The Storm Blog Tour: Excerpt + Giveaway

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for The Storm! Today I have a great excerpt from the book to share with you - and don't forget to enter the giveaway!!

The Storm (The Rain #2)

Author: Virginia Bergin

Genre: YA Science Fiction/Dystopia

Release Date: October 6, 2015

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Description:

"I'll tell you a weird thing about apocalypses - a thing I didn't even know until I was in one: they seem pretty bad, don't they? Well, take it from me: they can always get worse."

Three months after the killer rain first fell, Ruby is beginning to realise her father might be dead . . . and that she cannot survive alone. When a chance encounter lands her back in the army camp, Ruby thinks she is safe - at a price. Being forced to live with Darius Spratt is bad enough, but if Ruby wants to stay she must keep her eyes - and her mouth - shut. It's not going to happen. When she realizes what is going on - the army is trying to find a cure by experimenting on human subjects - Ruby flips out . . . and makes an even more shocking discovery: she's not useless at all. The Storm begins . . . 

From Chapter 8 of The Storm by Virginia Bergin

By the time I’ve finished, my tray is so heavy, my arms are questioning how long they can hold it as I turn and… So the whole place is pretty much empty, right? There are a few people left, lingering over le top nosh, but I want to sit away from people. I want to stuff my face in peace, then find a place to sleep—­in this canteen if I have to. I look to the far end of the room; it is darker there, the lights down at that end off already, chairs stacked on tables. Only one person sitting there, alone.

I must be really, really, really hungry, because I suddenly feel all shaky and my stomach does this funny flip.

As I get closer, I see that he has a book open in front of him…but he isn’t trying to read in the darkness; he is just staring out of the window—­into space, I presume, because you can’t see into the stadium from here and the view’s not all that, just more boring buildings. But at least he can see the view; he’s got new glasses.

D-­A-­R-­I-­U-­S   S-­P-­R-­A-­T-­T

I wish I knew how terrible I look, but maybe I don’t look terrible at all. This is not because I care about what Darius Spratt thinks, you understand. This is for the sake of my own dignity. There’s quite a lot of black makeup gloop on my hands, but it can’t really be smudged all over my face, can it? (Oh yes, it can!) On my tray, the tiny upside-­down reflection of me in the spoon (for quicker stew shoveling) gives no real clue—­because the light is so bad, I suppose. I’d rustle up some inner dignity, but I won’t be able to hold the tray for long enough to get that done. I take a deep breath and a long, shaky walk across that room.

I spill my water putting the tray on the table. It goes all over my food.

The Spratt, startled, looks around and—­

“Ruby!” he gushes.

This makes a change from what he usually says to me, which is, “What have you done to your hair?” That will be coming, I am sure. For now, the gushy voice is the least of it—­he actually surges to his feet and opens his arms and—­

I dump myself down as elegantly as I dumped the tray. There will be no hugging here, I can assure you.

“Hi,” I say—­as curtly and as crisply as I can manage.

The Spratt gawks at me with joy and—­oh no! You’re kidding me! Glistening tears well in his eyes. (TEARS OF GUILT. Should be.) The effect on me is horrific; I have had a very traumatic time and very little sleep and so, in my weakened state, I feel a surge of emotion at the sight of his familiar, nerdy face. (See how dreadful apocalypses are?)

“Siddown!” I hiss.

The Spratt sits back down—­but he can hardly stay in his seat; he leans across the table at me, and I see his hand creeping across it toward my hand, which is just lying there, dog dead exhausted by all the goings-­on. I grab my spoon and shovel stew into my face. It is hard to swallow. I am starving, and the irksome presence of the Spratt is putting me off my food.

“You’re alive…” he breathes at me.

Yup. He is definitely one of the smart, useful people. I nod at him in a mean sort of way, eyes narrowed; if my mouth wasn’t crammed full of unswallowable cold stew mush, I’d tell him straight out what my look is intended to convey: “NO THANKS TO YOU.”

“Did you find your dad?” he blurts.

How did he do that? How did he just manage to pick the one question that stabs me straight in the heart? I have been back in the Spratt’s company for approximately ten nanoseconds and already I am wigging out. Right. I’ve got to shut him up. I need to swallow so I can talk. I grab his mug of—­cocoa? He’s drinking cocoa?!—­swig, and force that stew mush down.

“Oh, Ruby,” he whispers softly, like he already knows the answer. So softly and kindly and sweetly, I feel myself choking up—­which is even more annoying than wigging out.

I shove my plate of food away, mainly so the spoon is out of reach. Otherwise, I would be tempted to find out if you can stab with one. Instead, I stab with words.

“Did you find your mom?”

The Spratt is adopted. He now basically has a snowflake’s chance in hell of finding her.

He glances around, and I think he’s about to yell at me, which I already know in a way—­but only in a certain sort of way—­I would deserve for asking such a cruel question—­but no: “I did,” he whispers, his eyes wide with the marvelousness of the thing.

The seething troll monster of my own feelings bristles. I’d slap it, but it is covered, all over, in razor-­sharp spines. It has a heart though; somewhere in the gargantuan raging mass of its troll body, a small, sad, human heart beats.

“Really?” I say.

“Kind of,” he says. He glances around again. “I looked it up,” he whispers—­so I’m guessing he wasn’t supposed to or something. “I know who she was—­her name and where she lived. I just don’t know what happened to her, you know…”

I do know. I know exactly. And I know exactly what that feels like. And I also remember the too-­many times (twice) the Spratt dared to point out to me that my dad was probably dead, and the troll monster wants to say this now, to him, about his mom, and see him hurt, but I just can’t stand it. I can’t stand any of this. I get up, shoving my chair backward.

I don’t know where I think I am going. I have nowhere to go.

I burst into tears.

“Ruby!” says Darius.

His arms are around me. His arms do not feel the spines. The troll monster shudders and judders with tears.

Ah-­hoo, ah-­wah, ah-­wooh, blubs the troll.

But you will notice that it was the troll that was crying and not the small, sad human heart. 

Virginia Bergin learned to roller-skate with the children of eminent physicists.
She grew up in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in a house tied to her father’s job. Her parents, the children of Irish and Polish immigrants – and one Englishwoman – had moved from Liverpool to the south of England in search of work.
Virginia studied psychology but ruined her own career when, dabbling in fine art at Central St Martins, she re-discovered creative writing. Since then she has written poetry, short stories, film and TV scripts and a play that almost got produced – but didn’t.
In between and alongside more jobs than you’ve had hot dinners, she has worked as a writer on TV, eLearning and corporate projects and has 22 broadcast and non-broadcast TV credits, from children’s favourite Big Cat Diary Family Histories (BBC) to the award-winning series Africa (Tigress Productions for National Geographic). Most recently, she has been working in online education, creating interactive courses for The Open University.
She has lived in North Wales, London and Bristol. In May 2015, she moved from a council estate in Bristol to live in rural Somerset, somewhere between Taunton, Chard and Ilminster. Her nearest neighbour is a horse. (Biography + photo taken from author's website.)

Author Links:
http://virginiabergin.com/ 
https://twitter.com/VeeBergin 
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Virginia-Bergin-Author/307548002740038 

Buy Links:

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

IndieBound

Books-A-Million

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H2O Blog Tour: Author Interview

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for H2O by Virginia Bergin! Today I have a fantastic author interview to share with you!!

H2O (The Rain #1)

Author: Virginia Bergin

Genre: YA Science Fiction/Dystopia

Release Date: October 7, 2014

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Description:

It's in the rain...and just one drop will kill you.

They don't believe it at first. Crowded in Zach's kitchen, Ruby and the rest of the partygoers laugh at Zach's parents' frenzied push to get them all inside as it starts to drizzle. But then the radio comes on with the warning, "It's in the rain! It's fatal, it's contagious, and there's no cure."

Two weeks later, Ruby is alone. Anyone who's been touched by rain or washed their hands with tap water is dead. The only drinkable water is quickly running out. Ruby's only chance for survival is a treacherous hike across the country to find her father-if he's even still alive. 

1. What inspired you to write H2O?


The simplest explanation is that I read an article in New Scientist magazine, I wrote a (not-very-good) screenplay, then turned it into a novel after a teen friend gave me a copy of The Hunger Games . . . but WHY I did that is a different story of inspiration. When I read Suzanne Collins’ novel I couldn’t put it down. It reminded me what it was like to get totally, deeply lost in a story – and of how I’d read when I was a kid, gobbling books whole, devouring the entire science fiction shelf at my local library. I want to do that, I thought. I want to write a story for the sheer love of story-telling. I want to write a story - from the heart - that I wouldn’t have been able to put down. Who knows, maybe other people will feel the same way?



2. Did you do any special research for the book?


You have to know that I am the world’s laziest researcher. I’m hopeless at studying things in depth. (I’ll just do a quick search at the library or flick about on the internet and think, Yeah – got it!). So to begin with I didn’t do much research at all (Yeah - got it!) and just concentrated on the story. I mean, it’s fiction – right? – so who is going to care about whether the science is realistic?


I realised I did care. I realised the story would be much more powerful and interesting if there was proper science at the heart of it. So I went back to the library and the internet and studied microbiology and diseases and invented a whole, biologically realistic model for the bacterium from space . . . and then I realised I needed to check it. I was lucky enough to find two scientists who were willing to help, and I will never forget sitting in a café in Bristol going bright red and um-ing and ah-ing and er-ing as I described Ruby’s story to a world-class microbiologist with a PhD.


3. Do you have any quirky writing rituals or habits?


Not really! I write straight onto the computer: I sit down and I stay sitting down until it’s done (very unhealthy). Because I’ve done other sorts of writing to earn a living (eg TV documentaries) I’m used to really tight deadlines that mean you just HAVE to get on with it, no choice . . . but that also means trying to get everything right first time because you might not have enough time to have a second go at it. The result of that is . . . I drive myself crazy when I write fiction. Instead of working at it in a sensible way, just getting a first draft down as quickly as possible then coming back to it, I find it really hard to move onto the next sentence if I think the last one wasn’t right.

The result of that is . . . I cut thousands – thousands! – of words as I write. I chop sentences, whole paragraphs, sometimes even entire chapters as I go along – but I never throw anything away. I’ve got all those words stuffed into what I call ‘Offcut’ files . . . but you know what? I hardly ever go rummaging there. Once a line has gone, it’s gone.


4. What book has inspired/impacted you the most?


That is the TOUGHEST of TOUGH questions. I’ve read so many brilliant books! But I think the ones that inspired and impacted me the most must have been those I read when I was a child, the ones that open your mind to how incredible fiction can be. Those are the books that really made me love reading and writing stories – but there were so many of them too!


OK. I’ll try. My favourite series when I was a child was the Narnia books by CS Lewis - just don’t force me to choose between The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – but I think the series that has stayed with me most is Tove Jansson’s Finn Family Moomintroll stories. She created such an amazing, believable world populated with such lovingly-written characters, a world that could be both beautiful and scary, but always wondrous. Story magic.



5. Any tips for aspiring authors?


GET ON WITH IT. I think there’s such a lot of advice out there and I suspect it’s best – not to ignore it, but not to get too hung up on it. If you want to write, the main thing you need to do IS write. Just sit down, every day if you can, and do it. All those self-critical thoughts? All that striving for perfection? All that wishing you could write something brilliant? Forget it, just start writing and keep writing – it’s the only way to learn . . . well, almost. The truly scary bit is I think you also need to put your ego to one side and be brave about showing your work to other people – not friends and family – but other people. Join a writers’ group! Join two! Don’t expect to be an amazing writer from Day One, just GET ON WITH IT.

Oh, and you’ll be reading a lot already – but just in case you’re not: READ.


6. What's up next for you?


A cup of tea? Then, after that, I’ve got to crack on with the next part of Ruby’s story. H2O is just the beginning . . . 

Thanks so much for stopping to chat today Virginia!

Virginia Bergin is the author of the young adult novel, H2O, a story about what happens when a totally ordinary (and utterly unique, because everyone is) teenager finds herself in a global apocalypse. Virginia works as a writer for TV, eLearning and corporate projects. Most recently, she has been working in online education, creating interactive courses for The Open University. She lives in Bristol, England.


In H2O, Virginia crafts a tale of desperation and survival about a world in chaos. Anyone who’s been touched by rain or tap water is dead. With a fascinatingly unique premise, a heroine that takes daunting risks and slim chances of survival, H2O’s fast-paced, unputdownable mystery and emotional survivor’s story will appeal to readers who enjoyed The Fifth Wave and The Hunger Games.