11/01/2016
Christine Ellis (cellis on QT) has signed with agent Hannah Fergesen of KT Literary.
There's a lot of violence and darkness in the world right now. I set out to try and examine for myself what drives a normal, logical person to commit acts of great violence, in a setting that was both familiar but completely different from our world. So it's Mars and Venus and Earth, but obviously in the future, and I think that's what Science Fiction is really best at. Using the future to examine the present.
And I do the work. I said that to myself over and over, every time someone asked for a big round of revisions, every time I got SO CLOSE but not quite close enough, I told myself to do the work. It's the only thing I can control. So we do the work, and we do it as many times as we have to. So really the work helped me, as it always does, to stay on course.
That is all to say that while I didn't rewrite the book in its entirety even once, I lived with the story and the world and the characters in my head for a VERY long time before I finished a draft, and then I did many revisions.
Dear Amazing Agent,
Born Martian, a child of the red iron mines and the scarlet sky, Audra Yve is ill-suited to fighting and espionage. Her artificial lungs handicap her in every atmosphere beyond Mars and she must wear a respirator. Her Martian nature makes her guileless and trusting, and her greatest act of rebellion is smuggling much-needed supplies through the only offworlder bar in the Capital city. But she will doom a planet to save her own and give her people a voice.
James Castor is a charismatic revolutionary determined to unify Mars and its sister colony Venus in a vote for Independence from Earth. When a bomb goes off in the Martian Capital during his rally, Audra saves Castor from the chaos only to find that Sev Charis, the smuggler she thought was her friend, has framed her for the disaster and plans to kill Castor. Audra risks her own life and any future she might have to save him, and in return Castor helps her conceal her identity -- at a price. She needs a new face, and he needs a spy. Swept into his world of false promises, fake smiles, and privilege, Audra finds in Castor a very seductive mentor.
She uses her wits, turning dangerous new biomods on her skin and in her brain to her advantage, and infiltrates the political knot of Earth and Lunar society. And she begins to change. She starts to resent the glistening world around her, and the shining people who have never suffered, or struggled to breathe. Sev always said that there were no innocent people left in the solar system. Castor believes that change must be a slow progression towards equality, but Audra turns on him. When Mars is threatened by invasion, her people sure to be enslaved, she decides that change must be swift and violent to be permanent.
BETWEEN STARS OF FIRE AND GOLD is Adult Science Fiction with romantic elements and a diverse cast, completed at 105,000 words. It is a stand-alone novel with series potential that will appeal to fans of Seth Dickinson’s THE TRAITOR BARU CORMORANT, Pierce Brown’s RED RISING, and anyone who loves a villain origin story. I’d love to submit it for your consideration.
[Bio redacted.]
Thank you so much for your time!