Padraig
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Secession
When her soon-to-be ex-husband gets involved in a statehood movement in Northern California, Islin Ryan shrugs it off as another of his stupid antics, but when he gets their son Jason involved, she fears that he will go down the same right-wing rabbit hole her soon-to-be ex jumped down. Jason goes to work for the Jefferson movement and lands in the crosshairs of the US government when Jefferson decides to secede from the US. To save her son, she must confront a former flame and reveal a long-hidden secret. And maybe, if she can save her kid, she can save California, too.
The following comes from the second chapter:
An enormous, olive drab box with caterpillar treads sat outside the slate-blue ranch house. The box had a sloping front with three tiny windows like rectangular ship’s portals. The behemoth was so large it filled the entire view out of the wide, plate glass front window. Fog common to the Northern California Coast washed over it, condensing on the sides and running down until the water dripped onto the grass. The sun would burn the fog away by noon, but for now, no one driving by the home could see the piece of Army surplus.
The diesel engine rumbled to a stop and then around the back of the hulking steel tank a broad door swung open with a great screech of rusty metal. Islin watched from the window, slack-jawed, as Kevin popped out and walked up the steps.
Islin greeted him at the door.
“Kevin, what the ever-loving fuck? Where did this come from?”
“It’s for the coming storm.”
“I’m not even going to ask what that means. Whose is this?”
“It’s mine.” Kevin planted his feet, ready to go on offense.
“Yours? How did you pay for it? Wait. Is that why I had to use my credit card at Safeway the other day? Goddammit Kevin!” What began as deep and controlled breaths devolved into hyperventilating.
“We had the money. Besides, our survival is far more important.”
“What do you mean, ‘we had the money’? How much did this cost? Where did you get the money from?” Islin looked increasingly alarmed.
“It’s not like Jason is going to go to college.”
“What? Tell me you didn’t take Jason’s college fund. Tell me. Kevin, so help me God, you didn’t take his money.”
Islin turned and sat down on the armrest of the couch. She reached for her phone and unplugged it from the charger. She gave the screen a quick wipe up and then opened the banking app. She scrolled to the bottom of the page to the link to the savings accounts and with another tap, she was able to see the balance for Jason’s college fund. The account registered $94.73. Islin dropped her phone.
“Kevin, there was more than $40,000 in that account!”
Kevin looked unnaturally relaxed, as if he might be prone to say, “Possession is nine-tenths of the law.” He wasn’t known for being a smartass, at least, not deliberately. Without bothering to shrug, he said, “I only took what we needed.”
“Motherfucker. Don’t make this about ‘we.’ You did this all on your own; you never even mentioned this to me or the kids. You’ve got no right.”
“Didn’t I? I’ve got to protect my family from what’s coming.”
Islin swallowed a couple of times and then got up and ran for the bathroom. She flipped the seat up but before she could make it to her knees she threw up. She dropped to the floor and wrapped her arms around the bowl in time for the second spasm, which moved through her as she began sobbing.
After a third retch, Islin made it to her knees, turned to the towel bar and grabbed a washcloth. She turned on the hot water, soaked the Terry cloth and then wiped her face. She looked in the mirror and saw that some of her hair was slimed. She wiped the wet locks then rinsed the washcloth in cold water, folded it up and held it to her forehead.
Islin bent over the sink, elbows on the counter and began counting. It took her three tries to make it to her age, but when she did, she stood up, walked out of the bathroom and back to the living room. She looked at Kevin for a moment, trying to decide which thing she needed to say first.
For Kevin, the event was over, finished. He’d won. At least, that’s what he thought. He picked up the TV remote and began to scan for the Alabama game. When he leaned back and put his feet up on the coffee table, small clods of mud fell off.
Seeing the dirt on the table, Islin considered just how many times she’d told Kevin to take his boots off at the door, how many times she’d said, “The barn is over there. We don’t live in it.” She realized there would never come a day when she wouldn’t have to remind Kevin. There would never come a day when Kevin took his boots off at the door, when he took his beer bottles back in the kitchen, when he’d put a plate in the dishwasher, when he’d consider whether the family could really afford that new gun or the 1000 rounds of ammo, or the tank.
In an effort to lessen the bitter, acidic taste of her stomach acid, Islin swallowed several times. No amount of swallowing was going to rinse the bad taste from her mouth, she realized, and turned and walked into the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee. While she preferred her coffee with cream, she felt neither the patience nor the need to soften the dark roast; anything at all was less bitter than her bile. Years later, she would kid that Kevin left a bad taste in her mouth.
After taking a few sips, she concluded that she was unlikely to throw up again and eating something might help calm her. She grabbed the package of bagels from the fridge, sliced one in half on the cutting board and dropped the two halves in the toaster. As she listened to the buzz of the heating coils she went to the fridge for butter and strawberry preserves. After the toaster sprang up, she coated the bagel in thin slices of butter followed by a layer of the preserves. She took a tentative bite and when it went well, she took a bigger one.
Islin felt something shift in her, as if her stomach had moved out of position when she saw the tank, but was now slipping back into place. She experienced a moment of calm in which her path forward became as clear to her as a credit card statement—a few easy to comprehend data points and pages of fine print that were a mystery to her. In order to shepherd her kids toward adulthood, Islin needed to free herself and her kids from Kevin. She set her bagel down and walked into the living room.
You know what, Kevin? “Mi casa is no longer su casa! I’m fucking done. This crazy ass shit has gone on too long and gotten too weird. I’ve put up with far too much. You and your gun-crazy buddies can go drive your tank and build a clubhouse somewhere the fuck else.”
“It’s not a tank. It’s an armored personnel carrier, an APC. And it’s not a clubhouse. It’s a bunker. And there’s enough land here that you won’t even notice it, and the feds will never find it.”
Islin looked out the window at the Bobcat sitting next to the barn. Considering the bucket loader on the front she began to ask herself how many weekends of digging it would take to make a hole as deep as he wanted, then caught herself. She looked past the Bobcat and could see the first yellow leaves on the one oak in sight, while several redwoods rose into the fog. Islin felt grateful that the Mendocino Coastal fog hadn’t burned off.
“I don’t care what you call it. You’re not building it here. You’re packing, Kevin. And you can put it all in the tank you bought.”
“I said, it’s not a tank; it’s an APC. You don’t even know what this armament is or why we need it.”
“That’s just it. I don’t need it. Our kids don’t need it. In fact, you don’t need it. What you believe is fucking crazy.”
Kevin stood upon realizing that the episode was not over and he was going to miss the kickoff to the ‘Bama game. He held his hands in a gesture that said stop. “Now hold on, Iz. Don’t go all—”
“Don’t even. You’re not going to minimize this. You’re not going to gaslight me—or the kids. This?” She gestured in the direction of the hulking green thing. “This is the last fucking straw.”
Algonkian Retreats and Workshops 2023 - Assignments
in Algonkian Writer Conferences - Events, FAQ, Contracts
Posted
Algonkian Conference
Secession
Patrick Brady
FIRST ASSIGNMENT: write your story statement.
The protagonist confronts the divide between liberals and conservatives. She must convince the antagonist to give up his plan to secede from the US, a plan that has gotten many people killed and many more will die if she doesn’t succeed.
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.
Stoner cum entrepreneur Thomas Galley wants to be a legal weed kingpin, but California law is stymying his business’ growth, so he decides to co-opt the Jefferson statehood movement into a strategy to circumvent California law. As he gains power, his goals evolve and he leads Jefferson into a full-fledged secession from the US, and being president seems way cooler than being governor, especially if there are no pesky federal laws or constitution.
THIRD ASSIGNMENT: create a breakout title (list several options, not more than three, and revisit to edit as needed).
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?
After the Revolution, Robert Evans: What will the fracturing of the United States look like? After the Revolution is an edge-of-your-seat answer to that question. In the year 2070, twenty years after a civil war and societal collapse of the "old" United States, extremist militias battle in the crumbling Republic of Texas. As the violence spreads like wildfire and threatens the Free City of Austin, three unlikely allies will have to work together in an act of resistance to stop the advance of the forces of the Christian ethnostate known as the "Heavenly Kingdom."
In my novel, Northern California secedes from the US, and in doing so, it becomes a lawless place divided by competing interests. The US can’t allow Jefferson to succeed, which ensures enough war to scar a culture for a generation.
The Deluge, Stephen Markley: In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat. His fate will become bound to a stunning cast of characters—a broken drug addict, a star advertising strategist, a neurodivergent mathematician, a cunning eco-terrorist, an actor turned religious zealot, and a brazen young activist named Kate Morris, who, in the mountains of Wyoming, begins a project that will alter the course of the decades to come. From the Gulf Coast to Los Angeles, the Midwest to Washington, DC, their intertwined odysseys unfold against a stark backdrop of accelerating chaos as they summon courage, galvanize a nation, fall to their own fear, and find wild hope in the face of staggering odds. As their stories hurtle toward a spectacular climax, each faces a reckoning: what will they sacrifice to salvage humanity’s last chance at a future? A singular achievement, The Deluge is a once-in-a-generation novel that meets the moment as few works of art ever have.
My novel is set in the near future and it is set in motion by present-day tensions between the left and the right. Adding to the tension are flashpoints like drug policy, credit card debt, social welfare programs and our obsession with guns. Jefferson not only circles the drain we’ve all feared, it goes down the tubes, descending into a lawless fiefdom that has chosen to go to war with California and eventually the US.
FIFTH ASSIGNMENT: write your own hook line (logline) with conflict and core wound following the format above. Though you may not have one now, keep in mind this is a great developmental tool. In other words, you best begin focusing on this if you're serious about commercial publication.
When her soon-to-be ex-husband gets involved in a statehood movement in Northern California, Islin Ryan shrugs it off as another of his stupid antics, but when he gets their son Jason involved, she fears that he will go down the same right-wing rabbit hole her soon-to-be ex jumped down. Jason goes to work for the Jefferson movement and lands in the crosshairs of the US government when Jefferson decides to secede from the US. To save her son, she must confront a former flame and reveal a long-hidden secret. And maybe, if she can save her kid, she can save California, too.
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.
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?
Islin has lost her patience with right-wing capital-C Conservatives, like her soon-to-be-ex-husband, Kevin. And while her ire at him has broken into the open, she doesn’t want to become a target of the far right—the forces at work to establish the State of Jefferson. Her son, Jason, is beginning to head down the Jefferson hole and Islin seems powerless to stop him.
Her inclination is to avoid conflict, but she can’t abide discrimination and small-minded thinking. She wants nothing to do with the craziness that she sees in the Jefferson movement and wants to run away, but is angry she must leave her home. She decides she must get her kids and herself out of Mendocino County when tanks begin massing at the Jefferson border.
Islin has to confront a former flame, the Governor of Jefferson. He is the most visible force behind the movement and she believes she must confront him if she is to save her son. She thinks that seceding to establish Northern California as an independent country is the dumbest idea she has heard in her life. Going to war to do it is even dumber. And her son identifies with the struggle because it mirrors his drive for independence as a teen.
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.
Secession is set in Northern California. Primary locations include:
The protagonist’s ranch house, barn and sprawling property in rural Mendocino County. The house and barn were built by her father and represent security and safety for her. The invasion of Jefferson threatens her home and her sense of safety.
The rocky and foggy Mendocino Coast. The foggy coastline is a place that muffles sound and light, where you can hide everything from a tank to an illegal pot grow.
The California State Capitol building in Sacramento, its mall, and the downtown streets and buildings around it. A number of scenes take place in the governor’s offices.
The flat farmland and small farm towns of California’s Central Valley. This flat farmland is cheap, dusty and the sort of land you can’t imagine anyone fighting over.
The town of Chico, California, a farm community of 100,000. It makes a natural capital for Jefferson as it’s the largest city north of Sacramento.
An old storefront in Chico, converted into the offices for the Jefferson administration. Jefferson is not a slick operation. Their offices look like everything was bought at an office bankruptcy. The building is rundown and looks like it was last decorated in 1968.
The redwood forests and mountains of Sonoma, Mendocino and Humboldt Counties. The winding dirt roads and hidden cannabis grows serve as a backdrop in multiple scenes.
The lava beds of Modoc County where the Modoc Wars were fought. The lava beds provide excellent cover for anyone.