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Philip Norbury · Author · added about 8 years ago
Have just found out that book orders from the US have a $15 shipping fee. So I’m switching to Unbound, a similar site running in UK. Thanks

Philip Norbury · Author · added about 8 years ago

The Girl Who Walked Through the Sun is a 56,000 word dystopian novel for Young Adults set after the worst effects of climate change. The world has turned to desert and only one society remains. Known as the Hive, it was created by their ruler Father a thousand years ago. Inside its protective walls he has carried out a bold and ruthless experiment. He has extended his own life by centuries; he has abolished love, hope and sexual desire; he has created a monstrous breeding factory, an army of workers ignorant of their own mortality, and a class of frivolous pleasure seekers known as Children.


Zah, a fourteen year old Child, is on the cusp of womanhood. Strange new desires are stirring within her - powerful emotions she does not understand. For her own safety she must master them and accept the limitations of the Hive. Then, one day, she learns that a female worker from the caves - known as 361 - has escaped and is running wild. She finds herself irresistibly drawn to the fate of 361 whose miraculous transformation inspires hope. While the inhabitants of the Hive hunt her down, Zah risks great danger by hiding 361, and through her finds new meaning in life and discovers the greatest lies of their age.


I am thirty three years old and run my own gardening business. I started writing from a very young age but from about fifteen have spent most of my spare time trying to write novels. When I was twenty five I did an MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University, receiving a distinction, and studied under David Belbin, Graham Joyce and Anthony Cartwright. This course gave me an understanding of the craft of writing and since then I have been working hard to hone my skills. ‘The Girl Who Walked Through the Sun’, is a novel I have worked on for seven years. A couple of years ago I joined the Nottingham Writers’ Studio and earned a place on a mentoring scheme with Young Adult Writer, Paula Rawsthorne. Under Paula’s critical eye, I rewrote my entire book, making it more focused and dramatic, and giving more intimacy and care to the relationship of the two girls.


I am greatly interested in social and environmental change and want to write stories that explore these issues. Last year I went to the Appalachian mountains to research my current book ’Animals on the Moon,’ about a boy who suffers a mental disassociation when his parents are killed in a toxic slurry spill. I am considering placing this book as a prequel to my last in a thematic trilogy - from pre-apocalypse to post-apocalypse.