What is Break about?

Well, that's an excellent question!

Let's see what different sources have to say.

My query letter--complete with original title!:


Nothing sucks for seventeen-year-old Jonah McNab. Life's perfect. And he's bored out of his freaking mind--tired of being healthy, comfortable, and stagnant. How is his upper-middle-class lifestyle training him to be a better person? Unlike his anaphylaxis-prone brother, who gets to fight death on a regular basis, Jonah isn't evolving. He's not getting stronger. If he wants to be improve, he's going to need a challenge to overcome. Even if he has to create one himself.

And that's where the broken bones come in. Everyone knows broken bones grow back stronger than they were before. So Jonah will break them all, one by one. Break a bone, grow a better bone. Break a body, grow a better body. Right?

But Jonah's new habit--and subsequent distraction--exacerbate all that's not well at home. His brother, deteriorating whenever he's not under Jonah's watchful eye, decides eating's not worth the risk of an allergic reaction. His parents use Jonah's broken bones as just another prop in their power plays, until they become the suspects of child abuse. It looks like Jonah's destroying more than just his bones...but how can he be sure it's all going to grow back?

IF IT AIN'T BROKE is a YA for the Children of Fight Club, complete at 45,000.

My publisher's description:

Jonah is on a mission to break every bone in his body. Everyone knows that broken bones grow back stronger than they were before. And Jonah wants to be stronger—needs to be stronger—because everything around him is falling apart. Breaking, and then healing, is Jonah's only way to cope with the stresses of home, girls, and the world on his shoulders. This is the story of his self-destructive spiral, his rock-bottom moment, and how he finally learns to accept help and find true strength through recovery.




And mine:

It's a dark comedy.

I thought of it after I saw Into the Wild.

I wrote the first draft in six days.

It's fast.

It's energetic.

It's short.

It's intense.

It's simple.

It's mine.