Misha Herwin and a New YA Book

What would happen if the world ran out of water? Would our societies survive? Would our technology? The more I thought about this, the more complex the situation became. Without water, humans and animals would get sick, cities crumble, and the way of life we know would disappear.

At first I set the book in the real world. I started doing research about how people would survive in a dystopian land, which technologies would last, and which would not, but I soon got bogged down in the details. What I needed was an alternative world and a history which is based on ours, but is nevertheless a fiction.

This was my starting point, but the book took off when I found my main character. As is usual for me, she came in one vivid image -- a girl standing on a rock looking down on a line of wagons carrying water to a distant town. So precious is their cargo that the wagons are guarded day and night. Mouse wants to be a guard. She wants to leave the narrow confines of The Town and go out into the world in search of the knowledge and learning she has been denied, because in her society women are either mothers or fighters, and she knows that for her there is more than this.

I don’t want to label Mouse as feisty and fiery. She is both, but above all she is herself, a girl who has problems understanding other people and who believes that the most important thing in life is to survive. A girl who has no time for love or, most importantly in a YA novel, sex.

Clear Gold is the first of three books. To write a trilogy, which explores love and romance, but does not involve sex,  was something I very much wanted to do. I am not against sex in YA novels, or indeed any other books. My novels for adults do include sex scenes and I enjoy writing them, but I do believe that there is a place in books for the 13+ readership for less graphic, more romantic scenarios.

The reason for this comes from my experience as an ex-teacher, who used to have to teach sex-education to mixed classes. Searching for suitable material for my tutor group of fifteen-year-olds, I was only too aware of their very different stages of development. Some were almost adults, others still kids. They all needed to know the facts but not all of them were ready for, or indeed wanted to read about, steamy sexual passion.

So Mouse, whose every action contradicts the name she was given by her foster sister, was born. Her life is not ruled by the need to find the one true love of her life. She fights, she swears. She is independent, awkward, and sometimes downright difficult. And I love her.

Misha Herwin lives in Staffordshire, near the countryside that inspired the terrain of Clear Gold. She writes books for children, young adults, and adults, and has a number of short stories in various anthologies, mostly dealing with the darker, supernatural side of life.  Her latest book for adults is House of Shadows, a time slip novel. When she is not writing, she enjoys spending time with her family and ever-patient husband. Baking bread is relaxing and marzipan muffins are a specialty.

Clear Gold by Misha Herwin for illusio & baqer. Art by Yanmo Zhang. To be published in the next few weeks by Zharmae Publishing Press.