Author Interview: Kelley York

I met Kelley York and her co-author, Rowan Altwood, at a Barnes and Noble book event, and was immediately intrigued by the premise of OTHER BREAKABLE THINGS. This story embraces second chances, and shows why no one should ever give up.

According to Japanese legend, folding a thousand paper cranes will grant you healing.

Evelyn Abel will fold two thousand if it will bring Luc back to her.

Luc Argent has always been intimately acquainted with death. After a car crash got him a second chance at life—via someone else’s transplanted heart—he tried to embrace it. He truly did. But he always knew death could be right around the corner again.

And now it is.

Sick of hospitals and tired of transplants, Luc is ready to let his failing heart give out, ready to give up. A road trip to Oregon—where death with dignity is legal—is his answer. But along for the ride is his best friend, Evelyn.

And she’s not giving up so easily.

A thousand miles, a handful of roadside attractions, and one life-altering kiss later, Evelyn’s fallen, and Luc’s heart is full. But is it enough to save him? Evelyn’s betting her heart, her life, that it can be.

Right down to the thousandth paper crane.

Kelley York also answered a few interview questions:


According to your website, in addition to being an author, you are also a graphic designer with a specialty in book cover design. What, in your opinion, are the necessary elements of a good book cover?

There are a lot of elements to this so I’m going to try my best to keep this answer concise: 1. Genre-matching (you don’t want someone to pick up your YA contemporary romance thinking it’s a sci-fi book, for instance), 2. Technical aspects (good compositing and typography, for instance), 3. Uniqueness, and 4.) the ability to give a reader some kind of idea of what they’re getting into when they pick the book up.

The cover of OTHER BREAKABLE THINGS demonstrates this beautifully. Since you co-wrote this with Rowan Altwood, what was the collaboration process like when you wrote Luc and Evelyn’s story?

It was my first time finishing something with someone else, and it definitely has it’s own unique challenges, but at the same time, co-writing is exciting. We plotted out most of the book together first, so we knew what needed to happen as we alternated chapter by chapter and consulted one another on “our character’s” reactions to things. Rowan is largely responsible for all things Luc, and I’m largely responsible for all things Evelyn.

Lovely. Another book of yours, SUICIDE WATCH, deals with the fragility of life and the complicated bonds we make with others. What parts of Vince’s story were the most challenging to write and why?  

Suicide Watch is very much a book near to my heart, because a lot of Vince’s struggles have been my own. Even down to a few small scenes in the book that were a direct reflection of things I’ve gone through or felt or thought. But while writing all of that was therapeutic in a lot of ways, it was also terrifying to share that part of myself. I had this deep fear I would put this book out there and readers might not “get” Vince, or might shrug off his issues, which in turn would be dismissing my own. To date, it’s my most personal book and putting that much of yourself into your writing is scary.


Indeed it is, and I’ll bet plenty of readers understood where Vince was coming from. What are some of your current projects?


I have an LGBT book set in Mare Island (remember that place from Other Breakable Things?) that’s about halfway done, and I’ve been a little stuck on it. Actively, Rowan and I are working on another book together; this one is an LGBT horror/thriller set in a British boarding school in the late 1800’s. It’s halfway done, and we’ve been chugging away at it every single day this month. It might end up being the fastest book I’ve ever written, and I’m so ridiculously excited for it!

Buy: Book Passage ~ Amazon ~ Barnes and Noble ~ Indiebound

Buy: Book Passage ~ Amazon ~ Barnes and Noble ~ Indiebound