Guy Burt

A group teenagers lock themselves into a forgotten bunker. They bring sleeping bags, tinned food, bottles of booze. Three days later, things turn ugly. Not everyone gets out alive.

That’s the premise of my first novel, After the Hole, which was published in 1993 (and, later, filmed as The Hole, starring Thora Birch and Keira Knightley.)

33 years later, in The Glass Field, two teenagers, Scott and Jodie, find a forgotten bunker. They stock it to survive nuclear war. They, too, take sleeping bags, tinned food; bottles of iodine solution to counter the radiation.

Two novels. Teenagers in a bunker, both times.

I did have a nasty moment of wondering, Wait. Is this the only novel I have?

I’ve written the full story of this moment – and the answers I came to – in an essay on Substack, where I’m writing slightly longer posts about writing and reading. Link in bio, if you’d like to check it out.

#literaryfiction #bookstagramuk #contemporaryfiction #readersofinstagram #fictionlover @substack