NARRATIVE - My Flesh and Blood
Narrative Series
Title: My Flesh and Blood
Page Count: 66 pages
Project Status: In Development
Logline
In a secluded treetop society, a rebellious teenage girl discovers the horrifying truth beyond her community’s borders, forcing her to choose between her family legacy and a dangerous search for her missing mother.
Synopsis
In Shamine, a hidden society built high in the trees, fifteen-year-old Anima is supposed to become one of the community’s future leaders. Her family helped found the valley, and her father expects her to eventually inherit their permanent seat on The Council. Anima knows that life would matter, but it still feels too small for her. What she really wants is to join The Guard, leave Shamine, and find out what happened to her mother, who disappeared years earlier without leaving behind any real answers.
As her coming-of-age ceremony gets closer, Anima’s choices start causing problems. Her father wants her to protect the family legacy. Her friends are dealing with secrets of their own. And after publicly declaring her intention to join The Guard, Anima starts drawing attention from people who fear what her growing influence could mean for the future of Shamine.
Then, during the ceremony, Anima and her brothers are taken beyond the safety of the treetops and shown the truth adults have kept from them their whole lives. The world outside Shamine is not empty. It is filled with undead creatures left behind after civilization collapsed generations ago.
The truth terrifies Anima, but it also gives her a clearer reason to leave. If her mother came from somewhere beyond Shamine, then there may still be answers outside the valley. And if Shamine has been hiding this much, Anima has to wonder what else she was never supposed to know.
Additional Project Info
MY FLESH AND BLOOD is a project I’ve been writing on and off for close to a decade. It started from my love of character-heavy genre stories and eventually grew into a larger post-apocalyptic horror series. I’ve always been drawn to zombie stories because they tap into something primal: the fear of no longer being at the top of the food chain, the fear of being hunted, consumed, and stripped of your humanity. At the same time, zombie stories can explore larger societal ideas through that horror, from tribalism and fear to isolation, identity, and the systems people create to survive. The script has gone through multiple workshops and revisions with Filmshop LA, Writers Mafia, New Hollywood Association, and other peer feedback groups over the years.
From early on, I knew I wanted the center of the story to be a teenage girl who already has a strong sense of herself, but is constantly being pushed toward a future other people have decided for her. A lot of coming-of-age stories focus on girls learning confidence. I was more interested in exploring how families, communities, and social systems can slowly create insecurity and self-doubt long before someone even has the chance to speak for themselves.
I also wanted the world to feel grounded and lived in despite the larger horror elements. The series follows people trying to hold onto connection, identity, and community while living through generations of fear and isolation. Even with the undead and larger mysteries surrounding the world, the emotional core of the story has always come back to family, belonging, and the complicated act of leaving home behind.
Team
Written by Jennifer Patterson
Seeking
Seeking producing partners, production companies, and creative collaborators interested in helping develop and package this project as a television series. I’m also looking for development support or investors interested in helping create pitch or proof-of-concept materials to help pitch the series to networks, streamers, and other potential buyers. Most of all, I’m hoping to connect with people who respond to grounded character-driven genre storytelling and want to help shape the project as it continues to grow.
Contact
Jennifer Patterson
jennifer.e.patterson@gmail.com