Marc Curtis Little

GAME KNOWS GAME FIRST 50 PAGES.docx

Game Knows Game - Book Synopsis 500 Words.docx

GAME KNOWS GAME EDIT.docx

STORY STATEMENT A high-profile man sets out to devise a history-making event that will improve the economic conditions of a struggling municipality. SKETCH THE ANTAGONIST The antagonist of my novel is Lena Ashby Mosley, the first-term mayor of Newark, New Jersey. She is a self-serving former superintendent of schools in another state, who moves back to her native city to allegedly care for her elderly parents. Lena wins the election with help from her childhood friends and older citizens who were friends of her activist parents. Just three years into her term, Newark gets national attention from publicity about an African American multibillionaire couple making a serious bid to purchase a legacy professional football team with the intention of moving the franchise from New York City to Newark. Lena begins to craft a web of deceit that includes the selling of valuable city land to a group of real estate investors that have their sights set on making Newark a target of gentrification. Lena's two-decade dalliance with a man twenty years her junior places her in the company of forces attempting to block the sale of the football team. She plans to use both her relationship with the land speculators and her feigned attempt to salvage the sale of the team for the purpose of elevating her to Newark's patron saint. BREAKOUT TITLE Game Knows Game Dark Alley Friends GENRE AND COMPARABLES Genre: Thriller Comp: Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead Comp: If You Want Something Done by Nikki R. Haley LOGLINE As Newark, New Jersey's mayor leverages a major real estate deal to secure her legacy, she collides with the desires of the potentially first majority African American owner of a professional football team, forcing her to navigate a web of political intrigue and betrayal. OTHER MATTERS OF CONFLICT The primary conflict is for Curt Felton Jr. to find a path for his son and daughter-in-law to become the first African Americans to be majority owners of a professional football team. Curt Jr.'s aggressive personality buts heads with the duplicity of Lena Ashby Mosley's leadership style as Newark, New Jersey's mayor, which manifests into aberrant behavior from Curt Jr. The inner conflict is Curt Jr. returning to personal relationships from his past as a celebrated elected official and prosperous businessperson who cultivated fruitful relationships that followed him for more than four decades. Conversely, his recent machinations create dubious scenarios and foster misgivings about his character, leading to a relationship chasm between him and his son. The secondary conflict is the debate over the perception that a millennial African American couple would be able to accrue the kind of capital to secure a majority share of a professional football team. Moreover, the couple's fragile relationship with certain members of the oft cited Black community is creating mistrust about their silence when questioned about creating an environment where diversity, equity and inclusion goals are paramount. SETTING The setting of the novel is Newark, New Jersey, a real-life city in the northern portion of the state approximately twelve miles from New York City. Newark is a city with a checkered past and a promising, yet uncertain future. The city's deplorable earlier days are a mixed bag of redlined neighborhoods, unequal educational opportunities, and inequitable distribution of governmental resources. Those dilemmas were fully illuminated four years before the popularly titled Rebellion of 1967. That five-day insurgence sent the city into a spiral of massive residential flight to surrounding suburbs, creating a weakening of the all-important property tax base. As a result, the perception of Newark slogged for nearly fifty years, despite three African Americans serving as mayor of the city for four and a half decades. Much of the story occurs in post-pandemic Newark, beginning in 2023. Newark has experienced phenomenal growth under the leadership of Rashad Jelani since 2014, so much that he campaigns in a special election for governor and wins the seat in a landslide. Lena Ashby Mosley is elected mayor to fill the open seat. While she campaigned for the office, she discovered that while Newark's political leadership is comporting itself in a more transparent manner, she could use the spotlight as the city's female mayor as an opportunity to manipulate the notoriety for personal gain. Several other settings are visited as Curt Felton Jr. travels to venues while promoting his son's ambitious plan to purchase the New York Monarchs professional football team. The settings vary from present-day locales in Florida, Philadelphia, and southern New Jersey, to time periods as far back as the 1970s. There are also settings via omniscient narration, which is employed in the book.