Synopsis Workshop

My Name
My Street Address
My Town & State
My Phone Number
Genre: Romance/Adventure
Synopsis--Duty with Honor: Leap of Faith Word Count: @ 60,000

         Just before her thirteenth birthday, Air Force brat, BETH MORGAN got the surprise of her life. Not only was she adopted, but she had a father and older brother—both celebrities in their own right. Always a ‘people-pleaser’, Beth decides to split her time between the two families. She maintains this separate but equal lifestyle for more than thirty years—keeping it secret even from her ex-husband.
         If she thought she’d have an uneventful life after her divorce, she was wrong. Soon after it’s finalization, her sister-in-law is diagnosed with cancer and she spends the next four years doing what she can to make her sister-in-law comfortable and keeping her brother and nieces and nephews reasonably sane.
         The story begins about a year after her sister-in-law’s death. She is living a solitary life in the Connecticut countryside, when her Grammy winning brother, RICHARD EMERY, convinces her to meet him in New York City for some charity event. To her surprise and dismay, she finds he’s provided her with a date. ANDREW OLIVER is damn near perfect and she’s having a hard time resisting him. But when she discovers he’s an MI6 agent—just like her natural father, SIR ROGER EMERY, she wants nothing to do with him. Then Andrew makes a chance remark that triggers a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder attack, and Beth dashes back home.
         Richard tells him about the days of rape and torture she endured as a teenager, which explains the cause of the PTSD. Andrew is more determined than ever to win Beth’s love. He unexpectedly presents himself on her doorstep and wheedles his way into her heart. But just as she acquiesces to him, he discovers that Beth’s been having a recurring nightmare since they were in New York. When he realizes that what she think is a nightmare is really the memory of what occurred thirty years before he decides to sacrifice his feelings and walk away. He hopes this will let the nightmares rest.
         Driving in a rainstorm and distraught over his decision to leave Beth, Andrew wrecks his car and winds up in the hospital. He wakes up to find Beth standing over him. Then he crushes her by unceremoniously sending her away. He believes she’ll get over him. A few weeks later Richard informs him otherwise. Beth has spiraled into a major depression and abandoned her art classes and charity duties.
         Andrew agrees to go back to Connecticut and try to work things out between them, but only after he consults a psychologist about PTSD. He arrives to find Beth hurt and angry. He tries to get her to understand why he thought just turning his back on her was the best thing for him to do—for her. Things don’t seem to be going well, until he blows up from frustration and Beth see that she isn’t the only person who feels they have no control over their lives. They decide to try to become a couple—something that’s not going to be easy for these two loners.
With all that’s gone on over the last month or so, it is no surprise that Beth has a sudden anxiety attack. Drew gives her a few Valium and after weeks of turmoil and no rest, she sleeps. While Andrew is glad she is getting some much needed rest, he did have some things he thought he should talk about. He decides his problems will have to wait.
So instead, he goes downstairs to consider how to approach the sensitive subject of their physical relationship. The expert said that trust was the crucial issue for her. So Andrew’s solution is to just be affectionate but not sexual—at least for the time being. The next morning they begin a new path together. After a very uneventful breakfast, Beth shows Andrew the town. She’s also done some thinking and decided that if they were going to be a couple—she wants to work with him. Shock, morphs to an uneasy truce, to a ‘let’s put off thinking about that right now’ policy.
         When, later that night, Drew receives a phone call sending him to meet a CIA agent in Washington, DC, Beth asks to go along. She recants the requests, but only after she’s asked if he trusts her. Andrew takes that as a ‘sign’ and agrees to her coming, but lays down some ground rules as they drive south. Determined to prove herself, Beth agrees to his guidelines.
She spends the majority of the day reading in the hotel room and when Drew came back he brought his friend and associate, JACK LLOYD. He takes them for a twilight tour of the capitol and out for dinner. Andrew and Beth are enjoying his company and tall tales that neither notice how many rounds of drinks he’s ordering—or bottles of champagne.
         The men carry her back to the hotel, where she is sick most of the night. Mortified and sure Drew will never forgive her, Beth spends her second day in Washington recuperating and worrying about making it up to Andrew. She is dressed and waiting for them to go to lunch, when Andrew returns. But when she opens the door, two gun toting men follow him in. Together, she and Andrew deal with their captors—just as Jack and the cavalry arrives.
         She is horrified by what she did, and Drew hopes this will dissuade her from insisting on working with him. But Jack relates her amazing ancestry and announces that with her record she’ll have no problem getting ‘work’. Andrew resigns himself to the fact that they are going to be partners—in both life and work.

         This is the first of four completed manuscripts relating the adventures of Andrew and Beth.