Broken Fate
Jennifer Derrick
Published by: Clean Teen Publishing
Publication date: April 18th 2016
Genres: Mythology, Romance, Young Adult
Zeus gave her one simple job: Kill every human. Atropos—daughter of Zeus and the third goddess of Fate from Greek mythology —spends her eternal life snipping human lifelines when their mortal lives are over. As if being a killer doesn’t make life miserable enough, she and her Fate-wielding sisters must live amongst the humans on Earth thanks to a long-running feud between their mother and Zeus. Living on Earth means they must mingle with the mortals, attend the local high school, and attempt to fit in—or at least not stand out too much.
Killing and mingling don’t mix, which is why Atropos’ number-one rule is to avoid all relationships with the humans. Caring for the people she has to kill is a fast track to insanity. However, when Alex Morgan walks into her first-period English class, she knows she’s in for trouble. He’s the worst kind of human for her to like—one with a rapidly approaching expiration date. And he makes Atropos want to break all the rules.
EXCERPT:
I turn off my desk lamp and computer, starting to get up, but then sit back down. My curiosity about Alex has been building all day. I’ve tried to tamp it down, to forget him, but I can’t. Even Chloe’s chatter couldn’t take him out of my thoughts. I boot the computer back up and give in to temptation.
I search for Alex’s record in our database. What I’m doing isn’t forbidden, but I rarely bother to check on the humans once I assign their manner of death. I forget them until I see them again on their date of death. However, tonight, I want to see what kind of fate Lacey devised for him and refresh my memory about how and when he’ll die.I find his file but just as I’m about to double click and open it, I pull back. Do I really want to know what Lacey has planned for him? He’s already faced grief and loss. What if his fate gets worse than that? Do I want that knowledge?
I think for a few moments and decide it doesn’t really matter either way. He and I aren’t going to become friends. I enjoyed our afternoon together, but that has to be the end of it. If his fate is bad, I can live with it. He is, after all, just another human. Easy come, easy go.
I double click on the file. His entire past and future lies before me. I scroll down to the end of the document, looking for the relevant part, the date of death. I don’t have to scroll far.
May fifteenth of this year.
I read the page again. The date doesn’t change. May fifteenth is a little less than two months from now. I quickly scroll back up, looking for the details on how he will die. I’m furious when I find them.
GUEST POST
Funerals,
Book Ideas, and Other Odd Behavior
Whenever
people ask me where I get my ideas, I say, “Anywhere and everywhere.” Almost
anything can be the seed of an idea for a story. Yet for all that I mine for
ideas in every aspect of my life, even I never expected to get an idea at a
funeral. But that’s exactly where Broken Fate first appeared in my head.
It was
the funeral of a relative who died way too young. Like any sane person, I hate
funerals, even more so because I tend to be a snotty crier. Once the tears
start, it gets embarrassing. I do everything I can to keep myself together
until I can cry in private. So there I was, trying to distract myself from
thoughts of death, when I found myself thinking of, well, death. Specifically,
what kind of nonsensical, cold, cruel system would claim someone so young?
I remembered
the unit on Greek mythology from my freshman English class. That was where I
first heard the myth of the three Fates: The first spins human lifelines, the
second assigns them their destinies, and the third kills the humans by cutting
the lifelines.
[IMAGE
4]
My brain
locked on the third Fate. How bad would that job stink, I thought. All you do
is kill people, day after day. And you’re immortal, so it never ends. You’re
just a cog in the business of life and death. After a while, you wouldn’t even
care any more. Your days would just be snip, snip, snip. It’d be like working
on a never-ending assembly line.
Beyond
the fatigue, you couldn’t possibly have any relationships with humans because
loving people you have to kill is insane. “Hey, let me love you so I can kill
you and then be sad.” Um, no. But what would happen if one day you did fall in
love with a human, and that human had a very short shelf life?
There it
was: The idea for Broken Fate. I spent the rest of the service working it out
in my head, thus averting the snotty crying crisis.
I wanted
to write it down, but that’s not cool in the middle of a funeral. After the
service, I reached for my phone, but since we’d carpooled to the service it was
still in the car back at the house. I dug around in my purse for a pen but I
didn’t have one.
I kept
chanting, “Fate, Fate, Fate,” in my head until I caught up to my cousin at the
reception.
“I need
to use your phone to send myself an email.” I said.
She
looked at me strangely, but fortunately my family is great at overlooking weird
behavior. She handed over her phone and I sent myself the following:
“Fate,
business, crappy job, how could you love someone if you had to kill everyone,
person with rapidly approaching expiration date.”
So a
novel about death was born at a funeral. Since I can’t separate the funeral
from the book, Broken Fate has become a weird, bittersweet, and humorous last
memory of my relative. That’s strangely comforting.
AUTHOR BIO
Jennifer is a freelance writer and novelist. As a freelancer, she writes everything from technical manuals to articles on personal finance and European-style board games. Her interest in storytelling began when she was six and her parents gave her a typewriter for Christmas and agreed to pay her $.01 per page for any stories she churned out. Such a loose payment system naturally led to a lot of story padding. Broken Fate, her first novel, earned her $2.80 from her parents.
Jennifer lives in North Carolina and, when not writing, can often be found reading, trawling the shelves at the library, playing board games, watching sports, camping, running marathons, and playing with her dog. You can visit her at her official website:www.JenniferDerrick.com.
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