VERA CAUSA

                      (True Cause)

synopsis to a political spiritual novel (66,666 words)

They always keep to their same plot: attack a person's weakest, most vulnerable spot. If you're greedy and have the thirst for wealth overpowering the force of your scruples or spiritual feelings then you become prey to the Vera Causa.

United States President Elliot Bryson senses his final days have arrived. This victim of an obscure illness has progressed into seizures and physicians are bewildered, having exhausted their medical knowledge. Elliot wants to go down swinging and ensure his legacy by contemplating his Global Peace Plan, an epochal attempt to bring law and order to an increasingly lawless, violent planet.

It that isn't enough, Elliot's embattled relationship with son John and his sexual identity problem turns bitter. The brash, toubled youth sees the press as enemies and living in the White House a prison sentence.

President Bryson tries to convince top governmental officials of the existence of a cunning, ruthless high level terrorism back organization with heinous intentions. Who are they and what are their motive is unclear but with chilling ease they've swarmed U.S. businesses, politics, military and other super power nations. Suspected of also infiltrating the Vatican, equally disturbing is their obession with an ultra top secret Russian underground military complex the size of Washington D.C.!

If Bryson dies, Vice President Arthur Shingle assumes power. thought by pundits to be a notoriously incompetent buffoon who prefers video games to politics, high-level Pentagon officials know otehrwise.

Seeing his life slip away, the President propels his bold peace plan ahead by making amends with Senator Paul McNair, a former Air Force hero. He sends Paul to Rome as an emissary to gain support from Pope Sixtus, a former simple parish church priest chosen for his dedication to reforming a troubled church.

Washington political news reporter firebrand Lynn Jacobs is reluctant to cover Paul's Vatican mission. She can't forget her torrid scandal-tinged romance with the senator in the last presidential campaign that cost him a spot on the winning ticket. Yet her news congolomerate desperately needs her astute coverage, and she relents. When she and Paul become intrigued by a volatile Vatican document buried deeply in the Holy See archives and off limits, they nearly die from a terrorist's bomb.

Back in the States, Senator David Warzon schemes to thwart the President' peace plan. Warzon's "down home good ol' boy" facade hides an ego maniac aiming to seize the reins of government and he conspires with Cardinal Scolari--a dour, pitiless intellectual who manipulates the Pope.

When the Pope is kidnapped while on a peace pilgrimmage in Israel, Lynn and Paul are bent on rescuing him. . . but Vera Causa has other plans.

President Bryson, all but dead and struggling to keep the world in one piece, sets hi sDove Shield anti-nuclear warhead defense in motion with Art Shingle at the helm!

And who finally shows up to support Elliot but son John, with a woman who carries a unique force of her own--First Lady Bevery Bryson.

For the righteous brave who gather--first one and then another--to take a stand against a near invisible enemy, laying in wait are crooked politicans and priests, war mongers and the Russian mob ready to batter enough corpses to mak an undertaker grin.

Vera Causa zips along at the speed of a japanese express train stopping only to give insight into how humans work. Richly drawn villians jump off the page to battle wonderful untested people who learn to fight with the tenacity of John Wayne and Mahatma Ghanti rolled into one.

                    Mine Game

(psychological romance thriller screenplay)

Logline

A celebrity discovering her stepbrother/first love killed in combat years ago died needlessly under mysterious circumstances plots retribution against his elusive war partner.

Synopsis

During his youth, JEREMY JENSON (early 40's) had aspirations of becoming a playwright. That changed when he went to war and was assigned the harrowing task of locating and dismantling landmines. Occupying his every thought was "trip a wire, play the price." After completing an agonized, destruction-filled tour of duty, nothing of his previous life seemed to have survived. Through it all, Jeremy's carried a painful secret. For the first time in years, he tries to extricate it.

CARLA COBRA, (late 30's) a former stage actress-turned-Hollywood television personality, receives an unsolicited Off-Broadway play for her consideration. Reading MINE GAME by R.J. Jenson shocks her to the core, for the searing war drama is art imitating life--her family's life! Though names have been changed, there's no doubt that the play details how her real-life stepbrother ANDY COBRASKY, actually died in battle. Carla, full of rage over the playwright's gall, is also fearful. Her family must never know of Mine Game, for their wounds from losing Andy have never healed. Nor must they every discover her coming of age relationship with him.

After hiring a private detective to investigate the playwright, Carla suprises stepfather RALPH COBRASKY (60's) with a visit to their hometown in western Pennsylvania, a languishing rust-belt backwater. For Ralph, the ghosts of his past, especially Andy and his own late wife, are far more alive for him than the moribound present. Unbeknownst to Ralph, Carla searches his bedroom for Andy's war letters that he keeps hidden. Having not seen them in years, she's shocked to realize how much of the play mirrors what Andy wrote about in his letters home. What's more, he told much of his one soul mate in the mine-tracking platoon-- a certain Jeremy Jenson!

Claudia's investigator uncovers that Jenson still continues searchig for an dismantling landmines left over from previous wars. He also carries a ghastly reputation for accepting hazardous assignments and betting life and limb in a bizarre game of "landmine roulette."

Carla's other stepbrother NICK (early 20's) also comes home for a visit. Though he was a small child when Andy, his best friend and idol died, he's grown physically into the spitting image of him. But there the similarities end. Whereas Andy was happy-go-lucky, Nick's a troubled brooder with a hair-trigger temper. Him stumbling upon Mine Game in Carla's room and surresptiously reading it, deeply affects him. He swears vengeance on the author, whom he felt betrayed his beloved brother. He also confronts his stepsister, accusign her of "collaborating with the enemy." Carla convinces him that getting to the truth must be done with subtlety. They must attempt her way first, she insists--trying to catch Jenson in his own trap, which means she'll go to New York and meet with him over the project! Nick is livid, but fails to argue Carla out of it. Ralph overhears some of their quarrel; though his surviving kids think of him as addles, he's smarter than he lets on and does his own "intelligence" work.

In New York, Carla meets the enigmatic, cagey Jeremy Jenson and feels what bonded Andy to him so strongly. Jeremy, for his part, takes to Carla immediately and almost obsessively. He insists on casting her for the part based on Andy's own mother, without an audition! Against her better judgment, she signs on to do the play, which Jeremy, havig lost his director at the last minute, must direct himself.

Treading through a different kind of minefield, Carla visits his apartment and manages to steal a look at his own war-time journal, finding a whole level more to the story of Andy and Jeremy. Especially gripping is the account of a young Asian sultry beauty named Hoang who is befriended by both Andy and Jeremy, but falls under suspicion of being an enemy infiltrator. Riveted, Carla is able to spy on Jeremy's journal while he rehearses scenes "in country" at the playhouse, leaving him free. Those scenes complete with trap-laden jungles and mined rice paddies, become almost unbearable for Jeremy to rehearse. Worse, he pushes the cast into a totally life-like recreation of the paranoia, brutality and betrayal in war that destroyed Andy and, in many ways, Jeremy.

As Carla gets clsoer to the journal's end, her desire to hurt Jeremy dwindles as their attraction for one another grows. She finds herself blindly trusting him, as Andy did. Meanwhile, her lack of communication with Nick leads the headstrong youth in desperate action of his own. Before Carla can finish the diary and finally confront Jeremy about what really happened between them, Andy and Hoang, the mock war on the rehearsal strage turns frighteningly real. Landmines are set and someone will pay the price!

And who should arrive in New York just in time to see his surviving family in mortal danger but Ralph out to save his family from the secret that refuses to die!

WGA registered 2009

           The Day They Came

An original screenplay based upon Top Secret government classfied documents     (108 pages, love story/thriller)

Are we alone in the universe?  While mankind searches the sky for signs of higher intelligence, are they looking in the wrong direction?  Friendly strangers, full of insight, mysteriously appear, disrupting normal life.  Who are they, what is their agenda and why is the government afraid?

They knew this day would eventually come.  High powered government and military-industrial complex leaders--working with an "above the law" covert group--have prepared for it, ready to coerce people, even take lives, if need be, to maintain the greatest cover-up in American history.

The beautiful stranger, Alana, singles out Eric, a young farmer with journalism dreams.  She has a mesmerizing, astonishing story to tell about his grandfather, Eddie, an old man in a nursing home with a secret he vows to take to his grave.

The hypnotic Seth offers a bold challenge to a retired Air Force major running for the U.S. Senate and sends him to seek an alley in a billionaire industralist riddled with guilt over past deeds.

But when Alana and Eric discover more about each other, a crack is exposed in the strangers' near perfect world.  Unexplored emotions arise within Alana that threaten to alter her mission.

What sacrifices must be made to heal the Earth and all who depend on her?  Or will the strangers fail and the deadly cover-up continue?   WGA registered

Tasted Magazine   www.tastedonline.com

February '08 Issue --feature articles include:

--Gary Newman, President of 20th Century Fox Televison and founder of Jorian Hill Winery

--Tao Las Vegas--the world's largest grossing restaurant/nightclub

Summer '08 Issue-- "Broadway and Wine" A profile on various Broadway stars and their wine(s) of choice and also their humorous--often accidental--moments on stage.