Esther Chilton

Welcome to Friday’s guest writer slot. This week I would like to introduce Heather Beveridge who writes as Hetty Waite. I met the lovely Heather at Swanwick Writing Summer School which I recently attended. We share the same publisher and Heather’s book, Mutate, launched at Swanwick. Of course I purchased a copy (and got it signed) and am very much looking forward to reading it. Here’s the blurb to wet your appetite:

One change can be deadly

In the city of Galex, all that matters is your genetics. Living with a virus that only affects the Y chromosome, men – Ys – are at risk of death or mutation and considered too dangerous to live freely. Women – Xs- rule the city.

Cara must navigate a world where the one she loves is considered a deadly enemy. With her sister Myla in charge of Galex and driven by a hatred of Ys, Cara has a dangerous secret.  If discovered, it will not only destroy her relationship with her sister, but will threaten the life of the Y she loves.

Brown has spent his life enslaved, knowing he could mutate at any moment. After seeing his best friend killed, he volunteers for a deadly mission.  He is soon to face a difficult decision: protect Cara and sacrifice her sister, or betray his fellow Ys and place all his loyalty in the hands of an X.

Want some more? Here are a couple of extracts:

There are two main narrative perspectives in Mutate: Cara, an X, and Brown, a Y. Cara is a powerful figure in the new city of Galex, whereas Brown is treated as a slave.

Extract 1 is from the beginning of the novel, from Cara’s perspective.

Extract 1

One of my earliest memories is the first time I witnessed a Y transformation.

I must have been about three years old. We were moving between city hostels at the time, trying to find safe havens. There weren’t many back then. Ys were still running free without controls, so the risk of them becoming infected and mutating was high. The army was struggling to keep control: so many soldiers had died, they hardly had any manpower left, and the ones they did have were at risk of changing. It’s a shame that, at the time, the army was overwhelmingly made up of Ys.

Why I was out alone in the street at that age is anyone’s guess. Myla always says I must have been on the hunt for food, as I never stopped eating. We’d joke about poor parenting skills leading to kids being made breakfast by monsters.

At the time I didn’t laugh, though. I can still remember how hard my heart pounded, how afraid I was, when this human-lizard hybrid looked at me like I was human-shaped snack. I can still remember my Mum’s angry, hysterical shriek as she yelled at me. I can still remember Myla peeking out from behind her legs, barely six years old herself, shaking in fear as she witnessed her mother killing a Saurian to save her little sister.

Unfortunately, that’s no longer the worst monster I’ve seen.

Extract 2 is from Brown’s perspective, giving an insight into what life is like for a Y in the city of Galex.

Extract 2

The morning alarm felt brutal. Bells rang loudly in the dorm every morning at six, giving us time to get up and report for duty. It must have felt the same for those teenage boys who were in the school so many years ago. Just like us, I’m sure they would have been reluctant to leave the warmth of their beds for a day’s work. Though, to be honest, I’d do anything to swap my day for one filled with advanced algebra and physics.

After what felt like only five minutes’ sleep, I dragged my body up and placed my feet squarely on the cold floor.

“You look like a corpse, Bro,” joked Blue.

“I feel like one too,” I answered, stretching my arms to hear them crack. I padded to the washroom to get cleaned up. Red and Orange were in there already, brushing their teeth.

“Hey,” they greeted.

“You Browns out today?” asked Red. He meant the runners: our colour was Brown, then we each had a number to identify us. I was Brown 21. Reds were domestic, Blues hunters, Oranges cooks and Greens maintenance. We’d been allocated our colours and numbers when things had changed after the deaths of the Founders. My real name felt like a ghost: a faded reminder of the past. To my friends, I was Brown, the number only added if needed. In private, they called me Gonzales, after some cartoon mouse we had seen as kids, who could run really fast. The Boss didn’t like the whole nickname thing though, so we kept it on the down-low. Still, it felt like a small way we could assert some form of personal identity, a way of refusing to become just another faceless Y. We called Myla the Boss as it reminded us just how dangerous she was: the title never let us forget that she was in charge.

Despite the hierarchy of the city, Brown and Cara have fallen in love. Their relationship must be kept a secret, as if discovered, it would endanger both their lives.

You can buy Mutate from Amazon.

Now for a little bit about Heather and her relationship with story-telling, and how she came up with the idea for her book:

I have always loved stories. As a child, I would direct extravagant plays, using toys and teddies to act out great sagas, which usually ended with Barbie plunging to her doom from the top of her fabulous dream house. I’ve always been a fan of a dramatic ending! This grew into a love of books from an early age, and like most bookworms, I don’t think there’s much that will beat the delight and anticipation of an enormous TBR pile.

This fascination with Literature took me to Leeds University to study English, and then onto an 18 year career in teaching. My favourite lessons always centred around books: from sharing surprising twists in short stories with Year 7 students to discussing the nuances of language choices at A Level, I loved seeing young people engage with and enjoy reading.

I have always harboured ambitions to write. For as long as I can remember, if anyone asked what my dream job was, I’d say an author, even if I was doing nothing to achieve that dream. I was too busy, I thought, with work, family and life in general. Apart from penning the odd short story or the first few chapters of a novel, I never gave writing a chance to take hold, to become part of my routine.

Until, March 2020. Lockdown. A global pandemic which stopped life and finally took away my excuses.

When Covid hit, I’d just become a mum – my daughter was three months old. Maternity leave had been blissful, filled with coffee mornings and baby groups. Lockdown loomed large in comparison. It felt isolating and restrictive and frightening.

So I turned to writing. With a baby who napped three times a day (sadly now a thing of the past) and broken nights of sleep (sadly not a thing of the past), I realised that if I was ever going to get a story down on paper, now was the time to do it.

Once I’d started, I discovered the excitement of really expanding a story and understood how it can often grow organically, sometimes in directions you might not expect.

Mutate started from a single idea: a virus that affects only the male Y chromosome. I was interested in the idea of flipping the stereotypical power balance between men and women and exploring what society would become. This led me onto lots of other possible scenarios. What if the virus could cause men to mutate into monsters? What if they were considered too dangerous to have their freedom? What if, regardless of the risks, a young woman could still fall in love with one of them?

Initially, I planned out my first few chapters but after this, I had only a basic outline. However, as I wrote, the story unfolded quite naturally as I was working on it several times each day. This surprised me, as generally in life I’m a serious planner. I like lists. I always look at the menu before I go to a restaurant. I already know what I’m getting most people for Christmas. But with writing, I found it most effective to take my idea and see where it went. This can be terrifying, because you’re telling a story without having everything worked out in advance, yet it’s also quite freeing. I think the most important thing you can do as a writer is to just write. Just get started. If you keep at it and keep working on it consistently and regularly, you’ll be surprised where your stories can take you.

If you’d like to be included in my guest writer slot, please get in touch: estherchilton@gmail.com. Poems can be up to 60 lines and prose 2000 words. If you’d like to add a short bio and photo, then great.