Not so Grim Grimsdon.

I was really keen for Grimsdon not to be a grim, disaster novel – there have been a few post-apocalyptic films and stories in the last few years and even though my characters face a world that has changed, there is still a lot to be hopeful about, including the fact that these courageous kids will be our future. There are moments when the kids face kidnappers, where their lives are threatened by collapsing buildings and even where they come face-to-face with sea monsters, but they always come through, if not at times a little soggy and bruised.

Grimsdon is the first book I have written, though, where the kids are not only on their own, but the adults who are around, are out to get them and use them for their own gains. This book then has called on my characters to be at their most creative, inventive and resourceful for their own survival. The kids left behind have no electricity, no computers, no phones, no hot water for baths or cooking, no shops to buy food and warm clothes. They have to reinvent a way of living in a cold and watery world. They find a solid house to live in, scavenge seeds from nearby houses to create a rooftop greenhouse, they use the tidal waters to create energy to power lights and create heat and a flying machine to scavenge from houses further from them as food sources run low.

The world is deliberately similar to London. I wanted an older city that had been established a long time ago and was expected to be around for a long time into the future. I wanted to have internationally recognisable icons, but which would now be half-drowned by water. I wanted the impact of what had happened to be greater and setting it in a London-kind of city with Big Ben and The Houses of Parliament hopefully would do that. My main question for readers is, what if you woke tomorrow and everything you knew had changed? Setting this in such a solid, seemingly permanent world centre, with so much history, felt like it would increase the ramifications of that change.

If you’d like to see the trailer my very clever partner Todd made, have a peek at: http://deborahabela.com./deborahabela.com/Grimsdon_Preview.html

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K2nVRYdb64]

Deborah Abela:
National Literacy Ambassador and author of Max Remy Superspy, Jasper Zammit (Soccer Legend), The Remarkable Secret of  Aurelie Bonhoffen and Grimsdon   
www.deborahabela.com