Meet Ross Adams, author of “The Siberian Question” and “The Price of Water”
Tell us what your book, “The Siberian Question,” is about!
Sure! Here’s the summary:
A prequel to The Price of Water, the geopolitical thriller readers called “disturbingly plausible,” “compulsively readable,” and “less like fiction than a classified briefing.”
Before water becomes the world’s most valuable commodity, before global systems fracture under environmental and political strain, there is The Siberian Question.
In this tense and meticulously researched prequel, Ross Adams traces the origin of the crisis and the beginnings of a solution that later defines The Price of Water. As Russia weakens, China advances patiently while the West misreads the moment. Siberia, vast, resource-rich, and demographically transforming, emerges as the fulcrum on which the future world order will turn.
Through the eyes of intelligence officers, political leaders, and operatives embedded deep inside rival systems, The Siberian Question reveals how long-term strategy, economic dependency, migration, and climate pressure quietly align into something irreversible. What appears at first as regional instability becomes the opening move in a global realignment that no nation is prepared to stop.
Readers praised The Price of Water for its realism, clarity, and chilling sense of inevitability. The Siberian Question deepens that realism, showing how such a future does not arrive suddenly, but is constructed, step by step, by rational actors making logical choices in an unforgiving world.
The Siberian Question can be read as a standalone geopolitical thriller, but it also forms the foundation of The Price of Water, revealing the strategic origins of the geopolitical world order in which the crisis that will soon engulf the globe takes place.
And what about the sequel?
In a dystopian 2051, a visionary Ghanaian scientist unveils a groundbreaking water purification technology at a global conference, only to discover that a nefarious Water Cabal, comprised of powerful private water conglomerates, seeks to control and exploit his invention. Fleeing through unexpected alliances, he races against time to thwart the Cabal's sinister plans and help end a catastrophic global water crisis."
What did you love most about writing this book?
It allowed me to delve deeply into the geopolitics of today and speculate about what might happen in the near future. Through regular collaboration with an author friend who is ethnically Chinese, speaks Mandarin fluently, and spent 20 years as an expat in China, I gained insights into the Chinese psyche that enriched the development of the Chinese characters in the book.
How did you start writing?
I was a good writer in high school and college, but then went to law school, where they change your writing style to fit the overwhelmed and overworked judiciary. No more prose, just efficient advocacy. So I've always wanted to write but felt constrained by the financial reality of being a full-time author. But now that I am older, more established financially, I came back to it. Still, it wasn't until I found a method that appealed to me that I could turn my writing ideas into real manuscripts. It's been a very satisfying journey even if sales are small.
Tell us a little bit about your self-publishing experience.
I first began learning the ins and outs of self-publishing by attending a number of writers' conferences. The first lesson was that the chances of being embraced by an agent or a traditional publishing house were harder than getting into the most competitive universities. I also learned about the advances in technologies that allow self-published authors to print on demand with quality, so the investment in books is not an issue any longer. The challenge is the marketing. While my objective is to find my tiny slice of the digital world that likes and is willing to buy my books, finding that slice and marketing to it is time-consuming and fraught with digital marketing minefields. The aforementioned fellow author with whom I meet by Zoom each week has been a godsend, being several years ahead on the digital marketing journey. Nevertheless, still a full-time lawyer, I didn't have the time to do the digital marketing myself, so I found a digital marketing company to help me with my first book, which did not go well. The book was published, and some digital marketing was done, but in the end it seemed all they wanted was my money, and the grand promises they made were empty. I learned a lot and truly self-published my second book, The Siberian Question, a prequel to my debut novel, The Price of Water.
What was your biggest challenge in bringing the book to market, and how did you solve it?
The biggest challenge in bringing a book to market is the digital marketing, and I haven't solved it yet. I've just accepted that until I stop practicing law, I'm only going to be able to devote a limited amount of time to the marketing process. I'm OK with that as I'm creating content now and not worrying about sales. Hopefully, I'll publish at least two more books before I'm in a position to devote the amount of time digital marketing requires. For now, I'm aiming for 20% of my time on the "publishing business," the way I think about the business side of being an author, budgeting more and more of my time each year to this pursuit, and reducing the time I spend practicing law.
What's one piece of advice you have for other writers?
I'm not sure I'm in a position to give advice to other writers at this point in my writing journey. I guess the best advice might be to not worry about sales of your books. If you're planning on supporting yourself through book sales alone, that's a hard nut to crack.
Anything else you want folks to know?
Now that I've published two books, the hardest thing for me has been accepting that the world will now judge my work, and by transitive property, me. I've learned to live with that. It's been an important psychological hurdle for me to clear.
Where can people find your book?
