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Permalink Reply by Clancibooks on January 9, 2017 at 8:15pm

Here's the synopsis I wrote for my latest novel - Code Name Fountain of Youth. I would appreciate your input and look forward to reading yours.

Code Name: Fountain of Youth – Synopsis

Steve Hunt is a successful sales representative for a software company by the name of Kindrick Innovations, located in the Silicon Valley. Kindrick develops top-secret software programs for the United States Defense Department.

Today is Steve’s birthday; he just turned 40. As a gift to himself, he’s taking a month off and flying to Scottsdale to purchase a vintage Corvette Stingray at a Barrett Jackson car auction. He plans on cruising Route 66 all the way to Chicago.

He doesn’t know it yet but he’ll never make it; in fact, he won’t get past Holbrook, Arizona, a mere 175 miles away. There’s something up ahead around the next bend that’s about to turn his dream vacation into a nightmare.

That ‘something’ is a person, who goes by the name of Cliff Redmond. In less than 30 seconds Steve will run into him at over 100 miles per hour! This unfortunate accident not only changes Steve’s vacation plans but also sets off an unbelievable chain of events he could never imagine...which is the thrust of my novel, Code Name: Fountain of Youth.

As the reader turns the pages of this mystery, they’ll discover along with Steve, there’s something rather odd about this fellow. He was twenty something when Steve picked him up off the asphalt and lifted him into his car, but now 30 minutes later as Steve speeds into the parking lot of Holbrook General Hospital, the man appears to be about 85 years old...an enigma to be certain. Steve also has a hard time trying to figure out where that blue flash of light came from when he plowed into Cliff out on the highway.

The next morning while eating breakfast in a nearby diner, Steve is approached by a young barefoot woman who identifies herself as Shelly, the dead man’s wife. Feeling a great deal of remorse, Steve invites her to sit down with him. She has the fragrance of lavender. He’s strangely attracted to her. After questioning Steve as to his reason for being in town, Shelly explains that Cliff was running from a hit-man, which is how he ended up in the middle of the highway. She then begins babbling about a government facility where she and her friends worked, back in 1955.

“This woman must be crazy!!” Steve thinks to himself. “This isn’t possible, she doesn’t appear to be more than 21 years old.”

“They were conducting secret experiments!” she espouses. “There was an explosion and about 40 people died. Cliff, me and some co-workers were the only ones to survive. We’ve all been living, actually hiding, in a secluded compound out in the middle of the desert.” She then leans across the table and whispers the most incredible thing Steve’s ever heard. “None of us have aged in over 50 years!”

“Yeah...right.” Steve thinks to himself.

Shelly nervously tries to convince Steve that this hit-man has already killed many of her friends. “There’s only a few of us left. I think he works for the government. We need your help!”

“Whoa! I’m a salesman...not a superhero!” Steve runs out of the diner and back to the motel where he’s staying. Three days later when his car comes out of the body shop he heads back home to Northern California and leaves this strange set of events behind him...or so he thinks. What he doesn’t know is, he’s being followed.

Within a week of his returning to his job, he unexpectedly gets fired. Three months later, still unemployed, nearly broke, depressed and in danger of loosing his house, Steve turns to an old friend...alcohol. While in a drunken stupor, Steve gets beaten up in an alley of a local bar. The thugs steal his wallet and Corvette, then deposits him in a nearby dumpster where’s he’s nearly crushed to death.

Days later after being released from the hospital, Tarack, the manager of the hotel where he stayed in Holbrook and close friend of Shelly, locates Steve and convinces him to go back to Arizona.

Realizing he has no life and having thought about Shelly more than once lately, he returns and takes up the challenge of trying to locate a psychopathic killer!

The path to capture or eliminate this maniac takes all three of them on a winding road riddled with uncertainty and danger. Toward the end, the hunters become the hunted and are dragged to an abandoned gold mine where they are faced with extinction. An almost miraculous event occurs however, which questions who, if anyone will survive.

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