cindy l. otis

Trust no one. Question everything.

Quinn Calvet was supposed to be having an epic year. She had all kinds of plans with her best friend, Ximena, and sister, Ava, and to grow her following as an influencer on The Whine. Instead, Quinn finds herself third wheel to Ximena and her new boyfriend or getting ditched by Ava who has turned into an overachiever, obsessed with studying and joining every school club. It brings up Quinn’s old feelings that her disability has her left behind. She tries to talk to Ava about it, but she’s too busy with the newest club at school, Defend Kids, which is working frantically to help find two kids who were recently kidnapped from a nearby town.

Suddenly, Defend Kids is all anyone is talking about, and whenever Quinn posts about them on The Whine, she gains tons of new followers and her posts go viral. As the club works to get the message out, more kids in the surrounding area go missing, but it seems like the police and the media aren’t doing much about it. When two of Quinn’s classmates are kidnapped, the dangers that Defend Kids is trying to fight become all too real.

As Quinn and her friends search for the missing kids, tensions escalate at school, there’s an uptick in bullying, and conspiracy theories abound. Before she knows it, Quinn and The Whine are at the center of it all, trying to find out what’s really happening. Only the truth might be more deadly than anyone knows...

Cindy L. Otis is a former CIA officer and an expert on disinformation threat analysis and countermessaging. She is also a senior non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and an associate at Argonne National Lab. Prior to joining the private sector, she served in the CIA as a military analyst, intelligence briefer, and a manager in the Directorate of Intelligence. She is the author of the nonfiction book for young readers True or False: A CIA Analyst’s Guide to Spotting Fake News.

Cindy is a frequent media commentator and writes regularly about disinformation and national security issues, often cited by the Washington Post, New York Times, BBC, NPR, and CNN. She is also a member of USA Today’s Board of Contributors.

As a wheelchair user and passionate advocate of disability rights, she has also worked as a consultant to major disability rights organizations. Find out more about her at cindyotis.com.