"Havana Harvest...When Cuba was Naughty!" An Overview - Writers Forum

johnaustin · 03-31-2008, 10:05 PM

Advice on this book proposal overview would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

OVERVIEW

Havana Harvest…When Cuba was naughty! is a bawdy, humorous, coming-of-age story set in Key West, Florida and Havana, Cuba against the backdrop of Castro’s Revolution. In fact, you might indirectly credit Fidel Castro with this catholic boy’s first taste of erotic female intimacy...with all the bumbling, nervousness, apprehensiveness, timidity and orgasmic wonder that accompanies this most memorable rite of passage.

It’s springtime 1958 in Key West, Florida; rock and roll was still new after Rock Around the Clock’s debut just three years earlier; and All the Way (Frank Sinatra), It’s All in the Game (Tommy Edwards), At the Hop (Danny and the Juniors), Great Balls of Fire (Jerry Lee Lewis), Short Shorts (Royal Teens), Sugartime (The McGuire Sisters), Get a Job (The Silhouettes), Sweet Little Sixteen (Chuck Berry) and Lollipop (The Chordettes) were playing on all the jukeboxes. Sock hops, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, drive-in restaurants and drive-in theatres were wildly popular.

The emerald green and aqua ocean surrounding the Florida Keys was brimming with shrimp, oysters, lobster, crawfish, tarpon, red snapper, flounder and all manner of other fish. The charter boats were always full. The living was easy. But, just 90 miles south, the Castro Cuban Revolution was brewing in the mountains not too far from Havana and Fulgencio Batista, the Cuban dictator at the time, probably had his bags packed and his private jet fueled and ready for takeoff.

It is exactly at this sliver of time in history when the young players of the visiting Mary Immaculate High School basketball team from Key West go stumbling headlong into totally new adventures and experiences; the epitome of which is the dissolution of their lowly-esteemed virginity in a plush Cuban bordello!

1958 marked our high school basketball team’s second trip to Havana from Key West, Florida. In 1957 the team was billeted right on the Belen School campus. However, in April of 1958, all of the Havana authorities and citizenry were nervous about the rebel Castro up in the mountains of Cuba. Would Castro come down and fight in the streets? Were Batista’s government forces enough to keep Castro at bay? All this angst had the Belen School administrators nervous about having a foreign team on campus and they refused to let us stay in their school dormitories. Well, this turn of events makes our coach Richards so indignant he sees red out of his one good eye and his glass eye seems to fog over! After telling the Cuban school officials just where they can stick their tournament, coach stomps off with the team in tow.

“To hell with um!” says couch, “We have three days to blow over here---we’ll just get rooms in a cheap hotel and spend the time sightseeing and shopping!”

Although we were unaware of it at the time, this decision set the stage for all the team’s members (except one) to see, feel, explore and experience an actual living and breathing female anatomy. Past adolescent dreams and fantasies fell to the floor, like the silken clothes from the nubile bodies of the chosen women, and exploded into reality. Nine teens walked into Madame Chiquita’s bordello as virgins and emerged blessed with worldly experience and two inches taller (and longer) in their collective, adolescent mind’s eye.

Havana Harvest spotlights and explores the relationships between young men during this time of adolescent experimentation and growth.Above all, this story will entertain. Secondly, it will help those who have yet to visit this time in their lives to better understand the mind-set, anticipation and angst and, yes, even humor, that is an inherent part of a young man’s loss of innocence.

I was a little too tall
Could’ve used a few pounds
Tight pants points hardly re-known
She was a black-haired beauty with big dark eyes
And points all her own sitting way up high
Way up firm and high.
Lyrics from Night Moves by Bob Seger, 1976

phurst · 04-01-2008, 05:42 PM

Kill para 2 or cut out the artists name, it stretches it out too long. 1st para is good. 3rd isn't too bad, maybe too many shrimp or fish references. Cuba is the hook so stick with that. The whys and reasons aren't important, the conflict with the trip is. 4th para, too wordy and vague, get to the point. 5th - way too much info and detail. 6th - now that's good!, 7th not too bad, delete the (except one) and (and longer). 8th okay with a tiny bit of fine tuning.

johnaustin · 04-01-2008, 08:14 PM

Thanks for your input, Phurst! Finally, someone gave input...I thought my stuff was so bad nobody wanted to even comment...Your input on each paragraph was very thoughtful and good.

Removal of the artists' names in para 2 is a good idea. It's just that I remembered the titles of these great oldies when I uncovered them in my research but I could not remember some of the artists...and I thought other old farts like me from that era might appreciate having this info given to them...

The reason I put (except one) in para 7 is because that one person will play a big role later in the intrigue and conflict of the story...(and longer) was just meant to describe the mental exuberance and confidence gained (also in the newly initiated private parts area) by the young players who had just been wrung through a pretty great first time sexual milestone. Do you think I should still remove these two descriptive wordings?

Thanks so much for your input...good food for thought...John

John

phurst · 04-02-2008, 11:45 AM

Yes I do. Take them out. Get the agent/publisher intrigued first and then that stuff can come out. I found out recently that publishers and agents are very busy and will spen about 2 minuts (maybe0 to read your intro. If we want to hook them we need to be brief. I took my one page qyery and had to reduce it to a 20 word 20 second elevator pitch. Do that then expand. Ask yourself, If I had to delete one sentance, which one? Then do it. Keep doing it till you are down to 20 words. You can build on that for the written pitch (yours isn't bad) but keep it brief. I always want to say its a character driven novel then I found out that's like saying it isn't gripping so I was killing my self. My 20 second pitch worked 3 out of 4 tries so at least I got my first 10-75 pages read by an agent.

johnaustin · 04-02-2008, 03:52 PM

Good advice and I thank you, Phurst...Please take a look at my actual one page query letter under the heading of "Please critique this query Letter...Thanks" in the Critique and Advice section

Thank you...John