I’m very happy to share that Ridley Adams is now represented by kt literary! Ridley’s YA Southern African Contemporary Fantasy novel is a fresh action-adventure with elements of mystery, mythology, and Afrofuturism. Pitched as Men in Black meets Fantastic Beasts, THE PLACE WHERE CLOUDS GATHER was revised under mentorship during Pitch Wars 2019:
Seventeen-year-old Finn is a star agent trainee for HELSING, an agency devoted to tracking and hiding African mythical creatures from civilians. Her first real mission to investigate the violent death of Cape Town’s mayor is the perfect chance to prove she’s more than her late parents’ legacy as top HELSING operatives. With her partner, Finn finds intel that the mayor was killed by a cryptid of Zulu legend: the Lightning Bird. When she uncovers a secret plan to turn the Lightning Bird into an instrument of terror—a plan hatched within HELSING itself—it’s a race against time to stop an unknown mastermind in the agency that raised her.
Ridley Adams is an Afro-Brazilian fantasy writer. For their day job, Ridley is a conservation biologist; as their father is of Angolan descent and they have a personal connection to the continent, they specialize in African conservation issues. They’ve prevented cheetahs from eating livestock in Namibia, tested out different ways to keep elephants out of croplands in Kenya, ridden donkey carts to work in the Northern Cape of South Africa, designed a picture-only video game to teach non-literate Mozambican villagers about the ecosystem importance of vultures, climbed mountains, been stung by scorpions, and chased many a mamba and puff adder out of their office. When Ridley’s not wildlife-conserving, inventing, or writing, they’re still involved with their old pirate reenactment crew and do swash buckles on occasion.
THE PLACE WHERE CLOUDS GATHER is a dream project straight off my MSWL and I couldn’t be more pleased to represent the author behind it.
Welcome to the team, Ridley!
