H2O (the novel, not a chem lesson)

I love sci-fi apocalypse stories. Not the post-apocalypse, dystopia ones, but the ones that take place as the world’s falling apart. Like, for example, Stephen King’s THE STAND. Or Rick Yancey’s THE 5TH WAVE, a YA novel about an alien invasion where most of the human population dies. When the sequel to THE 5TH WAVE was released, I rushed to the bookstore to buy it.

Not that this post is about THE 5TH WAVE or its sequel; it’s about the book I discovered because of it. As the girl behind the counter was scanning THE INFINITE SEA, we started talking about apocalypse stories. Her recent favorite, she said, was H2O by Virginia Bergin. She made the premise sound intriguing, so I promptly took out my phone and added the book to my ever-growing Amazon wish list. The cover further got my attention:

Months later, my husband bought H2O for me for my birthday…along with several other books. I started with the other books. Big mistake. Because I ended up loving H2O the most and here’s why:

THE PREMISE

Seven years before the novel begins, an asteroid was headed toward Earth all Armageddon style. Some people got together and shot the asteroid out of the sky…sort of. What they didn’t count on, or didn’t think to even consider, was that the asteroid was already caught in Earth’s gravitational pull and the remnants after the explosion continued to fall toward Earth. Theoretically, those pieces of asteroid shouldn’t have been a problem, but they contained a bunch of extremophile bacteria that, when combined with the water in Earth’s atmosphere, turned deadly for humans. Basically, killer rain. Which in turn got into the water table, poisoning every bit of fresh water on the planet. Most of the human population died in the first rainfall or by drinking tap water shortly thereafter. Ruby, the novel’s narrator, survived.

THE HUMOR

Most apocalyptic stories are dark. Very dark. And that’s not to say H2O isn’t. But I love Ruby’s humor. First off, she’s British. Second, she brutally honest about her own flaws. And third, well, there’s this part about a Carpenters song (playing on a car stereo while Ruby and her stepdad are trapped inside watching people outside die all around them) that had me laughing out loud on my lunch break. (Luckily, the lab was empty.)

THE SCIENCE

Bergin nails the science. I’m always (consciously and otherwise) on the lookout for errors in science in such books and I couldn’t find any here. Bergin’s very specific about the properties of the extremophile. She also details what water’s contaminated, what’s not, and what that means for Ruby and the story’s other characters. Further, the whole time I read, I kept wondering about the future. Was there a way to beat this bug? (Ruby quickly discovers boiling the thing doesn’t kill it.) And if so, would that be something a character would figure out?

THE END

Don’t worry. I’m not going to ruin the end for you. But I loved it…and that’s saying a lot because I’m pretty picky when it comes to endings. For starters, I hate epilogues. (See Harry Potter for a great example of why epilogues suck…because who didn’t know all that stuff anyway?) For another thing, I don’t want sappy endings where everything’s all perfect. Life’s not perfect. But the ending of H2O is.

While I don’t know the name of the girl who mentioned H2O to me that day at the bookstore, I’m happy to pass on her recommendation. If you like dark YA sci-fi with some humor, you should check out Virginia Bergin’s H2O. You’re welcome.

Motivation

Here’s a bit of a confession.

For months, I wrote a blog post every week, if not more. I worked on manuscripts and queried, entered contests and spent every spare minute on Twitter making connections with other writers. And then, late last fall, I stopped.

If you read my blog frequently, I’m sure you noticed. Some of you even asked me about it. I recently said in a post that I was busy writing and querying with not much going on. This was true. Also, a lie. (Because, yes, things can be both.)

I was querying, getting rejections and requests, and didn’t want to talk about it and jinx anything.

But I’d stopped writing. I’d like to say it was because I’d gotten to a point in my work in progress where I knew what I wanted to happen farther in the plot, but I couldn’t figure out how to get from where I was to that point. I was missing a step somewhere. That’s true enough, but nothing like that had really stopped me before in my WIPs. Before, I always pushed forward, no matter the resistance, knowing I could revise the thing later if necessary. (It was always necessary.)

What really stopped my writing was much bigger than plot problem. I found out in October that I’m pregnant. And within a week or two, I was so exhausted and sick that I could barely get through my normal workday. When I got home in the evenings, I fell asleep. I woke up to eat dinner and get sick, then it was back to sleep until morning. Writing (and blogging, Twittering, etc.) wasn’t even a question, plot issues or no.

Though I’m feeling more energetic now, within these last couple of weeks, I’ve been worried about my writing. Because writing is like exercise. In order to stay fit, you have to exercise on a certain schedule, every day, every week. Once you stop, it’s hard to get back into the routine, to get back to where you were. And though I’ve been thinking about my plot issues, I’m not sure I’ve solved them.

All of this worries me because, despite querying, I’m always working on a WIP, a backup plan for if querying doesn’t get me an agent. Without that backup writing, I start to panic, flail around, and worry. And, to continue being honest, I stopped querying around the holidays. Life’s too crazy for me and for agents around Thanksgiving and Christmas. But now that’s all over and I’m wondering…when do I start querying again? Writing? Where’s my motivation?  Gone with my first trimester exhaustion?

Then yesterday I received an email from a Twitter writer friend whose debut novel comes out soon. And while I’m happy for her, I’m also incredibly jealous. I want an agent, a debut novel. I want it BAD.

Just like that, my motivation's back. Everything that's made me work so hard the last year and a half has shoved aside what remains of my exhaustion, my worries. I'm going to solve that plot problem in my WIP and query my manuscript. Someday, I'm going to have a published novel.