{Guest Post} Little Known Facts about Broken by A.E. Rought

Imagine a modern spin on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein where a young couple’s undying love and the grief of a father pushed beyond sanity could spell the destruction of them all.
A string of suspicious deaths near a small Michigan town ends with a fall that claims the life of Emma Gentry’s boyfriend, Daniel. Emma is broken, a hollow shell mechanically moving through her days. She and Daniel had been made for each other, complete only when they were together. Now she restlessly wanders the town in the late Fall gloom, haunting the cemetery and its white-marbled tombs, feeling Daniel everywhere, his spectre in the moonlight and the fog.
When she encounters newcomer Alex Franks, only son of a renowned widowed surgeon, she’s intrigued despite herself. He’s an enigma, melting into shadows, preferring to keep to himself. But he is as drawn to her as she is to him. He is strangely… familiar. From the way he knows how to open her locker when it sticks, to the nickname she shared only with Daniel, even his hazel eyes with brown flecks are just like Daniel’s.
The closer they become, though, the more something inside her screams there’s something very wrong with Alex Franks. And when Emma stumbles across a grotesque and terrifying menagerie of mangled but living animals within the walls of the Franks’ estate, creatures she surely knows must have died from their injuries, she knows.

Little known facts about Broken by A.E. Rought:

I always knew making readers feel emotions was a big joy for me—I didn’t know I would enjoy being so mean to Emma and Alex. Yes, the plot was set when I started writing, but I never thought twisting, and wringing all the heartache out of them would be so entertaining.

Renfield wasn’t initially intended on being such a “character.” He ended up almost playing a supporting role himself. (And I type this one-handed while holding my own fuzzy Overlord…)

I didn’t know Emma was going to have that sense of humor, or her sarcastic edge at times.

While on the subject of Emma, I didn’t plan on her punching anything but her locker. I liked that she showed me a backbone, despite her heart being broken by loss, though, so I let her take a few swings.

What Josh admits toward the end? It’s in Chapter Twenty-Nine, I think… He was supposed to be a jerk, but I didn’t plan that. I remember typing it, and my first through was, “You bastard.” Then I texted my betas, enjoyed their shock and echoes of my initial sentiment. Then, I tweaked things to make it fit.

Alex is ticklish. That wasn’t planned, and I loved when it cropped up. I think it’s the little things that make characters seem more human.

I didn’t know the Franks estate would be so…horrific. It was deep in the night as I sat typing that chapter at a friend’s house. She’d gone out and left me hunched over the keyboard, then came back in the middle of the night to find me pacing in the kitchen. “Aren’t you supposed to be writing?” she asked. “Yeah,” I answered, “But I creeped myself out…” (The deer, though—I totally planned that.)

Alex’s dad is a villain, dark, twisted in his analytical, clinical view things. I didn’t know the depth of his evil until the endgame of the book.
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About the Author:

Somewhat serious: Self-proclaimed nerd, A.E. Rought has spent most of her early life in libraries and bookstores. It’s no surprise that she turned to writing shortly after creative arts college. She has novels of varying genres, and different pennames, published since 2006.

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