NICOLA MORGAN

Published May 3rd 2010 -  if you think Wasted sounds like something you’d enjoy, ask your school librarian to contact me and I will probably be able to get you a copy BEFORE publication, if you would like to review it. If you have a blog, contact me about being part of my blog tour in May!

What is the book about?

A love affair. And the collision of danger, passion and chance. It’s a risky book: it will challenge and change you. It’s not an easy book, but a book for deep readers, readers who like to fly and are prepared to go with me on an unpredictable ride.

The blurb on the back: "Jack worships luck and decides his actions by the flip of a coin. No risk is too great if the coin demands it. Luck brings him Jess, a beautiful singer who will change his life. But Jack’s luck is running out, and soon the stakes are high. As chance and choice unravel, the risks of Jack’s game become terrifyingly clear. An evening of heady recklessness, and suddenly a life hangs in the balance, decided by the toss of a coin. In the end, it is the reader who must choose whether to spin that coin and determine: life or death."

Let me tell you a bit more: A couple of times during the book, the reader watches alternative scenarios unfold. When I was writing it, I tossed a coin to "choose" which one would happen and then one scenario disappeared. You are left wondering, what if... What if the coin had landed the other way? But that’s life - our lives depend on tiny random events, chance meetings, going down that street instead of this one, leaving the house five minutes later, missing a train, saying the wrong thing, making small choices. We aren’t aware of how things would be different, but in WASTED you see how Jack and Jess’s lives are changed by chance.

Here’s an example: Imagine the scene: Jack and Jess in a club, wrapped up in each other. An enemy, Kelly, waits her moment to spike Jess’s drink. Another girl is outside, trying to get past the bouncer, who may or may not let her in. He might be distracted or annoyed: such small things will make all the difference. If she gets in, she’ll distract Jess’s friends and they won’t see the drink being spiked. If she doesn’t get in, Jess’s friends will see what happens and save her.

In WASTED, you see alternative results unfold and disappear as the lives of Jack and Jess spin out of control. Finally, it is you who must take the risk and toss a coin to determine the ending. Their lives are in your hands.

Jack and Jess

Jack and Jess are my favourite characters of any I’ve written about. They are brilliant at music – Jack has a band and Jess joins it as the singer. Jess is gorgeous – amazing half-Italian-half-Norwegian eyes and skin, and Jack is one of those trendy musical types with a clever hair-style and poetic eyes. They meet by chance (and you see exactly how those chances coincide to create a meeting that easily might not have happened) and fancy each other immediately. They are strong, clever, and very ready to leave school and fly out into the world – and in fact, they will both finish school in two weeks. But their lives are not perfect. Jess’s mother is becoming an alcoholic and Jess is worried - Jess’s father left years ago and she knows that her mother is terrified about Jess leaving home. Jess loves her mother - an artist, floaty, flighty, dippy, fragile - but wishes she could be stronger.

 

Jack is obsessed by luck, risk and chance. He was very unlucky as a young child - his mother died twice, by horribly bad luck, which wouldn’t have happened if Jack hadn’t been there.  Although it wasn’t his fault, he can’t help thinking about how easily she might not have died. This obsesses him, so now, aged 18, he often sacrifices himself to luck – by tossing a coin and promising to do whatever the coin says, however dangerous. This is how he thinks he keeps himself lucky, and he thinks that Jess coming into his life is proof of his system, proof that if you spin the coin the right way, make the right choices, take the right turnings, luck will follow.

But Jack’s luck is about to run out, horribly and terrifyingly. And only chance can save him – but will it? Well, at the end of the book I present two endings and before you read them you have to toss a coin to find out which is your real ending for Jack and Jess. Life or death. But you find that it’s not as simple as life or death. You may find that there’s no such thing as luck, or chance, or choice. Which is a scary thought, but Jack and Jess are strong enough to think that deeply. Are you?

One more thing I’d like you to know

There’s a scene where a pigeon smashes through a window. This actually happened to me while I was writing Wasted. If it hadn’t, the book would have been quite diffrent, which just goes to prove how chance events affect our lives. I’d love to know if you predict the pigeon incident before it happens...

Would you like to read an extract? Wasted is written in an unusual style and this will help you decide whether you might like it. I hope you do!

This is a very short chapter. Spike is Jess’s cat, and this is the night that the whole book has been leading up to: the Leavers’ Prom, where Jack and Jess’s band are playing and where something bad is about to happen. Spike certainly senses danger. Cats are not stupid.

Chapter 39    -    Spike

Spike jumps in through the cat-flap. He has been hunting hot summer mice in the twilight. But suddenly he feels a need to be home. Softly, he slips through the kitchen and up the stairs, straight into Jess’s room.

It is very empty. He sniffs the air. He does not like it. Something. What it is he does not know but his back feels all itchy. A shiver runs along it. His hairs stand on end. The tip of his tail flicks from side to side.

He pads to the window, leaps onto the windowsill, weaving between the photos and fat candles, and looks out. The night is thick and warm but not quite dark. It won’t be. It’s that time of year. Good for hunting.

Spike jumps down and then onto Jess’s bed, where he pummels the duvet before he curls himself round and round and round into the smell of her. Still unrelaxed, he begins to wash. It is comforting and rhythmical. But it is not enough.

Eventually Spike falls into a troubled sleep, and in that sleep his whiskers twitch. There is a pricking of his hackles. He dreams, and in those dreams something nasty this way comes.

***