James Pray (Kiolia on QT) has signed with agent Donald Maass of Donald Maass Literary Agency.
Dear Mr. Maass:
I read on your site that your agency is currently looking for stories with a strong sense of the past's impact on the present, so I am querying you regarding my fantasy novel, Winds of a Lost Winter.
In a country of prairies where fleets of land yachts keep goods and people flowing between cities, Captain Patrick Union is a trader who has everything he wants: steady work, his own ship, and no one to answer to. When the powerful Traders' Guild shuts down its shipping to contain a strange new plague, Union thinks the resulting shortages have created a business opportunity. Opportunity turns to nightmare, however, when he finds out the Guild's quarantine plans include seizing independent ships -- like his.
A wealthy, but derided, historian believes this plague won't be contained by the quarantine, either. His readings of certain ancient manuscripts indicate it can spread on the wind, and has already eradicated one civilization. He offers Union a fortune to search out a lost city where the secret to stopping the plague may still be buried, left behind by the handful who survived the last cataclysm.
It's a job Union wouldn't touch under normal circumstances, but the money's too good to ignore, and the Guild's killers will be after him no matter what he does. He'll have to risk the ship he loves -- and accept the aid of a beautiful captain from the Guild he hates -- just to survive the voyage. The trouble is, if those old manuscripts are right about the lost city's existence, what of the demons they claim infest it?
Winds of a Lost Winter is complete at approximately 118,000 words. I hold an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Western Michigan University, where one of my short stories won the 2010 Frostic Graduate Creative Non-Fiction Award.
A synopsis and the first five pages are pasted below per your guidelines.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
James Pray
You can read more about James and his book at www.jamespray.com