BiblioJunkies is thrilled to be part of the Broken Cover Reveal Blog Tour. Broken is the latest release from CJ Lyons and will be available through Sourcebooks Fire this November.
Q
& A with CJ Lyons
For Scarlet Killian, every day is a game of Russian roulette—she has a 1
in 5 chance of dying…
New York Times bestselling author CJ Lyons makes her YA debut with
a fast-paced thriller sure to keep readers guessing to the very last page.
Fifteen-year-old
Scarlet Killian has one chance for a normal life. Only problem? It just might
kill her. Diagnosed with a rare and
untreatable heart condition, Scarlet has never taken the school bus. Or giggled
with friends during lunch. Or spied on a crush out of the corner of her eye.
Scarlet has come to terms with the fact that despite the best efforts of her
doctors and parents, she's going to die. Literally of a broken heart. So when her parents offer her a week to prove
she can survive high school, Scarlet knows her time is now... or never.
Scarlet
can feel her heart beating out of control with every slammed locker and every
sideways glance in the hallway. But for the first time in her life she makes
real friends. She also makes new discoveries about the truth behind her
illness... a truth that might just kill her before her heart does.
Q: Is
Long QT a real disease?
CJ: Yes. As a
pediatrician I diagnosed my niece with Long QT Syndrome when she was born. Her
heart specialists believe she's the youngest person in the world diagnosed with
Long QT. She's had to take medicine every day of her life and can't ever skip a
day. So far that's added up to over ten thousand pills taken.
You
know that feeling you get when you've run as hard and fast as you can and you
stop but your heart keeps galloping along? And you wonder for a second if maybe
it's not going to stop, but will keep galloping out of control? But then of
course it settles back down. For people with Long QT, their heart doesn't
change gears well, going from regular to galloping and back again. So they have
to avoid anything that would make their heart race.
No
sports or aerobic exercise. No horror films. No roller coaster rides. No
jumping into cold water on a hot summer's day.
But
that doesn't have to stop someone with Long QT like my niece from having a
great life. Today she is a brilliant, active fourteen-year-old who gets
straight A's, enjoys riding horses, archery, reading, breeding Rottweilers, and
who wants to grow up to be either a fashion designer or President of the United
States. Her main fashion accessory is her portable defibrillator, Phil, who
goes with her everywhere, including camping, to the beach, and recently to her
first Broadway show.
BROKEN is dedicated to
her fearless approach to life where outwitting Death is simply part of her
daily routine.
Q:
What was it like working in an ER? Is it like on TV?
CJ: Definitely nothing like Grey's Anatomy, but the first few
seasons of ER get it right. Working
in the ER is basically about learning how to control (and live with) chaos, the
art of listening, and how to quickly decide what's the most important thing you
need to tackle next.
I
worked three jobs to put myself through medical school and one of them was
waitressing at a very busy family restaurant. Honestly, that was the best
preparation I ever could have had for life in the ER.
Q:
Why did you leave medicine to write books?
CJ: I've been a storyteller all my life—a
fact that used to get me placed in time-out a lot as a kid. But writing stories
has always been my way of making sense of the chaos that goes on in the world
around us. I wrote my first novel in college and wrote two more science fiction
novels in medical school.
Then,
while I was an intern at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, one of my close
friends was murdered. Dealing with that grief and trauma while still working
seventy hours a week and trying to save lives—I wasn't prepared for that. So I
turned to my writing and that's when I wrote my first thriller. I never thought
about actually making a career of it until years later when friends who were
published authors encouraged me to enter a national writing contest and I was a
finalist. This led to several publishing contracts and I realized that as much
as I loved being a doctor, here was a chance for a second dream come true:
being a full time writer.
It
was a huge leap of faith leaving my job (and my patients—I missed them, a lot!)
but I've always believed that if you're going to dream, you should dream big,
so I went for it. Since then I've published twenty books, hit #2 on the New
York Times bestseller list, won awards for my writing, and most importantly,
have had the chance to impact millions of people through my novels. Talk about
a dream come true!
Q: What's
your best advice for someone who wants to be a writer?
CJ: Never surrender,
never give up. Writing is hard work, it takes years to master the craft, so you
need to stick with it. And read, read, read…pay attention to what makes the
books you like work as well as why the books you don't like fail. You never
stop learning in this job, but that's also what makes it so much fun.
About CJ Lyons
A New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of sixteen novels, former pediatric ER
doctor CJ Lyons has lived the life she writes about in her cutting edge
thrillers with heart. CJ has been called a "master within the genre"
(Pittsburgh Magazine), and her work
has been praised as "breathtakingly fast-paced" and
"riveting" (Publishers Weekly)
with "characters with beating hearts and three dimensions" (Newsday). The author of thrillers such
as the Lucy Guardino FBI series, she
has sold over 1 million books in the last year.
When
not writing, she can be found walking the beaches near her South Carolina
Lowcountry home in Columbia, SC, listening to the voices in her head and
plotting new and devious ways to create mayhem for her characters. To learn
more about her Thrillers with Heart go to www.CJLyons.net.
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