Broken (24 page)

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 As, enjoys horseback riding, archery, reading, and 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: And Munchausen by proxy is real as well?

CJ: Sad to say, but yes. I’ve been involved in diagnosing several cases, including one where we suspected a mother of killing three of her children. Thankfully, it is an extremely rare disease—in fact, some experts believe that there are more people falsely accused of Munchausen by proxy than those who actually have it. I don’t think that’s the case. After seventeen years of working in pediatrics and in the ER, I’ve seen way too many warped people who think it’s okay to treat kids like objects rather than people.

But the important thing to understand is that just like bullying or any kind of abuse, it’s okay to tell. If you don’t feel comfortable talking with your parents or the adults you’re living with, find a police officer, teacher, doctor, or, yes, even the school nurse or guidance counselor, and tell them what’s happening.

Tell the truth. That’s the best way to help them help you. You don’t have to make things up or twist things around because you’re worried they won’t believe you. Just tell them what happened.

The best way to end any kind of abuse is to break the silence.

Q: What about the rest of the medicine in
Broken
? Could any
of that actually happen?

CJ: Yes. I’ve seen kids die of heart attacks from taking drugs like the bath salts and synthetic marijuana mentioned in
Broken
. The most common drug use I’ve seen that can literally cause someone to just “drop dead” is huffing—it actually creates an abnormal heart rhythm that is just like Long QT. There have also been recent reports of kids dying from so-called “energy” drinks.

Also, kids taking antidepressants, even the herbal over-the-counter ones like Nessa took, can have severe symptoms, including signs of mania. This doesn’t always mean that you have bipolar disease though, because these drugs are very complicated and people respond to them in unique ways. This is also why it is very important if a doctor has you on an antidepressant (sometimes used not for depression but other things like headaches, PMS, etc.) that you never stop it abruptly—skipping doses can create unexpected side effects and be quite dangerous. If you’re having problems and think it’s because of a medication you’re taking, talk to your doctor—don’t just quit taking it.

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 became 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.

Learn more about CJ’s Thrillers with Heart at
www.CJLyons.net
and everything she knows about being a bestseller at
www.NoRulesJustWRITE.com
.

No book is brought to life without three things: Vision, Passion, and Commitment.

Broken
is no exception. I had a vision: a book unlike any I’d ever written, unlike any that I’d ever read, about a disease so unlikely that experts debate its existence. Without my agent Barbara Poelle’s passion for this project,
Broken
might have never been written, much less finished. The final magic ingredient came from my editor Leah Hultenschmidt and her fantastic team at Sourcebooks who brought
Broken
to life.

Thank you all!

As a pediatric ER doctor,
New
York
Times
and
USA
Today
bestseller, CJ Lyons has lived the life she writes about in her cutting edge Thrillers with Heart. CJ’s work has been praised as “breathtakingly fast-paced” and “riveting” (
Publishers
Weekly
) with “characters with beating hearts and three dimensions” (
Newsday
).

During her seventeen years as a pediatrician, CJ assisted police and prosecutors with cases involving child abuse, rape, homicide, and Munchausen by proxy. She has worked in numerous trauma centers, on the Navajo reservation, as a crisis counselor and victim advocate, as well as a flight physician for Life Flight and Stat MedEvac.

CJ has been a storyteller all her life, always creating stories about people discovering the courage to make a difference. This drove her to writing thrillers centering on strong relationships and led her to coin the term Thrillers with Heart.

Learn more about her writing at
www.cjlyons.net
.

Check out more YA thrillers from Sourcebooks…

SIX MONTHS LATER

Natalie D. Richards

She has everything she’s ever wanted—but not her memory…

WHEN CHLOE FELL ASLEEP IN STUDY HALL, it was the middle of May. When she wakes up, snow is on the ground and she can’t remember the last six months of her life.

Before, she’d been a mediocre student. Now, she’s on track for valedictorian and being recruited by Ivy League schools. Before, she never had a chance with super jock Blake. Now he’s her boyfriend. Before, she and Maggie were inseparable. Now her best friend won’t speak to her.

What happened to her? Remembering the truth could be more dangerous than she knows…

Praise for
Six Months Later
:

“Filled with tension and heart-in-your-throat suspense that kept me guessing to the very end.” —Jennifer Brown, bestselling author of
Hate List
and
Thousand Words

“This smart, edgy thriller taps into the college-angst zeitgeist, where the price of high achievement might just be your soul.” —
Kirkus

TRULY, MADLY, DEADLY

Hannah Jayne

They said it was an accident…

Sawyer Dodd is a star athlete, straight-A student, and the envy of every other girl who wants to date Kevin Anderson. When Kevin dies in a tragic car crash, Sawyer is stunned. Then she opens her locker to find a note:

You’re welcome.

Someone saw what he did to her. Someone knows that Sawyer and Kevin weren’t the perfect couple they seemed to be. And that someone—a killer—is now shadowing Sawyer’s every move…

Praise for
Truly, Madly, Deadly
:

“A fast-paced thriller.” —
Kirkus Reviews

“What a ride! Full of twists and turns—including an ending you won’t see coming!” —April Henry,
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die

SEE JANE RUN

Hannah Jayne

I know who you are.

When Riley first gets the postcard tucked into her bag, she thinks it’s a joke. Then she finds a birth certificate for a girl named Jane Elizabeth O’Leary tucked inside
her
baby book.

Riley’s parents have always been pretty overprotective. What if it wasn’t for her safety…but fear of her finding out their secret? What have they been hiding? The more Riley digs for answers, the more questions she has.

The only way to know the truth? Find out what happened to Jane O’Leary.

For more YA thrillers,
visit
teenfire.sourcebooks.com
.