A young woman has been left for dead in the North Carolina woods. She awakens with no memory, no idea who she is and no clue about what has happened to her.

So begins the storyline of an engaging whodunit written by a local author.

“From page 5 on, you can’t put it down,” said Sharon Evans-Rose, whose first published novel is now on Amazon.com and is about to be released in local stores. “It’s a race to find out who did it.”

The plot, characters and setting came with relative ease as the former dance teacher applied her keen imagination to the story that first wrote itself inside her head.

“As I would sit and think about the story, it parts would just unfold in my mind. Organizing all those thoughts and putting them together in order was harder than coming up with the ideas,” Rose said.

She titled the book, “Erased,” and was pleased to see an intriguing black cover with the title in white letters at the bottom of a dark vault of trees.

“When it came, I was so excited I couldn’t stand it,” Rose said. “It has taken so long to get to the finished product, I almost can’t believe it’s finally done.”

Getting a book published tested the mettle of her patience and perseverance. Publishers won’t accept a manuscript that hasn’t been recommended through a book agent.

Rose corresponded with her agent, taking careful note of his critiques, comments and corrections.

“He kept encouraging me, and that helped me to believe that this book would eventually be published,” Rose said. “I would make the corrections and send it back.”

Once she had a viable manuscript, then came the long, drawn-out task of contacting publishers.

“Some weeks I would send out several query letters and parts of the book, and other weeks, I wouldn’t send any.”

She got used to the perfunctory little postcards that apologetically rejected her work.

“I just kept believing there was a publisher somewhere who would accept it, so I just kept sending the letters and excerpts.”

Eventually, one came along, and except for minor glitches here and there, copies of “Erased” finally came off the presses.

Before the excitement of having her first novel published, however, Rose found another book beginning to write on the fresh pages of her imagination.

“I’ve started another one, and I also have an idea for a third one in my head,” Rose said. “It will be harder this time because I will have to know more about the subjects I will be writing about.

Tight-lipped about the mystery contained within “Erased,” Rose wouldn’t reveal even one tempting morsel of information.

“The whole point of a mystery is the intrigue,” she said. “I want to keep people guessing right up to the end.”

It was her dad, the late John Evans, who introduced Rose to the love of reading.

“He had this collection of westerns, and he was always trying to get me to read them. I would tell him I wasn’t interested in those kinds of stories. He would say, ‘It’s not about the story. You are reading about the history and the culture and things that happened during the period of time covered in that book. It’s not a reading experience; it’s a learning experience.’ So, I started reading, and it’s been something I’ve come to enjoy.”

— E-mail: bdavis@register-herald.com