The query whirlpool.

This is the query that got me a full manuscript request from Writer's House New York and another small publishing house. Don't ask me what it was about it that grabbed their attention. I have no f'ing idea! The whole query thing is an absolute nightmare and I think I've written about 20, none of which I've been happy with. I always find myself sucked into the query whirlpool. I go round and round in circles, writing the same thing over and over again until I lose my grip and get sucked down the plug hole. It always leaves me feeling like crap.

If she had known this was the day, would she have done anything different? Could she have stopped the horrible events that unfolded before her eyes?

Maybe.

Probably not.

Rosa is a 16-year-old smart mouth with a dangerous attitude. She makes impulsive and often poor choices. Not a good way to be when you live in the harshly controlled, concrete compounds of the Woodlands. It is her weakness and her greatest strength. It’s why Joseph fell in love with her, but it’s also why she gets kicked out of the Classes in a spectacularly violent and final way.

Rosa can’t help herself. She doesn’t really want to.

When she wakes up in an underground facility, pregnant and captive the first thing she thinks is: She’s glad she vomited on the creepy, smiling doctor’s clean pants. The second thing she thinks is: Escape.

THE WOODLANDS is my completed dystopian adventure novel of 82,500 words. Set in the Woodlands, the human settlement built in Russia by the chosen survivors of World War V.  Violent, heartbreaking and painfully romantic, the book weaves love with impossible decisions, sacrifice with bravery, and survival against the cost of conviction.