Joanna Nadin, "When the World Ends"

 

Dr Joanna Nadin is a former broadcast journalist and special adviser to the Prime Minister. Since leaving politics she’s written more than 100 books for adults and children, including the Sunday Times bestselling Worst Class in the World series, the Flying Fergus series with Sir Chris Hoy, and the acclaimed Joe All Alone, which is now a BAFTA-winning BBC drama. She’s been nominated five times for the Carnegie Medal for Writing, and shortlisted for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize and twice for the Lollies. She’s an Associate Professor in Creative Writing at University of Bristol.

About When the World Ends, by Joanna Nadin
When the unthinkable happens to the planet, two ragtag groups of kids on opposite sides of England beat the odds and escape death. But they soon realise that the only way to be truly safe is to seek a place they've only heard about in stories. As their treacherous journeys unfold, can they help each other survive - even when the world is ending around them? 

You can read more about When the World Ends on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the novel.

From When the World Ends

Be Prepared

The government said to 
stop using plastic and 
time all our showers and 
turn off the heating, but
it wasn’t enough. 

The government gave  
instructions to comfort us. 
To make us feel we stood 
a chance, when we haven’t got 
a single hope. 

 
Flood

You think it will be silent when it rises.
But it comes in a 
thunder and rush,
a clatter and clanking of 
cars smashing on lamp-posts and
the sides of fried chicken shops,
of things in the water that 
should be on land. 
And over it all,
car alarms and fire sirens, 
and the screaming of people
who know they are as good as
dead. 

 
Guess What

Everyone is an expert on
what will happen next. 

The navy, says Mrs Witter, who’s seen 
Chinooks on the TV so she 
knows what she’s talking about. 
The navy will take us to Culdrose or
Yeovil.

Armageddon Terry reckons the water will
sink by midweek and 
we’ll be able to rescue ourselves – 
our own handsome princes. 

The tourists only care whether
they’ll get a refund and when
they can post their one-star review and if
any trains will leave from Par or Liskeard. 

And all the while, me and Roshan play cards 
and try to guess who would win in a fight between
a dinosaur and Armageddon Terry,
while I try not to wonder where my mum is 
or if she is at all.

Anna Vaught, "All the Days I Did Not Live"

 

Dr Anna Vaught is an English and Creative Writing teacher and mentor, occasional lecturer, campaigner - and prolific author. Find her everywhere on social media as "Bookwormvaught." Links and further information here. 

About All the Days I Did Not Live, by Anna Vaught
After the death of her steady, constraining husband, Catherine discovers that grief can be a liberation. With her adult children appalled by her sudden transformations, and a strangely familiar presence in the house urging her on, she begins to test the boundaries of who she might become. A call arrives on her newly purchased phone – a widower, Alec, still dialling the number once owned by his dead wife. What follows is a transgressive, intoxicating relationship built on longing, lies and the hunger to feel alive. All the Days I Did Not Live is a haunting exploration of loneliness, taboo and the dangerous, but delicious, magic of reinvention – where freedom comes at a cost and even the ghosts refuse to stay quiet …

You can read more about All the Days I Did Not Live on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the opening of the novella. 

From All the Days I Did Not Live

1.

Yesterday I dreamed of that taste again. I dreamed of a deferential early summer. A kind breeze. I had taken the unripe and forbidden pear from the grass in the orchard. For a few moments, I sat cradling it as he watched. He had a camera and a scowl. In my dream, as on that hot day in the orchard, I lifted my chin and scowled back: it was the first time. Then I held the pear up, while his eyes said Do not dare; I held it up still further, before plunging it down to my mouth, biting into it lasciviously, though indeed it was unripe. 

As I said, it was the first time – the first time I had defied him – and in many dreams through my girlhood and all the way to middle age, and now, that dream comes back. I remember the sweet scratch of summer grass, wet, ardent on my bare feet. I am a teenage girl, shoulders back, the tart juice dripping down my chin. It is slightly obscene, and that is how I meant it. He does not move, and I think now, I can do anything. I feel, in defiance, that I am fully alive.

To this day a pear must be unripe, but yielding enough, and there must be juice, not only moisture. I must catch it at the right moment, if I can.

Yesterday I dreamed of that taste again. Of that time. Of my one invincible summer.

I dreamed at night, and then again when I awoke. Before I went to sleep, I thought I heard a drumming sound. I am used to that sound, I said to myself. Stress, anxiety: the blood pulsing and whooshing in your ears, then an irritation of tap, tap in your head, pinprick in your eye and a band snapping at your temples. 

But you see, I was wrong about that. And right before I drifted, with thoughts of that pear, the drumming sound was in the walls and under my bed. 

I am alive. I am fully alive.