Guest Post: Author Lydia Kang

An un-putdownable thriller for fans of Uglies

When a crash kills their father and leaves them orphaned, Zel knows she needs to protect her sister, Dyl. But before Zel has a plan, Dyl is taken by strangers using bizarre sensory weapons, and Zel finds herself in a safe house for teens who aren’t like any she’s ever seen before—teens who shouldn't even exist. Using broken-down technology, her new friends’ peculiar gifts, and her own grit, Zel must find a way to get her sister back from the kidnappers who think a powerful secret is encoded in Dyl’s DNA.

A spiraling, intense, romantic story set in 2150—in a world of automatic cars, nightclubs with auditory ecstasy drugs, and guys with four arms—this is about the human genetic “mistakes” that society wants to forget, and the way that outcasts can turn out to be heroes.

The Best Fortune Cookie Fortune, Ever

 

Well, at least for me. :)

 

I received this fortune cookie while I was in Las Vegas recently for the Vegas Valley Book Festival. I always get weird fortune cookies that are usually about nothing (a memorable one: “You have tasted the sweetness and the bitterness of coffee.” Whut?)

 

But this one was important.

 

 

It means so much. Much of my life, I was shy and not happy about being thrust into the spot light. But several times in my life, I had to do enter extremely uncharted territory because there were no others to do the job, and no one to teach me what I had to learn.

 

Like writing. I’d taken minimal classes on writing and I already had a career in medicine and a family that took up much of my time. But no one was going to show me how to write, or make me a schedule, or solve my plot problems but me.

 

I think that Zelia, in my book CONTROL, would have appreciated this fortune. She has to save her kidnapped sister. She’s not allowed to exist in the world that most people live in. And she can’t even trust her own new, foster family to help her. She’s smart and determined, and that’s really all she has.

 

She’s on her own, and it’s absolutely frightening.

 

But I think that this fortune speaks the natural resiliency and resourcefulness that we all have, but maybe have forgotten in this day and age of easily accessible everything. We can lean on friends and family for support, but at the core of the fight for anything that’s worth fighting for is...ourselves.

 

Learn by going where you have to go.

 

About the Author:

 

 

 

Lydia Kang is an author of young adult fiction, poetry, and narrative non-fiction. She graduated from Columbia University and New York University School of Medicine, completing her residency and chief residency at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. She is a practicing physician who has gained a reputation for helping fellow writers achieve medical accuracy in fiction. Her poetry and non-fiction have been published in JAMA, The Annals of Internal Medicine, Canadian Medical Association Journal, Journal of General Internal Medicine, and Great Weather for Media. She believes in science and knocking on wood, and currently lives in Omaha with her husband, three children, and a terrarium full of stick bugs.

 

Lydia is represented by Eric Myers of the Spieler Agency.

 

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