Flood Waters Down

Photo: Clive Simpson

WINTER solstice sunset over the flooded Willow Tree Fen nature reserve in South Lincolnshire - such evocative views of the water logged fens are the inspirational setting for my upcoming novel Flood Waters Down.

The narrative flows from the assumptions of a self-inflicted disaster, instigated by the conceit of a generation caring only about self and where the previously accepted norms of society no longer exist.

It is the middle of the twenty-first century and climate change has transformed vast swaths of eastern England's low-lying fens into water sodden land.

In a rapidly warming world of increasing storms and rising sea levels people have largely retreated to higher ground and normal civilisation has begun to fracture.

Those that remain have no choice but to scratch a living on the inhospitable marshes, pitting their wits against nature and surviving as best they can.

They exist in the shadow of powerful utopian enclaves, such as Tulip Haven, where the super-wealthy squander their fortunes on lives of luxury and protection from the elements.

But for those incarcerated in Tulip Haven all is far from the sumptuous lifestyle promised and many have become disillusioned with their tightly controlled, and ultimately fake, existence.

Water and flooding at the novel's heart are both physical and a shifting metaphor for the times, and it is against this backdrop that the heroine journeys from a morally corrupt and disintegrating capital city into this now alien and primitive environment.

She meets the leader of a group of rebel fen dwellers and discovers that, despite everything, life can still be real and relevant. Having left behind a broken past, she too becomes embroiled in the battle against greed and corruption.

The pair find themselves at the heart of a daring fight which cris-crosses the water-logged fens as they attempt to expose the truth. It becomes a race against time, pitting nature against technology and good against evil.

And, for the sake of humanity's future, there can be only one winner.

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Editor's note: for anyone interested, the long awaited first draft is finally almost complete so planning to edit, publish, etc, during 2025. All options open.

Painting pictures with words

THE window from my hotel room high on the tenth floor offered a truly spectacular view over the city of Lisbon whatever time of day or night.

Awake early, I pulled back the heavy curtains and my eyes were immediately drawn across shadowy trees in the park below to a sinister block of a building with brilliant red warning lights on its roof, flashing in unison every few seconds.

In the half-light before dawn their brightness and intensity was strangely unnerving.

No matter we were close to the landing path for Lisbon airport, it triggered my imagination and helped me complete a short description I had already penned as part of an early chapter in my novel 'Flood Waters Down'.

Tulip Haven’s twin towers, once giant cooling chimneys, still dominated the otherwise featureless landscape for mile upon mile in every direction. During the hours of darkness the building’s angular and functional architecture loomed menacingly, its red warning lights blinking in unison. 

To the casual onlooker their brightness and intensity seemed to convey a strange sense of hidden power, as if from a sinister lighthouse overseeing a forbidden landscape and somehow delivering a subversive message to humanity itself.

So, if you are a budding writer or author, my message is always take ideas from what you see in your everyday environment.

Develop a writer’s eye and jot down some free-flow prose whilst observing your surroundings. You never know where a moment’s inspiration might take you.

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Note: This author is seeking contact with agents or publishers for his first novel Flood Waters Down, a dystopian futuristic eco thriller set in the Fens of eastern England, a first draft of which is now nearing completion.

A reviewer of some initial chapters described it as "extremely evocative” with a "poetic and atmospheric writing style" that draws the reader "with a sense of unease and anticipation".

Make contact here: Clive Simpson