An Agent's Inbox #17

Dear Melissa Jeglinski,

I am looking for representation for a fantasy series of which I am working on the second volume. Angelhaven is a follow on series from The Green Woman which I finished self-publishing this summer after retrieving my rights from Musa Publishing. Angelhaven (70,000 words) picks up the stories of the main characters of The Green Woman three years into their utopian dream. Which is beginning to turn just a little sour.

This is a YA/crossover series. There is no ‘adult’ content, gratuitous gore or sex, so although the main characters are in their late teens/early twenties, the story is completely accessible to teenage readers. It is a story of a utopia, a place where myth and fantasy play a part, and a love story for some of the characters, who still have to find themselves in a new world where the old laws of brute force and obedience no longer hold sway.

After the grim dystopia of Providence, the people liberated from the tyranny of the Elders have begun to build a new life in the Garden. The magic that created the Garden is fading as they take their destinies in hand. But a wind of change is blowing through the idyll. Two winds. A strange, soft wind from out the west brings a hint of summer to the end of the hard winter, and the whispered promise of better things to come from an unknown golden man. At the same time, a black wind howls down from the barbarian fort in the mountain pass promising bloodshed and death.

The love that built Angelhaven is faltering and the wild Scyldings will wield the axe that puts it to the test.

You can see The Green Woman books and read a short bio on my Amazon author page here:

[redacted]

As well as Angelhaven I am also querying a YA apocalyptic (not post-apocalyptic) two part story set in a crumbling shopping mall at the end of the world.

Thank you for accepting to read my submission.

J.D.

ANGELHAVEN

Prologue

Scyld stood on the edge of the rocky outcrop and looked down from the mountain, over the treetops and the river Wildbach. He held a hand over his eyes to shield them from the glare of the sun. In the other hand he held an axe, its head resting on the ground at his feet. He noted the plumes of white smoke that the breeze caught and dispersed, and he scowled.

The wind veered briefly round to the west bringing with it the spring smells of damp earth and pinewoods. Scyld wrinkled his nose. He could not quite smell the fires in the hearths, the cattle in the pastures, the food cooking and the thousand other smells that meant settlement. But he knew it was there. Beyond the river Wildbach, beyond the forest of beech and oak it was there, the outlanders’ village.

The man frowned, drawing shaggy brows together. His fingers tightened around the haft of the axe, not in fear but in anger. Scyld was not the chief of his people for nothing. He knew where the outlanders came from, knew what it meant. While the Scyldings had fought to survive the terror unleashed by the furious gods, famine, cold, and man-eating demons spawned by the endless night, others had had an easier time. The völva who sent him blood dreams and war visions had shown him.

In his dreams he had crossed the Wildbach, crossed the mountains beyond, to the Great River and the desolation of its further bank. He had seen the strange fort, the dome of steel and crystal that protected the lucky ones from the death and destruction around them. And now they had emerged. Like butterflies.