May 24, 2009

Query - Nowhere to Run

Dear agent:

Corporate greed and one man’s plan for vengence collide in NOWHERE TO RUN, a 96,000 word dark romantic suspense, for which I am seeking representation.

Shae McCrary is a runner. Not in a sweaty, aerobic way, but in a jump-on-a-bus-because-the-boyfriend-proposed sort of way. She has a bad habit of sneaking away when her personal life gets jumbled, and right now, with her journalism career in shambles and strangers following her and ransacking her apartment, she’s definitely jumbled. When a man who would look more at home in a war zone than Greenwich Village grabs her outside her building, she decides he’s marginally less threatening than the bozos upstairs. And he flaunts the one thing that could bring her to a squealing halt: inside information on the story she just got canned for writing.

Noah Cole’s been buried in the underside of global politics for a lot of years, providing security for anyone who can afford his protection. Enough years to know when he’s being suckered: when the pesky reporter blinks those big brown eyes at him, says she teaches elementary school or some such nonsense, and couldn’t possibly know why his client called her hours before being kidnapped in Baghdad. Or how she’s come to be the next target.

So Cole does what he does best: snatches her before anyone else can, sure he can keep her alive long enough to get information out of her. And if seduction is the only thing that makes her talk, well, he can get past his aversion for her to make the sacrifice. But as the stakes go up, and the cost of justice becomes Shae herself, will he be able to let go of the woman who’s conned her way into his heart?

I am a member of Romance Writers Association of America. I have been published in nonfiction articles in international conflict and diplomacy, and am under contract for two nonfiction books with Syracuse University Press and Cambridge Press (UK).

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Query - The Wolf Of The Sea

A Pictish princess and a prophet of the future, Loxa is apprenticed to the old seer of her tribe. The king, her uncle, decides she is to marry his son, an honour that she can't refuse, despite their mutual loathing. Locked into a loveless marriage that her husband cannot bring himself to consummate, she is hounded by the Christian priest who is fearful of her powers, while terror comes to the kingdom's shores, as Norse longships are seen sailing into the bay.

Almost captured by the fearsome Norseman, Jorund, she finds that she cannot stop thinking about him long after the invaders have left. Unhappy with her life, in a village where it is whispered she is barren, Loxa seeks hope in her ability to predict future events. But seeing that she is to follow her husband to live and rule in a neighbouring kingdom, she refuses to leave. After being drugged, she wakes to find that she has been transported while unconscious.

Away from her kin and misunderstood in her new home, Loxa is almost relieved when the Norsemen strike again. As she re-encounters Jorund, she knows that he means abduct her and does not lament being taken across the sea. The new world she enters is unlike any she has known, where her powers are respected and she is honoured as Jorund's woman.

The Norsemen continue to make raids across the water and Loxa is left distraught when Jorund does not return from a skirmish. As she plans to take her life and honourably join him in Valhalla, Loxa finds that she is pregnant and choses to live for Jorund's child. As attacks come from surrounding tribes, Loxa and her son escape with the remaining villagers over the sea, arriving back in the bay where she was raised.

Under pressure to return to her husband, Loxa fights that the marriage be annulled. The king disagrees as there is no evidence that Jorund is alive and that he is able to claim her and their son. Loxa's predictions allow her to see that Jorund will return the day after a ball of fire flies across the night sky, but these claims are not believed. The evening before the priest is take her back to the neighbouring lands, a comet is seen clearly moving across the horizon.

The villagers wait with Loxa the next day to witness the arrive of the Norseman, but it is not until sunset that a small skiff is seen entering into the bay.

THE WOLF OF THE SEA is a work of historical fiction, complete at 90,000 words.