Synopsis

In 2000, Nye fell in to the chemist's back alley bathtub of prostitution. It was Newtown, Sydney,  and in the spirit of the laissez-faire, life and the locals had permitted the existence of a pink and dingy chocolate box brothel to light up the otherwise empty end of a long, cosmopolitan street. 

It was going to be an experience, like trying oysters, or marijuana, or going inter-railing. Another in a list of things for an insistently triumphant and curious 18 year old to do. 

But ten years have passed, and Nye is still incautiously operating her feet along the same washing line rope, dangled in among the back roads and basement flats of ten cities.  Still intermittent, still increasingly uncertain and still more or less 18. 

But no matter, because the clock isn't ticking, and it won't until Nye gives it her say so. Life, as ever, has yet to start. 

Outline

Nye tells the story of DECADE over ten years, in ten places, in ten sections. Nye also believes she can characterize her life using Aristotle's ten categories, but she relates to the theory neither methodically, passionately, nor well.

1.Sydney: Beginnings & at the brothel door.

Backpacking through New South Wales, Nye had intended to seek out work in Sydney, however her lack of ability to impress interviewers leaves her jobless, and running out of funds. At the end of a cosmopolitan street on which she stays - after the vintage clothes stores and chichi cocktail bars and ramshackle art galleries bereft of custom - is the brothel. Nye reasons that it is just one in a number of ways that imperfect people can seek out imperfect incomes. 

2. Auckland: Going, and falling for Crysalis. 

Nye forms a relationship with Chrysalis, a prostitute who travels from city brothel to city brothel, with one suitcase of designer shoes. Chrys impresses upon Nye the relative shoddiness of the Sydney brothel and tries to convince her to move to Auckland, where she is assured of a more grandiose prostitutional landscape. Though infused with self vaunting glamour, and sharp to a tee with men of money and status, Chrys is otherwise temperamental and manipulative - and Nye hopelessly craven and besotted. She buys both of their tickets. 

3.Cardiff: Coming to the wrong side of the tracks.

Some time later Nye travels to Cardiff, and for want of anything else to do or anywhere else to go, moves in to a small, beige and dingy brothel in an unedifying, poor district. However, the narcotic and boozy subterranean society leads her to burnout, and so she escapes to the east Wales countryside, with a view of leaving ‘the prostitution experience’ behind her. 

4.Bristol - Seeking legitimacy and higher learning.

Nye begins a University education with an enthused aplomb, however, like the sober dipsomaniac who forgets the tumult, she begins to obsess over the money and petty glory of prostitution. She joins a shift at a local brothel, run by the tight-ship running and pathologically dishonest Madam, Fondant. 

5.Los Angeles & Las Vegas - Running away and reading. 

Nye, during a University summer break, takes a lone holiday to LA. There she spends most of her time on Venice beach, reading Kundera and Self. Becoming bored, and fettered by loneliness, she takes the greyhound bus to Las Vegas, to try her luck ‘escorting’ on the desert strip.

6.Shanghai - Immersing into new world bohemias. 

She moves on her travels to China, to work briefly in an English language school in the buzzing district of the Bund. Whilst there, she discovers Fondant has been investigated and charged by the police for brothel keeping. 

7.Exeter - Half loving for money, half loving for Albert. 

Upon returning to England, Nye rents a mediocre apartment, and decides to set herself up as a local and, ultimately, disappointing ‘Courtesan’. She struggles with an alcohol problem, and oscillates between weeks of sobriety and drunkenness. Albert, a wealthy Russian, becomes her obsessive client who promises to Pretty Woman her away.

The last chapters I have left without synopsis to preserve the necessary secrecy of the final actions.

8.Geneva - Falling.

9.Bordeaux - Ending.

Epilogue - Here, there, everywhere. 

 

Audience

My potential audience consists of:

1. Those interested in the sex industry novel or memoir.
2. Those interested in prostitution as a topic of debate. Indeed the ‘sex industry movements’, are experiencing something of a moment, within the current Zeitgeist, politically and culturally. 
3. Those interested in modern, urban, literary fiction and first person narratives.

Promotion

1. Twitter - I will campaign on the social media site, starting with my 1500 followers.
2. Facebook - I will promote the book on my Facebook page, including seeking interest in the female', feminist and literary groups to which I subscribe.
3. WordPress - I will promote the book on my own personal blog, which gets between 5000-20000 views per month.
4. Medium - I will write a promotional article designed to widen potential backers.
5. Reddit - I will post links on the popular link sharing site. 

Competition

Prostitution Narratives Spinifex Press 2016

A collection of stories and first hand accounts from women in the sex industry. 

Paid For W. W. Norton & Company 2015

An Irish bestseller, former prostitute Rachel Moran talks about her time in the industry and her political perspectives and reflections, from a radical feminist perspective. 

Pimp State Faber & Faber 2016

A researched 'sex industry critical polemic' making the case against the industry and the narratives that promote it. This is a straight political non fiction, but I have included it to demonstrate the increasing popularity of books relating to prostitution. 

Being and Being Bought: Prostitution, Surrogacy and the Split Self Spinifex Press 2013

By Ekis Ekman, a Swedish feminist regularly quoted for her work on the sex industry, this book draws on Marxist and feminist analysis to link prostitution with surrogacy. I have included this book, as 'Nye' picks up the book in the final chapters and is influenced, uncomfortably, by the arguments. 

Freedom Fallacy: The Limits of Liberal Feminism Connor Court Publishing Pty Ltd 2015 

A collection of feminist essays exploring the deficits of contemporary, pop feminism. Though this is a academic work, I have included it, because the experience of 'Nye' in the novel, is one of a liberal, contemporary feminist, who cleaves to an empowerment rhetoric, even as her life is 'spiraling' out of control.