Yet Another Revision to the Synopsis of MASQUE

Leo Song sues companies that make defective drugs. His wife, Nora is a fledgling mother of a psychotic toddler and is pregnant with a child whose paternity is uncertain. The couple, transplants to San Diego from New York City, volunteers to host a masquerade party intended to build community among the aloof parents of children at their son's preschool. An uninvited, masked woman shows up to the party and refuses to leave. She never removes her mask, and apparently she speaks no English. Speaking in Shanghainese, this stranger, who calls herself Bei Qi, tells Leo that she is his own grown daughter, she has just landed in the States from China, and she needs a place to stay.

While Leo's career hinges on messy litigation involving a scheming pharmaceutical giant, Nora's motherhood is threatened by the intrusion of this supposed daughter. Meanwhile, Bei Qi gets caught up in emotional troubles that rattle her plan. And when quiet domestic struggles sustain all the secrets and betrayal they can endure, the family uncovers a scandal that threatens the health and safety of small children who have been prescribed antipsychotic medication.

Another Revised Synopsis

Leo Song sues big financial institutions on behalf of angry investors. His wife, Nora is a fledgling mother of a feral toddler and is pregnant with a child whose paternity is uncertain. The couple, transplants to San Diego from New York City, volunteers to host a masquerade party intended to build community among the aloof parents of children at their son's private preschool. An uninvited, masked woman shows up to the party and refuses to leave. She never removes her mask because it covers her deformity, and apparently she speaks no English. Speaking in Shanghainese, this stranger, who calls herself Bei Qi, tells Leo that she is his own grown daughter, she has just landed in the States from China, and she needs a place to stay.

While Leo's career hinges on messy litigation involving a scheming foreign financial giant, Nora's motherhood is threatened by the intrusion of this supposed daughter. Meanwhile, Bei Qi gets caught up in emotional troubles that rattle her plan. And when quiet domestic struggles sustain all the secrets and betrayal they can endure, the family realizes that what is also at stake is a global identity crisis.

{Actually the end of the novel is not yet written; I have no idea what is really at stake.}

Revised Synopsis for Masque

Leo Song sues big financial institutions on behalf of angry investors. His wife, Nora is a fledgling mother of a feral toddler and is pregnant with a child whose paternity is uncertain. The couple, transplants to San Diego from New York City, volunteers to host a masquerade party intended to build community among the aloof parents of children at their son's private preschool. An uninvited, masked woman shows up to the party and refuses to leave. She never removes her mask because it covers her deformity, and apparently she speaks no English. Speaking in Cantonese, this stranger, who calls herself Bei Qi, tells Leo that she is his own grown daughter, she has just landed in the States from China, and she needs a place to stay.

While Leo's career hinges on messy litigation involving foreign financial giants, Nora's motherhood is threatened by the intrusion of this supposed daughter. Meanwhile, Bei Qi gets caught up in emotional troubles that rattle her plan. And when quiet domestic struggles sustain all the secrets and betrayal they can endure, the family realizes that what is also at stake something something something something ?????? [TK] [TK].

What is also at stake?

Reader? You have any idea?

Updated Synopsis for Masque

Leo Song is an attorney who sues big financial institutions on behalf of angry investors. His wife, Nora is a fledgling mother of a difficult toddler and is pregnant with a child whose paternity is uncertain. The couple, transplants to San Diego from New York City, volunteers to host a masquerade party to build community among the aloof parents of children at their son's private preschool. An uninvited, masked woman shows up to the party and refuses to leave. She never removes her mask because it covers her deformity, and apparently she speaks no English. Speaking in Cantonese, this stranger, who calls herself Bei Qi, tells Leo that she is his own grown daughter, she has just landed in the States from China, and she needs a place to stay.

While Leo's career hinges on messy litigation involving foreign financial giants, Nora's motherhood is threatened by the intrusion of this supposed daughter. Meanwhile, Bei Qi gets caught up in family and emotional troubles that rattle her plan. And when quiet domestic struggles sustain all the secrets and betrayal they can endure, this family realizes that what is also at stake has the power to change the value of Chinese currency.

Synopsis for Rebecca Jane's NaNo Novel

My National Novel Writing Month novel is entitled Masque.

Here's the synopsis:

Leo Song and his wife, Leanora, host a masquerade party to build community among the fancy and aloof parents of children at their son's private preschool. An uninvited, masked woman shows up to the party and refuses to leave. She never removes her mask because it covers her deformity, and apparently she speaks no English. Speaking in Cantonese, Leo learns that this stranger, who calls herself Bei Qi, is his own grown daughter, she has just landed in the States from China, and she needs a place to stay.


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Now I do wish that the voices that urge me to write this blog would be respectful and remain quiet so that I may concentrate more writing energy on the novel, but novel writing is so challenging, and I love finding ways to procrastinate.

NaNoWriMo Tee-Shirt

So Ginny put on her NaNoWriMo tee-shirt and lots of deoderant because writing at such a fast pace makes her sweat. She has been known to write so slowly that choosing one right word consumes her full attention for over an hour, or a day. When she was writing her second published novel, Swindler’s Night, she left a whole chapter unfinished for a month because she was laboring over one word. The right word, she eventually realized, was “cadence.” When she came up with it, she had been shopping at Trader Joe’s and she nearly poked out a fellow shopper’s eye when she whipped out her pen and notebook to write down her idea. She’s never attempted NaNoWriMo, nor has she ever forced herself to write through the un-artful first-thing-that-comes-to-mind kind of writing that others seem good at. But today, she tried it and she enjoyed the speed with which she reached 1667 words. She made it to 1800, in fact. Her characters are on the page, having a significant conversation at a beer garden. Her tale is coming into being on the page, and Ginny feels a sense of relief that it is finally getting out of her head. She is far from satisfied with the klutzy writing. The piece totally lacks cadence, but Myles can’t have gotten as far in his endeavor. His novel is probably some rambling erotica crap, Ginny wonders, but then immediately tells herself to focus on herself. Forget him, already, forget him.

Myles, dear reader, is taking a bubble bath and drinking champagne to celebrate his victory today. He’s written over 4,000 words of his erotic, legal thriller entitled Thanks Be to Godfrey. The protagonist Godfrey, a lawyer and law enforcement officer, chases his financial advisor on I-5 going South and entering Mexico, a car chase scene that rivals what we saw on TV back in June 1994 when OJ Simpson ran from cops on the San Diego Freeway near L.A. Godfrey’s nemesis rides away in a black Ford Bronco, and this inciting incident throws Godfrey to his knees. Myles is so proud of writing this scene because he feels he made it very literary and successfully rendered a thrilling car chase as a metaphor for global financial emergency. If he gives his rival novelist a single thought—which he doesn’t—he’d be thinking, “Ginny, eat my dust!”