Hook Us March 2013 Contest

The book: Kered Trumps a Bully

The hook: Defeated and lonely Kered wants desperately the teasing, taunting and hate speech about him to stop. What can he do? He unfortunately has to go to school. But then the answer lies on the bulletin board at school: Join the band. Kered does so, chooses the trumpet and effectively boosts his self-esteem. But there is a major problem: His bully and tormentor joins, too AND ON TRUMPET! Yikes!

The synopsis: School kid Kered is being teased unmercifully by some of the other kids at school because he hangs with his sisters and doesn’t play sports with everybody else. He doesn’t let on what is going on at school and begins to feel depressed – until one day he decides to join the band. Suddenly, his esteem takes a major hike and after he begins playing the trumpet and realizes that he is quite good at it. But things take a major nosedive when his worst enemy also joins the band on the same instrument and begins making life even more miserable for Kered. The band director announces auditions for chairs and Kered decides to take on his tormentor once and for all. And what follows is quite surprising and unexpected.

Conclusion: I co-wrote my first play back in 2008 for the company I currently work, the Children’s Museum of Atlanta. It is entitled “Hawthor’s Dragon” about a youngster who ends up magically going into a bedtime story his father reads and becoming a part of the story in order to change the course of events for the poor dragon who is despised simply for being different, giving the story a happy ending.

I wrote my first solo play, again, at the Children’s Museum in 2009 entitled “Get Curious” based on the Curious George traveling exhibit. This time our child hero goes on several adventures with his Uncle Victor with his “curiousiter” first taking them to Africa to learn that there is math and counting in music and rhythms, France to learn that cooking is actually a science, and then finally “accidentally” being blasted into outer space to learn about the planets (including Pluto ).

The last play I wrote was entitled “Happily Never After” about two not-so-identical twins and their evil stepmonster Evilis who torments the twins by casting a spell to make all fairy tales end “happily never after” with a time limit to turn them good again or they stay that way forever! However, all is not lost when Evilis’s identical twin Good-I-Am, whom the twins never knew existed because Evilis cast a spell to have him banished from the kingdom, appears to save the day and gives them a spell to change the fairy tales back to good and in the process making Evilis good, too. Permanently.

In addition to the above, I am also working on an episodic screenplay entitled “Fabulous and Gorgeous” set in the 1970s.

This is my first turn out with actually publishing a book. So, I do thank you for allowing me to be in the running.