BROKEN SKIES is the first novel in a young adult science fiction trilogy by Theresa Kay. Perfect for fans of Angelfall by Susan Ee and the Lux series by Jennifer L. Armentrout, it tells the story of seventeen-year-old Jasmine “Jax” Mitchell, an impulsive and traumatized girl whose fierce loyalty to her kidnapped twin brother drives her to rescue him at any cost even if it means employing the help of a teenaged alien boy with questionable motives.
"This book had me ALL OVER THE PLACE. Happy, sad, angry, tummy fluttery, giddy, outraged, betrayed... just... all over the place. —Caylie M., Amazon Reviewer
"This is for those who enjoy exciting, intriguing YA level Sci-Fi and Dystopian with a sweet romance." — Sophia Rose, Delighted Reader Blog
"The kind of novel that makes you anxiously excited about the series to come!" —Jocey, Amazon Reviewer
"All I want to keep talking about is how awesome Broken Skies was, how much I loved it and that you must read it, so we can gush about it together!" —Total Book GeekWant to know about what happened when BROKEN SKIES got picked up by a publisher? Check out Theresa’s reaction here!
Broken Skies
Thirty years ago, civilization collapsed. Few survived.
Ten years ago, the aliens arrived…and stayed.
One year ago, I killed two men and went a little crazy.
Today, the aliens took my brother and I will do anything to get him back.
In seventeen-year-old Jax Mitchell's world, humans are nearly extinct and alien settlers have arrived.
Until recently, the E’rikon have remained segregated in their city and ignored the few humans who have tried to engage them… but now they have taken Jax’s brother. To rescue him, she forms an uneasy alliance with a teenage E’rikon left stranded in the woods. She agrees to guide him to the city if he sneaks her past the human-proof barrier. Too bad it’s not that simple.
Jax, who cannot stand to be touched, finds that she’s drawn to the alien boy with bright green hair and jewel-like scales down his back. And he’s equally affected by her, the courageous redhead with haunted eyes. But she doesn’t know the alien’s true motives and he has no idea that she is much more than she seems.
In this world where alien and human are at odds, the connection forming between the two has consequences. What started off as a rescue mission sets a chain of events in motion which threatens not only the remaining humans and the growing alien society, but Earth itself.
On Sale in Print: January 13, 2015
And Available NOW on your Kindle!
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SKIES to your TBR pile on Goodreads!
About the author
The only person she knows who had a subscription to Writer's Digest at eleven and was always excited to write research papers, Theresa has been putting words to paper since a young age. Living in the mountains of central Virginia with her husband and two kids, she works as a paralegal by day, binges on Netflix at night and finds bits of time in between reading almost everything she can get her hands on and laundry to craft stories that tend to feature broken characters in sci-fi or paranormal worlds, with a touch of romance thrown in for good measure.
She's constantly lost in one fictional universe or another and is a self-proclaimed “fangirl” who loves being sucked in to new books or TV shows. Theresa originally wanted to write horror novels as an ode to her childhood passion for Stephen King novels, but between her internal Muse’s ramblings and the constant praise for her sci-fi pieces from her writer’s group – The Rebel Writers – she knew she should stick with what was working.
Ok, enough talking about myself in the third person… I love interacting with readers, so if you want to shoot me a line, you can connect with me on Facebook and Tumblr Even if it’s not about my books, I like chatting about my (many) fandoms, books and reading in general, or just about anything really.(http://www.theresakay.com/)
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Theresa Kay Guest post
For me, the most discouraging part of the writing process is self-doubt, something that goes hand in hand with every writer's foe-- writer's block. I struggled with both when I was writing Broken Skies, and there were two things that got me through it: the support of my amazing writer friends and giving myself permission to write garbage.
I had no problem cranking out the first draft of Broken Skies. I wrote it during a session of Camp NaNoWriMo (the summer extension of the regular November challenge to write 50k words in thirty days). It was my fourth time doing a NaNo challenge, so I knew it didn't have to be pretty. For the most part, I did fine with meeting my daily word counts and rarely got too far behind. So, at the end of the month, I had a book. Well...sort of.
Broken Skies as it is now is *very* different from what I had on July 1, 2013. There were very few things I liked about my first draft, but there were some. I had the bones of the story and characters who wanted to talk, so I decided to rip it apart and rewrite it.
I got about two chapters into the rewrite when I hit my first wall. That sneaky little voice in my head (the one I'd managed to block out when all I had to concentrate on was word count) spoke up and said my writing wasn't good enough, my story wasn't good enough, and I might as well give up.
I listened. I closed the file I was working in and didn't open it again for almost two months.
Thankfully, the main character, Jax, is a stubborn one and she refused to shut up until I got back to work. This time, I made it to about the halfway point before the doubt crept in again and laid down another roadblock for me.
It was the same old chorus of 'not good enough' but this one hit me much harder. Already frustrated because I was having trouble fitting the pieces of the story back together, I just wanted to wipe my hands of the whole thing. But my crit partner talked me down and rescued Broken Skies from the recycling bin. Soon after that I joined a writing group that went on to become The Rebel Writers.
The rewrite was coming along nicely. There were still places where I stumbled, but the support system I had in place was invaluable.
And then along came writer's block. I was confident enough with the story and my writing, but only four or five thousand words from the end I became completely stuck. I knew what needed to happen, but I just couldn't get there. Nothing was right. Nothing was good enough. I'd write a few sentences and then immediately delete them.
Writer's block is a vicious self-feeding monster. The more blocked I was, the more stressed I got. The more stressed I got, the less I wrote. The less I wrote, the more guilty I felt. The more guilty I felt, the more stressed I got...and so on.
It was awful.
And this time I had no idea what to do about it.
I went back and forth for about a week. A sentence here. A paragraph there. But no real progress. Then, I came across an article posted by Rachel Higginson on her Facebook page.
I won't repeat the entire article, but the premise was just writing and giving yourself permission for it to be garbage. It's one of the main tenets of NaNoWriMo too, but I'd never heard it worded in that way and it was just the shift in mindset I needed.
So I did it. I gave myself to write whatever came to mind even if it was awful. I started about an hour after I finished reading the article and banged out the last four thousand or so words of Broken Skies over the course of a couple hours.
It wasn't perfect, but I had something I could work with. There were still two months of read-throughs and revisions ahead of me, but it was still an amazing feeling.
I still struggle with both self-doubt and writer's block, but I know I can get past them with the support of my writer friends and by learning to let go of perfection and just get the words down on paper.
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