineteen and were no worse for it.” Sanna could have disputed that. Rarely had she observed her parents actively enjoying each other’s company. In most of her childhood memories, her family moved around each other like pieces on a gameboard, her father ignoring her mother as if he were a stone and her mother emanating such a chill it was a wonder the room had not frosted. Sanna had been expected to sit silently and demand nothing from either of them. “It is easiest to adapt to the demands of marriage when you are young,” her mother continued. “The Ambertons are a strong family and in good favor with Mathias, who will be president sooner rather than later if your grandfather’s health declines. He is nearly eighty.” “He’s seventy-two and in prime health.” “Sanna.” Sanna recognized the sharp tone that signaled the end to debate. Sanna closed her mouth. Protected and provided for? She lived in an ostentatious palace surrounded by armed guards. She wasn’t even allowed to leave the grounds unless it was on family business. She hated feeling like a caged bird. But she knew better than to disagree when her mother used that tone. Her mother would start berating Sanna for her lack of temperance, or else complain that Sanna must not care how her impudence made her mother feel. “I would be delighted to meet James Amberton,” Sanna said, knowing exactly both what her mother wanted to hear and how she wanted to hear it. When mother left, Sanna turned to her vanity and stared into the mirror once more. Her eyes hardened like polished turquoise. Defiance bubbled up like water from an underground wellspring. At times like this, she felt like there were two of her: the proper lady she was bred to be and this other wild and disobedient woman inside, fighting to get out. She tamped the feeling down. Inside her own head, she could be free. She walked through her mental exercises, thinking of spring gardens, cool ocean breezes, starry night skies, and rolling hills of waving grass. Tanesha reentered the room. “What did she say that I am not supposed to hear?”

Assignment 1: Story Statement Defy the authoritarian regime but be forced to choose between love and revolution. Logline: The scapegoated and disaffected granddaughter of America's authoritarian presidential family falls in love with a rebel spy and must choose between her own desires and revolution. Assignment 2: Antagonistic Forces The primary antagonist is Mathias Whitehall, the eldest son of the president and next in line for the presidency. He is also the uncle of the protagonist. Mathias Whitehall is 40 years old, militaristic, misogynistic, contemptuous, cruel, impatient, and angry. Lacking in charisma and unpopular with the public, he is not the man his father wanted him to be. Mathias schemes to assassinate his father, assume the presidency in his prime years, and fast track America to monarchy, which it practically is already but with factions for and against. He wants the protagonist to marry his friend and produce heirs on his behalf because he hates women and children and all things weak and dependent. More broadly, the antagonist is the Whitehall regime and the entire system that supports an authoritarian dictatorship. The title of president typically passes from father to eldest son. A Council of Lords could technically elect another candidate, but the formalized caste system and control of information via propaganda ensures loyalty to the regime. The caste system is maintained by technology. All citizens are chipped at birth and have profiles on the Reader Network, which controls information, education, opportunity, travel, and access according to caste. People can move up or down castes based on calibrations from Administrators, which surveil activity on the Reader Network using AI agents. Secondary antagonists include Sanna's mother, the rebel spy agency director, and the assassin. Assignment 3: Working Titles Dissident Assignment 4: Comparables My market is primarily 18–30-year-old women seeking a mix of fast-paced action, romance, and SF/F elements in a dystopian setting that is more mature and grounded in reality than the YA dystopias of the mid-2010s. The girls who loved these books when they were 12-15 are grown up now and dystopias feel a lot more real. Comparables are my weak spot. I don’t have two that scream “this” plus “this” (selling loads of copies right now) equals a huge market for my book. Contenders: A Thousand Heartbeats, published in 2022, is the newest book by Kiera Cass who also wrote The Selection. This book is a YA fantasy that features a princess protagonist who is forced into marriage for political gains and instead falls in love with the man who should be her enemy. Mercenary Librarians by Kit Rocha is a three-book science fiction series published between 2020 and 2022. It is set in a post-apocalyptic dystopian America ruled by the Techno Corp. It features action and sexual tension between an information broker and an ex-militant whose bionic enhancements are so dangerous to him he is compelled to betray the woman he’s falling for. Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard, a series of five books published between 2015 and 2019. It has a caste system, a love triangle, and spies, but it is a fantasy, a bit old now, and YA in tone and theme. Shield of Sparrows by Devney Perry was released in May 2025 and is already being made into a movie with glowing reviews. It is described as a slow-burn, high-stakes romantasy in which a princess is forcibly engaged to a prince but rejects the crown and falls in love with a monster hunter. I haven’t read it yet. I may wish this to be a comp more than it might actually be one. Strongmen by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, published in 2020, is a hot selling nonfiction book about authoritarian dictatorships, which did inform aspects of the authoritarian regime in my novel. Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins, a prequel in the Hunger Games series published in 2025, is about propaganda and false choices, particularly choosing between love and rebellion. This is thematically a good fit, but I have been told not to use a series that is too popular. Also, when people hear “Hunger Games” they think about the arena and my book doesn’t have an arena. The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, published in 2019. I fear this may be too old, too popular, and too upmarket to be a good comp, but it might work combined with something else. The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills published in 2024 is about a woman with mechanized wings in a theologically based fascist government who has a crisis of conscience and rebels. The author gained some notoriety with the short story Rabbit Test, which is a futuristic story about controlling women with period and abortion tracking. I don’t know how her debut book is selling. Where the Axe is Buried, published in 2025 by up-and-coming science fiction writer Ray Nayler is about near-future Russia/Europe where an authoritarian Federation oppresses the people and there is a plot to assassinate and replace the President, a man who has downloaded his mind to a succession of new bodies to maintain his grip on power. It is reputedly a messy, idea-centric novel. Assignment 5: Core Wound and Primary Conflict The protagonist is Sanna Whitehall, the niece of Mathias Whitehall and the scapegoat of the Whitehall family due to being its only sensitive and empathetic member. She suffered a psychotic break when her father was murdered three years ago and was forced into psychiatric evaluation, which revealed the extent of her mistreatment by her family. Now an adult, she seeks to escape her family's control. Marriage is her only ticket out, but she is kept isolated inside the Presidential Palace, where she is incredibly lonely with only her handmaid for a friend, who is conspiratorial and gives Sanna banned books to read. In the opening scene, Sanna is informed by her controlling mother that her uncle’s friend has been chosen as a suitor for her. If she can’t meet someone else at the New Year’s Eve Ball and claim an existing romantic attachment under the Victorian-inspired social rules, she will be forced into a miserable marriage and subjugated for the rest of her life. When the current president is assassinated at the ball, Mathias is strongly implicated. Evidence also implicates him in the murder of his brother (the protagonist’s father), who died by poison three years ago, which was blamed on insurgent rebels. With Mathias to become president, all windows to freedom close for the protagonist except one—become a dissident. Assignment 6: Conflicts The protagonist’s inner conflict: Sanna’s primary inner conflict is to figure out how to establish herself as an independent person when she has always been under the control of others. She has to learn how not to obey, what she likes, who she loves, how to love herself, and how to defy those who want to control her. Scene that triggers protagonist: The New Year's Eve Ball, which takes place over four chapters. Two rebel spies infiltrate the Presidential Palace to attend the ball, which is also when Sanna learns her uncle’s friend has been chosen as a suitor for her (chapter one). Sanna is introduced to the spies at the party and is instantly infatuated with one of them, but he refuses her when she asks him to dance (chapter two). Sanna dances with her uncle's friend, the chosen suitor, but can't stand him so she retires early. Meanwhile, the spies sneak upstairs to the Residence to complete a mission, but insurgents interrupt them before they can leave (chapter three). The spies try to prevent the assassination of the president but fail. Sanna witnesses everything. She surprises them by declaring herself a dissident and asks to join the rebels (chapter four). Secondary conflict: Sanna falls in love with the spy who rejected her, but he is controlled by the spy agency which devalues him as a human being due to a bionic brain implant that enhances his lethality but mutes his emotions, meaning he can’t tell her how he feels; he doesn’t know himself. The spy agency pressures her to get engaged to the other spy, who is upper caste and socially and politically positioned to challenge Mathias for the presidency. Together, they are to manufacture a fake love story to be used as counterpropaganda to make Mathias unpopular with the people. Sanna's conflict is to decide whether she belongs with the avoidant spy she loves or if the political match is actually better for her in the long run. It doesn’t help when she finds out the spy she loves is ordered to assassinate Mathias, a suicide mission that will bring about revolution at the cost of his life. Even if she believes she belongs with the person she has the biggest feelings for, are her personal desires worth it if it costs America the chance at revolution? Note: There is also a subplot with Sanna’s handmaid which ties into the climax. Assignment 7: Setting The first half of the story takes place primarily in the Presidential Palace, which is Sanna’s home. The building is no longer the White House as it has been entirely rebuilt. Washington DC has been renamed New Columbia. The palace layout is reminiscent of the Residence just enough to be eerie. The New Year’s Even Ball takes place at the palace on the entry-level floor. Other locations include a short stint on the road and a motel, where Sanna experiences a taste of freedom and finds herself falling in love. There are also scenes at a rebel base in the country outside New Columbia, which is an underground facility with an oppressive, corporate feeling. There are also a few scenes in a New York City shelter for victims of domestic violence, which is where Sanna’s handmaid flees. The penultimate scene also takes place in New York City, at the Met fashion gala, where Sanna is taken hostage. The final scenes are back at the Presidential Palace. The climax takes place in the Rose Garden, which is adjacent to the West Wing.