A lot of people ask me how I came up with the idea for NOT A DROP TO DRINK. The scary answer is that I watched a documentary. The scarier answer is that was in 2010, and here in 2014 all I have to do is turn on the news.

Yep. A scant four years after watching a documentary titled Blue Gold which sent me to the ceiling and spawned awkward ice-breaking conversations from yours truly, most people know exactly what I’m talking about whenever I use the word water, followed by the panic-inducing words like crisis, situation, or scarcity.

California is staring down a mega-drought that could last into the next generation. The Colorado River appears to be drying up and the Southwest is depreciating underwater aquifers at a rate that they can never recover from. And that’s all gleaned from one article.

Recently in my home state of Ohio, half a million people lost their water when poisonous algae in Lake Erie made theirs taps unsafe. Ohio residents drove across the Midwest to purchase water, filling their carts Michigan and turning around to drive over 200 miles back home. And in this case, the Wolverines let the Buckeyes have their water because they had some to spare.

But what if they didn’t?

That’s the world of NOT A DROP TO DRINK, and by extension, IN A HANDFUL OF DUST. A world where the one thing that you and every person you care for will die without in three days, is scarce.

Does that make you think twice about picking up the book?

Then you should probably skip the news, too.