Blog Tour Stop: The Proving by Ken Brosky

 

The Proving

By: Ken Brosky
Published: Jan 5th 2016
Pages: 303

It's been 133 years since the Specters invaded Earth. Like ghosts they haunt the planet, devouring anyone foolish enough to venture outside the last remaining protected cities. For some, venturing out isn't a choice--it's a necessary evil to prove yourself to your clan as you come of age.

But when a team of ambitious youth—New Adults—undertakes a mission deep in Specter territory, they discover a terrible secret. Everything they've learned may be wrong ... and Earth is in grave danger.

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Suddenly, the area all around her began to glow, as if some sinister light was slowly coming to life. Thin pine and tupelo trunks were painted in a fiery red light, bright enough that each tree cast a bloody shadow. The creature was near. She ran left, thinking about her family and blinking away stinging hot tears. She hoped to see them again. She hoped to tell her husband and her daughter how much she loved them both. Her body, numb, expected death at any moment but she refused to give in. Ahead, she could see an end to the forest. And something else . . .

A fence! An old fence whose links were being pulled earthward by heavy vines with thick stalks and fat, crescent-shaped leaves. And beyond the fence: a dim pool of white light illuminated a squat building at the far edge of a barren lot. The building must be an emergency supply depot, no doubt running solely on stored energy from the solar panels attached to the roof, slanted up at the sky. The depot would contain emergency equipment and maybe some kind of weapon. It would have a communication system, too.

She could jump the fence. She could take one step on the constrained chain links and reach the top and hop over. She could reach the building. She could survive. She’d carried a child in her womb for nine months, seven days and an additional fifteen excruciating hours of labor. Her back had endured. Her legs had endured. This pain she felt in her shins now? It was nothing. It was an annoyance.

She could do this. She could send a warning.

The Proving is Ken Brosky’s newest YA sci-fi adventure. His first series, The Grimm Chronicles, ran from 2012-2014 and is available on Kindle. Ken received his MFA in writing from the University of Nebraska-Omaha.

Born in Milwaukee, WI in the year of the Cock, 1981 . . . how very fitting. Ken Brosky has lived in the Brew City all of his life and grew up with two parents and one younger sister. Most of his early childhood was spent reading, drawing, and writing small comic books, which were sold to family members at outrageous prices. Things were going well, until one day Ken discovered an insert in his favorite magazine. It looked like a comic book, but when he opened it up, there was nothing but page after page of words. Sentences. Paragraphs. Every once in awhile, a page would be devoted to a single picture of a man standing in snow, usually carrying a shotgun or a chainsaw, tearing through a handful of zombies. Ken read the short story/comic book, and was intrigued by the layout. Here was--essentially--a book printed in the form of a comic, with a few pictures peppered throughout. It was ingenious. And so Ken tried to write his own . . . Two months later, at the end of the sixth grade, Ken Brosky had written his first novel. 308 pages, tentatively titled Somewhere in the Dark. Sure, it was a piece of shit. Sure, the rewrite (done in the eighth grade) was a piece of shit, too. But from that point on, Ken Brosky wanted nothing more than to be a writer. And he has been writing ever since.

 

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